Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill last week that prohibits multiple types of gender-affirming care — including sexual reassignment surgeries and hormone replacement therapies — for those younger than 18. On the surface, Georgia’s bill seems like nothing more than the latest in a flurry of awful right-wing legislation to restrict care for transgender youth. But this law includes a clause claiming that “Gender dysphoria is often comorbid with other mental health and developmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder.”
Conservatives are forcing autistic people who are also transgender to choose between their identities.
Set aside the fact that autism isn’t a “comorbid” illness that threatens life; this peculiar phrasing in Georgia’s new law is part of a disturbing new trend wherein conservatives, in their effort to restrict gender-affirming care, are now weaponizing autism diagnoses. In doing so, those conservatives are forcing autistic people who are also transgender to choose between their identities.
The link between autism and gender dysphoria, and queerness as a whole, is well-established. Transgender and gender-diverse adults are more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. In a May 22 study in the journal “Autism” that surveyed 21 autistic adults, one of the participants said, “Being autistic is like everybody else has got the rulebook and you didn’t, so you can understand why gender would come into it because that was in the rulebook you do not get.”
This makes sense in so many ways. Gender is the ultimate social norm, and the social norm for autistic people might as well be a foreign language. So naturally, autistic people will question why they have to perform in a specific way because someone put an “F” or “M” on their birth certificate.
Incidentally, it was only after I started writing about autism that I met and befriended many transgender and nonbinary people. Their friendship helped me, a…
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