BloodyWinter01,
By: Keira Fulton-Lees
Tags: Gender Identity, Autism, Gender Dysphoria, Transgender, Simon Baron Cohen

One thing especially intrigued me when you wrote this:

“However, there is a seldom [any] amount of evidence about the reason(s) why [there is] a link between gender dysphoria and autism”

The buzz about the link between Autism and Gender Dysphoria has only been breaking news fairly recently, and I find it to be quite perplexing that there have not contol based studies into the etiology of the correlation. So, I did a little research of my own to see what, if anything is out there. Well, there ain’t much, as they say.

I did find a scholarly article detailing several (though few) studies in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders titled: Autistic Traits in Treatment-Seeking Transgender Adults (Springer).

Excerpt from the Abstract:

¹ “Therefore, the existing evidence suggests that the high rates of autistic traits found in studies including adult transgender people appears to apply to those assigned a female sex at birth (Jones et al. 2012). This may be explained by the extreme male brain theory (EMB) (Baron-Cohen 2002), which suggests that a higher number of autistic traits is associated with exposure to higher levels of foetal testosterone (Auyeung et al. 2009; Baron-Cohen et al. 2015). Affected individuals may therefore have more traits associated with a ‘male brain’ such as an increased drive to systemize and lower levels of empathy (Baron-Cohen 2003).”

My Comment on the Above

In summary, it appears they are really clueless as to the causation of the link, especially when they are citing Simon Baron-Cohen’s ridulously ouddated Extreme Male Brain Theory. The EMB can be traced all the way back to Hans Asperger’s initial sudies of his “little professors” who were all boys, which led the whole old school Autism experts to come up with the conclusion that there was a 4:1 ratio, where 4=Boys, and 1=girls, indicating that boys were four times more likely to have Autism than girls. That’s crap as far as today’s science goes because: You studied only boys! Duh! And girls can have boys brains now too?

Note: The only thing cool about Simon Baron Cohen is that he is the cousin of the comedic actor Sasha Baron Cohen, from the craxy as* movie: Borat!

Then there was this excerpt from the final Discussion:

² “Overall, this study found that autistic traits appear to be more prevalent in transgender people assigned female at birth, but not in those assigned male at birth. The autistic traits found in both groups appear to be particularly connected to social skills, which may be associated to the high levels of anxiety and low self-esteem that this group often experiences”

My Comments on the Above

Okay, now they have gone too far. Logically what they are doing is turning the Extreme Male Brain theory on its head! So, now they are saying that the link between Autism and Gender Dysphoria is predominately a girl thing, but the link between Autism and girls is not a thing unless the girl brain is a male brain and it is extreme and theefore she is transgender. What? What about the Extreme Girl Brain theory? Shouldn’t that be a thing?

So, if you tested a sizeable enough group of boys and girls to study, you would find then that four times as many boys as girls have Autism, and that those four times as many boys that have Autism all have Extreme Male Brain, but were not Transgender, well then the lessor amount of girls from the test pool that do have autism also have Extreme Male Brains, and they are Transgender! I think Simon Baron-Cohen needs to update his theory to include the: “Transgender Girl Extreme Male Brain” theory (TGEMB)!

Wait, but what is happening with the Control Group???

Sincerely,

Keira Fulton-Lees

Artfully Autistic Advocate for Autism

artfullyautisticpublication@gmail.com| 757–416–4314

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