27 A Parents’ Guide to Being Transgender and Autistic

Alexandra Forshaw

Trying to fit in has been a life-long undertaking, as much a consequence of being autistic as of being transgender.

TRANSGENDER PEOPLE are now more widely recognized than ever. A major UK soap opera had a transgender regular character for sixteen years. A Manhattan-based chain of luxury department stores used transgender models in an ad campaign for spring 2014. A transgender actress was featured on the cover of Time magazine in May 2014. But despite this, most people still know little if anything about us. Reliable estimates put the incidence of gender dysphoria —discomfort with one’s assigned gender—at about one in five hundred.1 However, there is evidence from some small studies that the rate may be as much as eight times higher among autistic people.²

As a child, I didn’t know anything about it. I was born forty years ago and labeled as a boy based on external appearances. Growing up in an environment that was entirely populated with white, heterosexual people, there was no way for me to gain experience of anything outside of that. There was no internet, only the books at home and at school, which I read voraciously. But these books presented a similar picture of the world to the limited view I had from the small English village where I lived. A completely binary view: people divided into men and women.

The trouble was that not knowing anything about transgender people or gender dysphoria didn’t change the fact that I knew I wasn’t comfortable being a boy. From the age of about ten I would borrow my mother’s clothes on occasion. I felt more comfortable dressing as a girl, as if I was being my natural self. I always thought my mother didn’t suspect because she never mentioned anything to me. To be fair, she knew nothing about gender dysphoria, and conversations on the subject of sexual or gender matters just didn’t happen in our family.

It would be true to say that I would not have ever felt comfortable talking to my parents about being female. For all I knew I was the only person in the whole world who felt that way. It was all so far outside my experiences that I would not have been able to explain anything properly. But more than that, there was my assumption that my feelings were wrong, unnatural, that I had to keep them hidden or else I might face censure or punishment—all a result of topics like this never being talked about at home.

Trying to fit in has been a life-long undertaking, as much a consequence of being autistic as of being transgender. Like most autistic people of my generation, I was not diagnosed during childhood; I was just seen as preternaturally shy, a loner more likely to be seen with my head in a book than playing with others. My social awkwardness made me a target for bullying—name calling and occasional threats rather than physical violence. The last thing I was going to contemplate was providing more ammunition by telling anybody that I believed I was a girl.

I lived that life, keeping my secret to myself, for about thirty years. Several years ago, I discovered, after following up on an initial suggestion made by my wife, that I am autistic. To call this a revelation would be a considerable understatement. Suddenly, so much of my life up to that point came into focus. I understood why I am the way I am and why I struggle with certain aspects of life. I became more introspective and analytical about my own behavior, studying myself, reading about autism, and applying what I learned to gain a deeper insight into myself.

One effect of this was that I also started to research transgender experience and gender dysphoria. At last I had the vocabulary to describe what I had known for so long. I was still too afraid to tell anybody else about it, but I began to drop hints into conversation. Not that anybody picked up on them: people tend to dismiss such small clues because they do not fit their expectations.

In the end, my hand was forced. Hiding my real self for so long had taken its toll on me and I descended into a lengthy bout of depression, primarily caused by my gender dysphoria. I was unable to work for several weeks, and my relationship with my wife deteriorated almost to the point of breaking up. To have the chance to regain some happiness in my life and become fit to work again, I came out and admitted that I was a transgender woman, and I started the long process of transition to bring my body in line with my self-image. It was as if a weight had been lifted from me, and at long last I feel happy. I am free to be myself.

Looking back, I have regrets. There are things I wish had been different. I wish I had known something about the spectrum of gender identities and expressions. I wish I had felt comfortable enough to speak to my parents about how I felt. I wish they had the knowledge and experience to understand gender issues.

Some children identify as a different gender from an early age, even as soon as they are able to communicate. In some cases, especially for autistic children, they may not have a strong sense of their own gender and want to fit in with a particular group of other children. Until your child can tell you unequivocally how they feel, there is no way to tell for sure whether your daughter is a tomboy or a boy. Like one’s sexual orientation, being transgender is not a choice. It is simply the way a person is. The most important thing is that your child has no doubts that you, their parent, will love and accept them regardless. It’s about honesty and openness.

Talking about gender with your child is very important. When they see a transgender person on TV, this would be an ideal time to introduce the subject. You could explain how some people look like a woman (or a man) but are really the opposite gender. Their minds tell them that they are a man, but their bodies look like they are a woman’s and that makes them feel unhappy. For some, just dressing as a man and looking like a man is enough to make them happy, but others will need the help of doctors to change their bodies. Having role models helps a lot by demonstrating that there are other people out there who have gone through something similar: people like Cher’s son, Chaz Bono; directors of The Matrix, Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski; actor and writer Scott Turner Schofield; lead singer of punk band Against Me!, Laura Jane Grace; and computer scientist and engineer Lynn Conway.

Over time, if your child consistently insists that she is a boy, perhaps even insisting for years, then that is a sign that she may be transgender. The reality is that while a lot of children simply go through phases, there is a significant minority who do not conform to their assigned gender over the long term. Whatever the signs, until your child is able to tell you for themselves, you cannot know for sure. The best approach for your child’s well-being is to be approachable and accepting, not critical. They will need love and support, because on top of her differences through being autistic, they will face discrimination and prejudice for not conforming according to their gender. Denying how they feel and not believing them will only cause them distress.

Your support can start with small things such as allowing her to dress as a boy at home, to have a boyish haircut, to play with toys that you might consider more appropriate for boys. None of this is going to change whether your child identifies as a girl, a boy, or something in between in the long run, but it will affect their happiness in the here and now. It may turn out that this is just a phase of growing up, and they later decide that they feel like a girl. But in some cases, it is not a phase and the feelings persist.

As parents, it is likely that you will find dealing with this difficult. It’s common to feel nervous, worried, embarrassed, or even angry. Some parents feel grief at the “loss” of their daughter when she becomes their son. There are parallels here with the feelings parents experience when their child is diagnosed with autism: There may be shock and denial at first and fear because you do not understand what is happening. Your expectations have turned out to be at odds with reality. Receiving any kind of unanticipated news is enough to knock most people off balance, and all the more so when it involves someone as close to you as your child.

It takes time for the new information to sink in, but don’t lose sight of this key fact: The only thing that is different right now is that you have a piece of information about your child that you didn’t possess yesterday. Your child has not changed at all. They were the same person before you received this news and continue to be the same person now.

You will almost certainly encounter conflict with other people who do not understand, such as other parents at your child’s school. Keep in mind that whatever other people may think or say, it is your child’s happiness that is most important. Discuss things with your child’s school; enlist the support of the teaching staff and classroom assistants who are responsible for your child while she is there. Encourage the school to involve other parents, to inform them about your child’s situation and the challenges she faces. Other children will be influenced by their parents, which is why it is important to involve them in the process.

Nothing you did as parents caused this; it is simply the way your child is. It is not a blessing, but neither is it a curse. Nothing you do now or in the future will change your child’s gender identification. What you can affect, though, is how happy your child is. I keep going on about support because that really is the most important thing. Providing a parent’s unconditional love to your child, accepting them for whoever they may be, and making that explicitly clear throughout their life will make the world of difference to their happiness.