Autistic young people are more prone to trans social contagion
Robby Starbuck said:
“These autistic kids are more prone to falling into a social contagion because of the fixations that they can have on different things.”
There is a genuine and well-documented higher prevalence of autism among gender-diverse young people, so the connection sounds grounded in real data. The idea that autistic fixation could drive a mistaken identity feels plausible to someone unfamiliar with the research.
The statistic is real: autism and gender diversity do co-occur more often than chance would predict. But the conclusion drawn from it is backwards. Autistic people tend to be less driven by social conformity, not more, which means they are more likely to name a gender identity that differs from the one they were assigned, rather than quietly suppressing it to fit in. That is the opposite of a group primed for social contagion. There is no peer-reviewed evidence that autism causes young people to adopt a false trans identity under social influence, and when that framing takes hold, the practical effect is that autistic trans young people walk into appointments already carrying the extra burden of proving their gender is real and not a fixation, which means some of them simply do not get the care they need.
What I said at the time:
“What different things can were autistic and then they were socially contagious and then they turned trans and then they decided they weren't trans. But like, what, like bollocks?”
Autistic trans young people, who face the additional barrier of having their gender identity dismissed as a symptom of their neurodevelopmental condition rather than taken seriously on its own terms.