I’ve Been Taken In…

It seems like yesterday’s post might not have been on the up and up, according to Cristan Williams at the Transadvocate the author of the Slate article didn’t report the conclusion of the research accurately.

Slate wants you to be concerned that, “A Disproportionate Number of Autistic Youth Are Transgender.” Here’s why that concern is BS.

Cited are the following papers:

• Gender identity disorder in a girl with autism —a case report, 1997
• A 2017 Atlantic article that itself cites a 2010 paper titled, Autism Spectrum Disorders in Gender Dysphoric Children and Adolescents
• A 2016 paper titled, Gender Dysphoria and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review of the Literature that predominately considers a pre-2013 dataset.

In fact, the 2016 study warns researchers that:

Notably, 1 study explored the link between the DSM-IV diagnosis GID and ASD in a clinical sample of children and adolescents using the more comprehensive Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders (DISCO), a semistructured 2- to 4-hour interview. This study identified 1 child (of 52 with GID) who also met criteria for ASD according to the DISCO… In conclusion, current research has not established an overrepresentation of GD among those with ASD or the converse.

Yup, this is the paper that Slate cites as an example of supporting that:

A.) There is a consensus that “gender-dysphoric youth are more likely to be autistic than would be expected based on autism rates in the general population”; and,
B.) “This co-occurrence has implications for the treatment of both gender dysphoria and autism in young people”

The Slate article states, “Research on this phenomenon goes back to at least the 1990s, when the first case study of an autistic child with gender dysphoria (then called gender identity disorder) was published. As studies investigating the co-occurrence (or correlation) between gender dysphoria and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have trickled in, there is a growing consensus in the medical community that the two do co-occur at disproportionate rates.”
[…]
Consider the following from a 2018 paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry:

More recently, growing attention has been paid to a putative relation between gender dysphoria (GD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This concept has become particularly popular in the lay press. Some individuals have gone so far as to suggest that transgender identity is a result of underlying psychopathology, with ASD being one example. These conclusions are not supported by extant research, and practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists should be aware of the literature on this topic and its limitations.

This paper is titled, “Gender Dysphoria” and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Is the Link Real?

As this paper correctly notes, the idea that Autism and GD share a link has, “become particularly popular in the lay press.” If you care to see how these misconceptions are used as propaganda, check out the way this misconception is used on this ex-trans site, a site that recently helped publish an ex-trans booklet targeting schools and school children. Click here to see the 100s of news articles on google fretting over the link between autism and being trans.

So I guess I was suckered in to reporting the Slate article.

What I do see is that many of trans children have been misdiagnosed with ADHD and other spectrum disorders; that many time when a child socially transitions all misdiagnosed symptoms disappear and the child begins living a normal life.

She ends the article with…

While it’s possible there is, in fact, a link between autism and being trans, the reality is that we do not have evidence to substantiate that hypothesis. Until we have clear data that substantiates the claims Slate and others regularly make, we need to remain agnostic to such claims, no matter how often these claims are made. While there are certainly autistic people who have gender dysphoria (just like there are autistic people who are GNC or gay) this reality doesn’t mean that being GNC, gay, or GD is any more likely than the general population to be autistic.