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o   Most autistic students feel that their teachers don’t understand their needs. Autistic characteristics like stimming, or a sensory overload induced meltdown in the classroom are often perceived as disruptive behaviour by teachers. This can lead to unnecessary punishments or even exclusion from school, affecting the student’s mental health and academic achievement. Teachers and staff should complete training on autism and other disabilities to better understand autistic students and avoid disrupting their education.

o   Teachers may assume autistic students can’t handle the level of work for their age group and give them work that doesn’t challenge them, or separate them from general classes. This can lead to autistic students falling behind their peers in academic achievement, and they may lose interest in the work as it doesn’t stimulate them.

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Autism or Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurological and developmental condition affecting how one interacts and experiences the world around them. Autism is a spectrum condition, meaning no two autistic people will have the same experiences.

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You can’t measure the “severity” of autism. Labels like high or low functioning are harmful because-

-it invalidates autistic people’s needs

-it overlooks the complexity of people’s experiences

-it causes expectations and insecurities

-it divides the autistic community

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o   Socialising is a big part of school. Making friends is hard enough but autistic people often struggle with social skills and anxiety about being perceived as ‘different’ or ‘weird’. This can lead to autistic students masking, meaning they hide autistic characteristics from people out of fear of being judged. Masking is a very common coping mechanism in the neurodivergent community, but it only causes more damage to mental health and in many cases adds to the trauma of living in a neurotypical world.

o   Many autistic children report being bullied for being autistic, or their autistic characteristics as other children perceive them as ‘odd’ or ‘weird’. Schools need to take responsibility for the safety of all children by reducing bullying. This can be done by educating students on embracing differences in people.

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Someone whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth (including non-binary people and identities under that umbrella).

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A negative feeling relating to the mismatch of gender identity and assigned sex.

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o   A common experience among autistics is to appear to be fine whilst at school, but once at home they have a meltdown. This is because they spend all their emotional and mental energy into masking whilst at school and are only able to release their emotions once at home, a safe place. Often this means the school is unaware of students struggles and over time autistic students could burn out, affecting their attendance and causing anxiety around school. A common name for this is the 'Coke Bottle Effect'.
Having a quiet or sensory room for available for all students means undiagnosed autistics can have a place to destress and normalises prioritising mental health.

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Gender is not binary; it is a social construct which has no limit of possible identities. The only one who can decide your gender is yourself.

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o   If a child is openly transgender at school they may wish to go by another name, use different pronouns or wear a different uniform. Being deadnamed and misgendered can be distressing for trans people, so it is important schools make sure all teachers and staff are aware of the students preferred name and pronouns and respect them.

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o   It is important for trans children to have a trusted adult at school, especially if their home in unaccepting or they’re not out yet. Having someone to talk about their identity with is important for self-esteem and wellbeing. However, many transgender students feel their teachers are inaccessible and are ill-equipped to help them. Schools should provide up to date LGBTQ+ training for all teachers.

o   If a student is having an unpleasant time at school at the hands of a teacher, they are unlikely to report it. Using the wrong name or pronouns for someone is often seen as a sign of disrespect and can impact the student’s mental health. Other students may see the teacher’s behaviour as an invitation to bully the student. Schools should ensure any reports of teachers mistreating students is handled effectively.

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o   More than half of transgender students report being bullied. This can impact mental health and attainment, as many students skip school to avoid bullying. A positive and inclusive school environment is a protective factor for LGBTQ+ students, as well as a clear anti-bullying policy.

o   However, when trans students receive support from peers, they are less likely to be bullied. Having an LGBTQ+ school club can help queer youth widen their support network.

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o   Coming out is probably one of the most common shared experiences in the LGBTQ+ community. It is supposed to be a celebration of identity and love you share with friends, family and even strangers. But in reality, it is one of the hardest things someone can do. If a child hasn’t come out to their parents this is usually because they know it will not be taken well, or they may not be ready yet. Schools should not disclose private information to parents/caregivers unless there is a safeguarding risk. Consequences of outing children to unaccepting parents include abuse, poor mental health and the child being kicked out. Schools should strive to be spaces where everyone feels safe to be themselves, and be clear to students about safeguarding policies.

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Autism and gender-diversity are common co-occurrences. Transgender people are three to six times more likely to be autistic.

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o   Many transgender autistics have had their gender identity questioned because they are autistic. Hearing this from a supposed trusted adult, like a teacher, can be invalidating and distressing for anyone. Again, up to date training can help clear any misinformation.

o   Sometimes people think trans autistic people are being manipulated by the trans community*, or want to protect them from discrimination. Everyone has the right to autonomy and self-determination, even if they need more support than others. Schools should respect their students’ choices and support them in any way they can.

*The linked article reflects the views of tabloid reporters and contains some transphobic and ableist content.

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o   Some trans autistics may struggle to self-advocate their needs and wants. This can be distressing and make accessing support harder, so it is important schools equip students with effective communication skills or tools. Schools should also be very clear on where or who to go to for support.

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o   Being autistic in a neurotypical society can be traumatic. Being gender diverse in a heteronormative society can also be traumatic. Trans and autistic students may mask their identities to appear ‘normal’ and avoid the stigma of being a minority. This affects mental health as masking can lead to burnout, stopping students from attending school. Schools should have sufficient mental health support available for all students.

o   Being a teenager is hard enough without worrying about all the discrimination you can face just for existing. Schools should be aware of additional issues trans and autistic students can face and be prepared to support them.

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An Introduction to Supporting LGBTQ+ Young People

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An Introduction to Supporting LGBTQ+ Young People

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I was late for lunch. At the time, I was juggling a teaching position with my work as public engagement fellow and running a journal; I'd made an appointment to meet a new graduate student assistant-but time got away from me. I was out of breath by the time I arrived, head still spinning with the effort of code-switching from one role to the next. It would take a few minutes to pull myself together, but the student was already there. I sat down, attempted some small talk (badly), rearranged my jacket on the chair four or five times. When I got myself in order, we commenced our discussion of the journal as we waited on sandwiches.

"I want to ask you something," she said. "How do you keep all your personas straight? I mean, how do you keep from losing yourself, being autistic and all?"

"I am not autistic," I corrected. She put down her lunch.

"But you are. Just like me. "

She meant no offense. But I felt outed, vulnerable. I'd worked most of my life to present as "normal" and even believed it myself on good days. I couldn't accept her casual diagnosis. It would take a coming-out journey (my second) to help me arrive at a place of acceptance.

I do not (yet) have an official diagnosis for autism. This is by design. I was born in the late 1970s in the midst of a family crisis. My mother rescued us both from my biological father and keep me hidden away at my grandparents' house for fear he might violate her restraining order. I developed unusual behaviors. I could walk and talk in full sentences by the age of eight months. As a toddler I put thought bubbles above my crayon drawings with pictographs for meaning. I loved words. I memorized stories, poems, songs. My grandmother considered me "gifted." But in addition to these traits, I could scarcely be handled or touched. I could not be taken into enclosed or noisy spaces; I bit and scratched other toddlers. I understand now that I suffer easily from sensory overload-I can get physically ill simply walking into a junk shop. Back then, I was just "being weird," and it was thought best if we kept it to ourselves.

In school, I had to adapt. It was hard going. I excelled in every subject and failed miserably (and embarrassingly) at social cues. But to my young mind, that was just part of growing up, and I wasn't as good at it as other people. Don't be weird, I told myself. Don't be weird.

I'm weird. I memorize lists of normative behaviors (introduce yourself, make eye contact, ask about the family, don't make those weird noises, don't tic in front of people, wear the right face for the job), but I never quite get it all right. Even so, I still did not think I was autistic. Being told I must be, by someone who was also autistic, distressed and shocked me. All of my associations for neurodivergence came with baggage.

I may never forgive Rain Man. Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Raymond, the autistic elder brother of Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) shows him unable to communicate effectively, prone to public meltdowns, and-because the doctor deems him "unable to make his own decisions" or function in society-ultimately in need of institutionalization. The film never provides Raymond's point of view-only the perspectives of those around him, who are entrusted to make his decisions for him. I was horrified by the movie. It frightened me. I understood very clearly that there were accepted norms, and that you could be locked away for violating them.

I knew I wasn't like other people. But I had also internalized the idea that this was "fixable," that I was curable. Adaptive behavior is recommended to parents of autistic kids today: help your child fit in socially, they say, as though autism were something to be schooled out of you by proper training. Masking may be a means of hiding who you are to prevent being outed (or harassed), but it comes with consequences, including anxiety, exhaustion-and loss of identity. And that, at least in part, was the question put to me by the graduate student when I arrived late to lunch: How do I present all these faces without losing my authenticity? It frightened me that I didn't have an answer.

In my early attempts to adapt, I used other human beings as look-books. I copied expressions, ways of being in the world, how to perform emotion so I could be better understood. I learned to see social interactions as a play; I can handle any genre-so long as I have the script and know the dress code. Trouble happens when there is no script, or someone changes it halfway through. I spent harrowing lunch hours driving home in traffic because I'd worn the wrong self for the day's activities. I can feel physically sick if I misread the type of attire expected for an occasion. It has been mistaken in me for vanity, but I'm not dressing to impress others so much as putting on the part required. It came natural to me to play both male and female parts; I excelled in almost any costume. I didn't know who I was without them.

I left my job in 2018. It should have been liberating; I'd just embarked on a freelance career and had a book contract. Working from home meant nothing to dress for, and without a specific role, I felt anxious and adrift. Similar experiences played out for people around the world in 2020 with pandemic lockdowns; I was an early adopter. I flipped from my work wardrobe of power suit-skirts and heels to men's jeans and T-shirts-but I felt between selves. Maybe there was a reason for that, my therapist suggested. Did I feel like a different gender from the one I was assigned? It wasn't a solution, but it was at least the right kind of question.

My body has always been a vehicle for the transportation and translation of ideas, and all the scattered performances were what I collectively called "myself." The specific bits of my body didn't really enter into the equation all that much. Many trans people experience terrible dysphoria over aspects of their bodies and seek to change them; some experience none and some fall between. For me, my gender felt wholly outside of, rather than a reflection of, myself. Extrinsic. I had mainly constructed it from other external cues.

I am married to a cisgendered and heterosexual (cis/het) man, and so most people assume I am a cis/het woman. I had neither expressed nor denied it; I just hadn't considered the question. I have always had traits largely considered "masculine," and my sexuality is pretty fluid, too. Mark intrigued and interested me; I fell in love with him for that, not because he was a man. So, I had to ask myself: was I just performing as cis/het?

For me, gender was something to be worn and used, a means of interacting with the world; I didn't know how to see it as an identity in and of itself. Jude Ellison S. Doyle wrote recently in an article titled " Divergent: The Emerging Research on the Connection between Trans Identities and Neurodivergence": "It wasn't possible to transition as long as I thought of myself as defective.... It was all so exhausting I could barely leave the house." I identified with that sentiment. I had been trying to choose a single new gender (and to do it right), but was still only expressing a part of who I am. In my search to understand what my identity meant to me, rather than how I packaged it for other people, I realized I am gender-fluid: nonbinary but containing multitudes. In that new freedom, I found myself returning to that otherpossibility. I had come out as gender fluid; could I also come out as autistic?

In August of 2020, the authors of the largest study to date on the overlap of autism and gender diversity announced their findings: about 25 percent of gender-diverse people have autism (compared to about 5 percent of cisgender people). To put it another way, autistic people are about five times more likely to be transgender or genderfluid than neurotypical people. As Doyle puts it, "'Autistic' is one of the most trans things you can be." So why isn't this connection more well-known?

One point, remarked on by Doyle and also by Eric Garcia in his new book We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation, is that autism is underdiagnosed along gendered lines. Cisgender men are identified as autistic more frequently, and at a much younger age, than either cisgender women or gender-diverse people. Even the autistic stereotypes are masculinized; an " extreme male brain" theory posits that autistic people process the world through a "male" lens. In truth, there are no significant differences between male and female brains-but, as Garcia points out, some autistic behaviors are seen as "female behaviors." It is more likely, then, that a boy who behaves neuro-atypically will be recognized and diagnosed. If parents, teachers and therapists are seeing symptoms along a binary of gender, they're going to miss people, and among gender-nonconformists, it's a significant percentage.

For many, an acceptance of autism diagnosis leads to a questioning of gender normative rules and an embrace of gender diversity. Garcia quotes Charlie Garcia-Spiegel, a presenter at Autspace, a conference on, for, and by neurodivergent people: "We [autistic people] can see a lot of the social rules around gender are bullshit, basically." It suggests that the 25 percent of autistics identifying as trans have been freed to do so by their autism. For me, this occurred in reverse. Questioning how I felt about my gender(s) gave me license to look at the other performed behaviors I'd learned to cultivate. It's also made me realize how much I have been impacted by social expectations, and how hard I had worked to meet them over the years.

As Eryn Star, an autistic and transmasculine writer and advocate emphasizes, trans people encounter prejudice, violence and denial of access to health care and other services. Some people claim they are illegitimate and want to prohibit them from living authentic lives. At the same time, people with autism are frequently rendered as incapable of making decisions for themselves about their sexuality. This increasingly public disdain and discrimination against trans and autistic people has surprising champions, including author J. K. Rowling, who suggested that autistic trans people assigned female at birth (AFAB) were being pressured to transition. (The autistic community responded with the hashtag #WeAreNotConfused.) "I have faced," says Star, "the denial of my queerness because I am disabled." Living authentically as both trans and neuro-atypical means confronting what I had always feared: if you cannot ape normativity, you may be denied your autonomy.

For years, I feared acknowledging my autism because I had absorbed the prejudice surrounding disability. Autistic people (as Garcia's book title emphasizes) are not broken. Autism is disabling because we live in a world built for and by neurotypical people. Acknowledging my autism is not an admission of weakness; it's a statement about myself as a self.

For Star, rediscovering their body as an autistic person no longer repressed by social pressure led to discoveries about their gender as transmasculine nonbinary. For comedian Hannah Gadsby, the late diagnosis autism led her to "be kinder to myself" and "not always to take the responsibility." Both early and late diagnosis with autism offers a window into understanding our own identities. I've learned that I have a right to ask for and expect accommodation. Neurotypicals think they are meeting us halfway because they don't realize we've already come miles and miles just to get here. I am neurodivergent. I can be forgiven for missing cues and instead be honored for how much work goes into social interactions, all the time.

So much of this-perhaps all of this-comes down to acceptance, accommodation and justice. After a lifetime of trying to perfect myself, I'm finally living in my own authenticity: autistic, gender-fluid, unique. I'm still in the play. But if I don't have a script, I can write my own, or I can cut the scene and draw the curtain. No matter how we identify, trans, neurodivergent, neuroqueer, we have a right to be-just as we are.

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I was late for lunch. At the time, I was juggling a teaching position with my work as public engagement fellow and running a journal; I'd made an appointment to meet a new graduate student assistant-but time got away from me.

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The Experiences of Autistic Transgender and Gender-Diverse Young People

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The Experiences of Autistic Transgender and Gender-Diverse Young People

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Resources For Trans People On The Spectrum

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Resources For Trans People On The Spectrum

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Team TransLash celebrates that neurodivergence is something we can smile about. It's a part of what makes this world a better and more beautiful place. On April 2nd, World Autism Awareness Day, we're sharing love for all of our TGNC siblings on the spectrum. This day also kicks off a month-long campaign toward greater acceptance and appreciation of neurodiversity.
People who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six more times as likely to be neurodivergent as cisgender people, according to the largest study yet to examine the connection.
Team TransLash is in solidarity with all people who decry the organization Autism Speaks. Here's why.

This compendium of resources is for folks who are still learning about neurodivergence, and for people who are on the spectrum. Diagnosed or not, you are valid--and we celebrate you today and every day!
General Overviews
The word 'neurodiversity ' was created as a term to describe a movement towards neurological diversity being accepted and respected in society. Neurodivergence includes those who live with Dyslexia, Autism, ADHD, Dyspraxia and other neurological realities.

"On the spectrum" usually refers to the specific set of behavioral and developmental realities associated with autism spectrum disorder. A diagnosis of ASD means that a person's communication, social, and play skills are affected in ways that aren't coded as neurotypical.
Medical Resources Personal Experience Essays, Advice and Articles Scientific Studies Trans and Queer People on the Spectrum to Follow

Alistair H | artist and activist: W ebsite (fr), YouTube (fr)

Asharah Saraswati/Art Twink | artist: Facebook, Instagram

ChrisTiana ObeySumner | consultant, writer, activist: Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Chrysanthe Tan | composer, violinist, songwriter: Website, Instagram, Twitter

George Morl | artist, writer: Website, Instagram

Lydia X. Z. Brown | advocate, organizer, writer: Website, Facebook, Twitter

s.e Smith | writer, editor: Website, Instagram, Twitter

Seranine Elliot | musician, model, and activist: Bandcamp, Facebook

Shain Neumeier | attorney, advocate: Website, Twitter

More Resources

Apply for financial aid through the Autistic People of Color Fund

Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization with a mission to provide community, support and resources for Autistic women, girls, transfeminine and transmasculine nonbinary and genderqueer people, trans people of all genders, Two Spirit people, and all others of marginalized genders. Go to their website for more information on their scholarship, their community support, and more.

Submit any useful trans/non-binary/intersex/two-spirit Autism Awareness Day resource links that we may have missed here.
[Image Description: An infinity symbol in the trans flag colors is intertwined with the text "World Autism Day" and beneath that it says "Celebrating our Neurodiversity"]
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Resources For Trans People On The Spectrum

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Team TransLash celebrates that neurodivergence is something we can smile about. It's a part of what makes this world a better and more beautiful place. On April 2nd, World Autism Awareness Day, we're sharing love for all of our TGNC siblings on the spectrum.

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o   Autistic students often have difficulty with exams and revising despite being academically able. They might struggle with the sudden change in routine, sensory issues in exam halls or be overwhelmed by the amount of content to revise. Schools should provide individual support to students to keep them on track and ensure accommodations are in place.