Female with autism feels masculine rather than feminine

I deeply appologise not only did I "autopilot" a rather unique colliquialism word but I also typo-ed it, so it made zero sense. I have since edited and fixed that sentence line. Also edited to remove specific mention of gender assigned at birth as I'm not comfortable disclosing that all to often either.

I am AGAB (assinged a binary gender at birth)* but I've since realised I have always been at odds with this as to be cisgender is to identify with your assigned birth gender, which I do not which makes me transgender "by default", and actually I'm nonbinary. Expression is different from identity though and a feminine expression doesn't invalidate your identity. To repeat a popular NB phrase "femmes can be thems".  Have you heard of the genderbread person? While it's used primarily as a chart it is also helpful because it tacitly explains quite a bit of gender variance that can in fact exist simultaneously.

I would not be at all surprised if the overlap between gender non conformity and ASC came down to the fact that we simply don't subscribe to a lot of social "norms" which includes gender, and gender roles.

*(also questionable as I may actually have a phenotype which is somewhat incongruous with my genotype, which hasn't actualy been tested but is merely assumed to be XX, and may not actually be, but pls excuse me if that's as far as I'm willing to disclose at this precise moment.)

Yes and I've started presenting masculine by wearing men's clothes, hairstyle, glasses, etc. I've even started dying my facial hair dark to try to make it more noticeable. I still get interpreted as female 99% of the time but I've found people make fewer heteronormative assumptions about me and I get bothered a lot less by men in the street 

I absolutely can attest to this , I thought it was only me tho … I once told this guy I was dating that I felt like my past like was a boy … I didn’t always feel this way until I would say 21 and I’m currently 23 , I also recognize that I’m also starting to develop masculine features

I loathed those romantic movies where it is clear the man is angling for a kiss and more as the drama develops. At 11 I wanted to be good at football and fantasised abput being a footballer, though sadly I would never have had either the stamina nor the coordination to be a good one. Still, there are good women's football teams now. 

So I didn't want to be forced into feminine roles, then I read an Enid Blyton featuring the character George, and I decided to be a stereotypical Tomboy. I had never read the Famous Five ones before, George was a little too close in her temperament to mine, plus she was always getting into trouble with strict authority figures,vwhich was disturbing too. 

Hormones are weird things though, the absence of them after menopause certainly made we wonder what all the urges and feelings they bring were all about. 

I was diagnosed about 4 years ago with ASD. I am 44 and single parent to 2 teenage boys, both have autism. I can relate to this, always a tom boy as a kid and still love tom boyish stuff. I do love having my hair done and wearing makeup and getting my nails done though. 

Yes,   I do.  
I googled this out of interest to see if anyone else had the same experienced.  I am now 67.  I was diagnosed 6 years ago with Aspergers.  Everything seemed to fall into place after that.  It is the first time I have checked out my experience of feeling masculine though.  Like you, I have always been very good at appearing feminine and have been told that I am on many occasions,  but have somehow struggled to believe it as it doesn’t line up with my inner reality.  I was a tomboy growing up and at 67 I still spend a lot of time with my dogs, taking them on walks and out with the bike and have occasionally still climbed a tree!  I now spend all my time in jeans and only ever wear a skirt if I am out with a friend at a pub or restaurant and even then my preference is trousers.  I have never liked to wear anything low cut or that shows off my shape In a sexy way, preferring looser clothes.  I used to always choose men’s tops over women’s for casual wear.

thanks for your post.  Another piece of the jigsaw now slotted in!

Ha, it used to drive me crazy when I was younger and people told me how much nicer I'd look in a dress with long hair. Actually, I look awful in a dress - I mean really, I move all wrong for them and it looks dissonant. You wonder which reality they inhabit. I've just put it down to my general poor executive funciton but now you mention it it takes me ages to distinguish the toilets from symbols only. When I was young, people were always trying to throw me out of the women's toilets - once, someone tried to chuck me out of a women's changing room at a swimming pool when I was naked to the waist! Nitwits. I did purposely dress as a man for a while thinking I might achieve consistency with that gender if not with female gender since people kept telling me I 'think like a man' - but I was just as inconsistent. I've given up caring and just ignore the various complaints about my lack of consistency/mannishness.

Just be who you are.  It's their problem if they have an issue with it. 

Gender is as much it's own spectrum as is autism and society and media both have a lot of maturing to do to understand and accept it. 

Time was when girls could be tomboys and nothing more was made of it, I was in the tomboy era and wasn't challenged about gender. 

School taught us about being good housewives and mothers - too Stepford Wives!  I wanted to be an astronaut. 

Sloppy-Jo t-shirts/jumpers, leggings/yoga pants/knee length fitted skirt & Doc Martens, plain, no frills, no fuss. 
Soft, comfy, protection from the elements. 

I hate the feel of make up suffocating my skin, it is putting a lie on your face, an NT masking device to be someone you want to portray to the world. 

I've always been more comfortable in male workplaces, guys are more straightforward.

I'm a straight, non-conformist, anti-stereotyping rebelliously tomboy female, So What?!  Live with it society! 

No, more like he has had a strong female role model and he is able to discern where power comes from. All the ancients knew the power of the feminine, which is distinctly opposite to masculine strength, which is just as necessary but the real power lies with the woman and you’re a good example of that which has clearly been communicated effectively to and understood by your son :) A job well done, I’d say. 

I find it interesting that he views a woman as being one of strength.. maybe a lack of positive male role model going on there? 

p.s. also, very smart, knowing when to drop out etc. I love how imaginatively and creatively aspie women use their intelligence to get by  pure genius in my eyes 

Haha I love that ~ strong black lesbian woman ~ that's some strong ass soul he's developing :) ~ which doesn't surprise me  

I tend to “drop out” of societal games”, or “gender expectations” that I simply either don’t get, don’t see the benefit of, or know I have no chance of succeeding in.

i find society very very interesting right now with an explosion of ways and terms to categorise self. A kind of societal schizophrenia that there is a desire to fit (which is basic survival to be included in the human tribe) plus a strong desire to assert ones own individuality

As BlueRay ha as mentioned, self acceptance and self knowledge is key. Labels can help us find tribes we feel a closer bond to or idenfty with and give us a meaning that others can google to increase their knowledge of who we are.

Last week my son to,d me he was a strong black lesbian woman. :) Amazing!

I think it’s a combination of both. Social conditioning is necessary, for all of us, but autistic people tend to put less importance on it as we don’t experience life in quite the same way, due to the fact that we are more connected to our true natures, as opposed to our socially constructed self. 

This is what intrigues me. Is that the autistic brain is different in this way so it is common for us to be more masculine/feminine? Or is it that boys and girls don't naturally like the things we associate with them but most follow social norms and grow to like them and as you say autistic people aren't affected in the same way? Or maybe a combination of both. I find it fascinating.

Interesting post. 

I've always felt more feminine than masculine.  I prefer the company of women, and often find men vaguely threatening.  As a child, too, I used to have dreams of being a girl.

An Aspie friend has told me I come across as more typically Aspie female than male, though she's never been able to convincingly explain why - except to say that she knows many Aspies of both sexes, and she thinks of me more as a female!

Yep, have alter ego I refer to as Mr. Herbary. Always felt masculine inside and drawn to what would traditionally called manly pursuits, like fixing things, building, getting dirty...could out dig and chop trees quicker than most blokes I worked with and figure out  engineering problems or solutions when they scratched their heads. I do women stuff too, but defo more blokey or should I say androgynous?

. said:

Also, if an autistic child is not tuned in to what the social norms for children of their gender are, they are probably less likely to adopt them early in life.

This was me. All my siblings and cousins were boys when I was young and the kids on our street, so I never played with girls so this could explain it! 

Tony Attwood talks about girls who are perceived to be ‘different’ by their same-gender peers being more accepted by boys, and vice versa. A liking for Lego, trousers, playing with and having similar interests to boys, whilst disliking uncomfortable dresses and other girls (who can be cruel), might lead to the assumption ‘I must be a boy’ or more boyish.

The evidence for the female autistic brain having increased masculine characteristics and the male autistic brain having less masculine characteristics would fit with this view (Bejerotetal, 2012). Also, if an autistic child is not tuned in to what the social norms for children of their gender are, they are probably less likely to adopt them early in life.

i am ‘me’ I mainly were trousers and tshirts|jumpers as they are easy to wear and as an active person more practical for me than a pretty dress. I also tend to steer my self from my head and not my physical self so tend to dissociate from what I might look like, what I’m wearing and how others may perceive my external shell.

i also dress to reduce attention to myself...I don’t want to stand out ...just given the opportunity to be quietly me.