Published on 12, July, 2020
I am a female with autism. Something that I have felt most of my life is that I feel more masculine than feminine in my inner self however outwardly I definitely look feminine such as makeup and I do my hair etc but inwardly I feel and see myself as more of a male. Has anyone experienced this?
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.)
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.