“We have enough evidence, across multiple studies internationally, to say that autism is more common in gender-diverse youth than in the general population,” said John Strang, a neuropsychologist and founder of the Gender and Autism Program at Children’s National Health System in Washington. Strang authored a 2014 analysis that found that more than 5 percent of autistic youth sampled for his study also displayed some level of desire to be the other gender, according to parental reports. (He cautioned that it’s too soon to say what the exact percentage in the overall population may be.) Another widely referenced study found that 7.8 percent of young people being treated for gender dysphoria at a clinic in Amsterdam had a confirmed diagnosis of ASD.
These studies seem to support the hypothesis that transgender identities are rooted in biology, especially when combined with other studies pointing to a strong heritable component of transgender identity. A biological basis for transgender identity is still highly contested, although the science has been pointing toward that explanation for several years. Researchers believe that autism itself is highly heritable, so a link between autism and gender identity could even provide some direction for researchers hunting for genes associated with transgender identity. [...]
One practical outcome of this research is that clinicians are recommending that autistic youth should be screened for gender dysphoria—and that clinics that work with gender-dysphoric youth should screen clients for autism as well. Young people who are found to have both need individualized, compassionate care, and they and their families also need to know that they are not alone. Strang cautioned that ASD should not be viewed as a negative for transgender people, because the ability to ignore social pressure can be very freeing for this group: “Autistic people may be more bold and individualistic, less swayed by social expectations. Some of the front-line leaders of the trans rights movement have been trans and autistic—and there’s a beautiful focus, for many of them, on being themselves and not bending to social expectations of what others expect them to be.”
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