Ep 8: The Intersection of Neurodiversity & Gender Diversity

“If the rule doesn’t make sense, it has no value to me.”

🎙️ Ep 8: Labels, their Utility & Lack Thereof

Episode Summary

In this episode of the AuDHD Psych Podcast, Aaron and Uma explore the intersection between gender diversity and neurodiversity, unpacking how autistic and neurodivergent ways of thinking can shape experiences of gender, identity, and self-understanding.

Aaron reflects on his own gender experience and how autistic logic, detail orientation, and a rejection of arbitrary social rules influenced his relationship with gender — including why he does not experience gender dysphoria in the same way many gender-diverse people do. The conversation expands into the lived realities of gender dysphoria for neurodivergent people, particularly how sensory differences can amplify discomfort and distress.

The episode also dives into what genuinely affirming gender care looks like, highlighting the importance of listening, accessibility, and avoiding harmful assumptions — such as the idea that gender diversity in autistic people is “just a special interest.” Finally, Aaron and Uma reflect on the power of community, advocacy, and shared support, especially for people navigating multiple marginalized identities.

Key Themes & Takeaways

• Gender and biological sex are not the same, and both exist on spectrums
• Autistic cognition often questions and rejects illogical social rules, including rigid gender binaries
• Gender dysphoria can be intensified by sensory sensitivities in neurodivergent people
• Gender-affirming care goes beyond pronouns to include sensory, environmental, and communication needs
• Viewing autistic gender diversity as a “special interest” is invalidating and harmful
• Advocacy requires energy — and it’s okay to need others to advocate with or for you
• Community is a powerful protective factor, especially at the intersection of neurodivergence and gender diversity
• Online spaces can be lifelines for connection, visibility, and belonging

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And welcome back to the Audi HD Psych podcast. I'm Aaron Howard, Clinical Psychologist, and today I wear a yellow coat.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

And this is Yoda Howard, who's keeping us company today. So I don't know if you guys can see him on the camera, but he's very, very cute, and he's my therapy assistant. So today we're asking the question: what about gender diversity and neurodiversity? We're going to have a little chat about that intersection and what that can look like for people, the impacts that it can have. Before we go on, thank you to everybody who's uh liked, followed, and subscribed on our social media channels, Instagram, or have a little watch on, pardon me, YouTube. We really appreciate it and for all the comments and feedback that we're getting. Now, I can't think what the first thing was we've got to talk about, so I'm gonna ask Irma to be kind and remind me.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Well done, Aaron. Um, we're gonna start with defining the terms that we're gonna be using in this episode. Talk a little bit about what does gender diversity mean? What does that look like? And what does neurodiversity mean? And if you'd like to link it back to your own personal life, that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Absolutely. So, I mean, I think most people listening to this podcast will know what neurodiversity is, but just as a general statement, it's really just, you know, our brains don't function in the same way as the average person in society. So neurobrain diversity, diversity all the deep words. And gender diversity, we can look at the same thing. Historically, we've had this conflation of gender and biological sex. And gender diversity is those of us who don't identify as the gender that is commonly associated with our biological sex characteristics. There is a whole conversation that could be included there about the spectrum of both of those things. And I'll just touch on that ever so briefly. In we talk about the binary notions of sex, but that really invalidates the lived experience of all those people that are intersex and all the variations of intersex. Um, male, female, everything in between. Gender is exactly the same. We have people who identify more in the masculine space, people who identify more in the feminine space, and everything in between. And we have people who also identify outside of that notion of masculine, feminine, bender. A person I once spoke to, and we'll call them Yoda, because that's not their name. But when I asked them, how do you identify? I loved their response because I saw myself in that response. They said to me, I identify as Yoda, and that's it. They identified as a whole self, and that was their gender experience. My personal gender experience, I think, is probably a nice foundation to start on because I think it really intersects with my autistic experience or my neurodivergent experience. I liked things to make sense. So if the thing doesn't make sense, it has no value to me, and I don't really internalize it. Pardon me, arguably it's underpinned by that same autistic characteristic that we sometimes call the details orientation that can sometimes be expressed in perfectionistic ways. But for me, if you want to give me a rule, I need the rule to make sense. Now, the rules around gender historically are biological sex and gender are the same thing, and there's only two: man and woman, male and female. But for me personally, that rule didn't make any sense because there are people like me in a biologically male body, but I have some really feminine characteristics. One, I am attracted to other men, historically a very feminine characteristic, but also some of those more feminine characteristics that have been across time. Females are more nurturing, females are more caring, females give more, I centrally identify with these characteristics. I, if I was to put numbers to it, I always say I probably identify about a third of what is central to who and what I believe I am, are feminine characteristics, and about two-thirds are masculine. I don't have a significant amount of gender dysphoria because my autism meant that I didn't realize this wasn't everybody else's experience until I was in my late 30s, early 40s, and I started to read a little bit around gender discourse. That is very much an autistic characteristic. I didn't grasp that somebody else could have a different experience to me. So my normal was how I perceived everybody as normal. So the notion of dysphoria for me just didn't ever come up. So I went on something of a tangent there, and I can't recall what the question was. Oh, defining the terms and then give you my own experience. Interestingly, I think my experience of gender is not unique, but it's not super common. I don't associate my gendered characteristics with my biological features. And that's the reason that I don't experience gender dysphoria. I don't believe that looking at bodies only, that this is what a man has to look like. And I don't think that somebody with curvier hips and uh breasts is what a woman has to look like to be. I reject that notion because I recognize that there are many, many biological males who have really feminine characteristics, and there are many, many biological females who have masculine characteristics, and there are many, many intersex people who have one, the other, both. So man and woman, male, female, they're arbitrary groupings of general clusters of characteristics. And if we accept that, then we accept the notion that it's not just one or the other, it's more. And so the rule that I must be a man or I must be a woman makes zero sense to me. If it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't have any value to me, so I don't ascribe to it. And that's a great privilege that I have. Um, that is not to invalidate the experience of other people who do identify with those notions. It is not my business nor my right to tell you how to identify. Uh, all I'm doing here is giving my particular experience. Other people really do. And I guess maybe I'll ask Uma what the next question was before I segue into potentially it.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Yeah, no, the next question was gonna be okay, everywhere. The next question was gonna be talking about the intersection of neurodiversity and gender-affirming care. And we sort of underpinned that with your detail orientation, which you already touched a little bit about, and your sort of lack of that need to sort of look at things in its totalitarian. You're able to sort of sit with the binaries because of your autism. So I think in itself, you already went in straight to the next point. So maybe we could touch a little bit more about that, and maybe we could expand that and you could talk a little bit about generally what are the overlap between the two communities, Eurodiverse and gender diverse. Yeah. And sort of explore that relationship and why they've been so interlinked, but at the same time also at odds at each other.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Well, I think we'll cut you that, because that's sort of uh um the overlap between two. I will come back to that in a second, but I'll just talk about gender dysphoria and that experience in people who sit at the intersection of um neurodiversity or neurodivergence and gender diversity. And I guess so one of the things that's certainly my experience and the experience of a lot of other people, and we see it in the research a little bit as well, is that rejection of social norms and how it leads us to not just accept that wiry notion of gender and make I'm not gonna lie, my brain has just gone on three segues, so I'm gonna walk back to the point there because a moment ago we were talking about with experience and that expression, we were talking about the clinical impacts of sitting at the intersection. And I had just wanted to touch on the intersection itself and what that can look like in terms of gender dysphoria as an autistic person or a neurodivergent person. And, you know, Uma, you touched on this before. And that is that intersection between our sensory differences and the physicality of um a body that doesn't align with my expectations of the gender that I experience. And that's really what we're talking about with gender dysphoria. It's I have this, um, I have an internal experience of masculinity or femininity or not those things, neutrality. And my body looks like what I associate with not my identity. So there's a there's a cognitive dissonance there. There's a if I'm if I'm a woman, then I should look a certain way. Or if I'm a man, I should look a certain way. And that's really difficult for neurotypical, trans and gender-diverse people.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

However, if I am also autistic or neurodivergent more broadly, and I have a sensory difference where maybe the weight in certain areas of my body is something that I notice even more. And this is something that I've spoken to a few gender diverse friends that are assigned female at birth. The weight and the way certain parts of their bodies sit are particularly uncomfortable. And when their attention's drawn to that, that amplifies their gender dysphoria. So it's not just I have gender dysphoria. Yeah, it's I have gender dysphoria and I have a sensory difference. And when I put those two together, they don't just add up, they amplify one another.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

And that's, you know, that's just one of the many examples that we could use there.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

That level of discomfort.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Very much so. And the equalification of it between my gender diversity and my neurodiversity in a clinical context. And sorry, there are many more examples I could give there, but I'm acutely aware that we have a limited time and I love a chat. In a clinical context, how can we apply that? And what are the considerations that we we do want to consider? There is so much to this. Those sensory differences can be a barrier to both neurodiversity affirming care and gender-affirmed care. You know, we have uh a wonderful psychologist who we work with, and bright lights are not amazing for them. And that made it harder for them to come into our office and work once upon a time. And I'm so sorry, Google, but we're gonna need to edit that out because I do not have their consent to share that story. So if we can cut that bit out, I'd really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Um, and then let me take it from something that I think you touched on, which is gender affirming care and neurodiversity. I was basically gonna ask, like, what does that look like in clinical practice? Because is it just like, you know, someone saying, Oh, okay, you identify this now, I will identify. And that's big, of course, but there's layers to that. There's layers to getting to that journey. So how do you let me just ask that question again? So, Aaron, just to segue the conversation a little bit, um you touched a little bit about gender-affirming care. And now that's a term that's sort of been thrown around in the psychology clinical space. And as a clin psychologist and as someone that has sit in these communities and you understand the experience of intersection, what does gender affirming care really look like, apart from the obvious iteration, which is someone coming in and validating your experience as the gender that you have proposed? And I think taking that a step further, like how do you sort of encourage anyone that's on that journey to find the right type of clinical practice because and the right type of practitioner to talk them through that journey?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

I guess I would probably end this conversation at clinicians rather than at a person looking for a clinician. Because that's that that question is going to change depending on where you're located, whether there are affirming people or not. In terms of finding appropriate care or providing appropriate care for a gender-diverse and neurodivergent person, look for what meets your sensory needs and your social and psychological and broader well-being need. Looking for an affirming practitioner is great. Um, not everyone lives in areas where they're available. From a clinical perspective, there's a bit more information to be considered here. And that is there's a not an uncommon still perspective, particularly around autism and gender diversity. One conversation that I've had is that there is, I believe in some pockets of the community, that for some autistic people, their gender diversity is actually a special interest in gender. There's no significant evidence that I'm aware of that demonstrates that this is a valid representation of autistic gender diversity. You know, all the autistic people who are gender diverse that I've ever spoken to, if there's special interest in flowers and floristry, they're able to differentiate between that and their identity. You know, my special interest is people. It doesn't mean that when we meet, I identify as you. I think there's a real misunderstanding of the experience of an interest in an autistic or a neurodivergent sense, and my experience of my identity. And we can generally tell the difference. Um why do I raise that? Because it's problematic. If I'm an autistic person, particularly an autistic young person, and lots of parents have that same fear, they're just trying to be protective of their child. But when I say to my child who is trans, um, oh, that's just your that's just your autism, or, you know, oh, is that your autism? Even that genuinely caring question can be really invalidating. Um what I'm saying is you don't know yourself. What I'm kind of saying to that person, or and even worse, I'm a clinician, because we have that authority, or we have clinical authority.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

I'm saying you really know yourself, and that's really invalidating, especially because no one knows us like we know ourselves. With clinical practice, though, there's not just that. We want to validate and affirm people's experience. They know themselves better than we do. But as an autistic person trying to seek gender-affirming care, I might be light sensitive. I might not be able to sit in fluorescent lights, I might not be able to go into busy environments because there's just too much going on for my particular constellation of cognitive characteristics. And so if we can make affirming spaces for both, not just respecting the pronouns that you use and your identity, but also allowing for if you come into our space, we have lights that we can turn down, or we have lights that are not fluorescent but are LED'd, or we have a space where you can sit that's nice and quiet, where you can recover if you had to deal with walking out in public, and that's not something for you. So, in terms of seeking and providing upworming care for those people who do sit at that intersection, and I have to clock again, my experience of that is quite privileged because I don't experience dysphoria and I do have a lot of confidence and comfort in who and what I am. But for other people, it's not that. We want to make people feel as safe as possible. And that's that's what we all look for when we look for service providers. Do I feel comfortable and safe with this person? Do they meet my needs? Are they good for my well-being?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah. I think you touched on a very like simple yet effective model, which is like, are they listening to me, you know, without invalidating me? And I think that's I think that sort of can be stretched to not limited to just your clinicians and your psychologists. I think that stretches into your day-to-day life as well. And that's something that I think advocating for yourself is definitely something that neurodiverse folk have to sort of navigate. I think just in general, human beings, we all have our own journey with advocacy and you know standing up for yourself. But I think there's an added layer of pressure that comes for neurodiverse folk. Maybe a very much an episode that we can definitely consider just communicating. Very much you know, communication and neurodiversity, how interesting that would be to delve into. Well, let's start.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

I'll just touch on that for one second because I think that's a really strong point to make in terms of advocacy. You know, I'm confident enough to advocate for myself. And the reason I'm so loud and proud about being all of what I am is because I have the privilege to be able to engage in those conversations. Because my brain happens to function in a way that I don't, it's not often that I get super overloaded, but lots of neurodivergent people do have a lot of sensory differences, and that's a cognitive burden. And so um, I guess I just want to add a little bit in there that we do want to advocate for ourselves when we can, but it's always based on resources. And if I'm spending, you know, most 80% of my cognitive resources just getting through the day, it's so much harder for me to do that. So those of us like me who have the privilege to do that, we can stand in, whether we're clinicians, friends, family members, we can stand in an conversation about my friends' needs, my siblings' needs, my child's needs, whether that be in terms of gender um affirming care or sensory differences. I I said that like I have more to say, but I really don't.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

But that's that's the part of it, right? Like taking turns to advocate for yourself or getting someone else to advocate for you. There's no shame in that. There's no such thing that we all have to get up and do things ourselves. Just to like, I think a perfect segue to this is the sense of community and that idea of community, which we wanted to touch on in this episode. Obviously, there is an overlap between the two communities, but then also not taking away anything and looking at them as distinct communities is just as important. Um so maybe we could talk a little bit about the importance of community for both of these communities and how they might overlap.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Well, I think there's a general statement. Community is so powerful for any disempowered group. And when I say disempowered, I mean any group who is not the powerful group in that particular society. The more marginalized you are, the less power you have, the more powerful community is. In the context of autistic people and gender-diverse people, and I guess my own experience speaks to this to some degree, I was lucky enough not to realize other people's experience wasn't mine. Other people, a lot of trans people do recognize that at a really early age and they feel different. And if they grow up in areas where there is no community, uh, you know, a child of the 70s and 80s, there was no, I remember living in Mount Israel, there was no queer community there. Everybody who was queer was very closet, um, I assume. But so it's really hard to find the right label for myself if I'm not exposed to people like me, or if I don't know that other people are like me.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Take that point and overlay the fact that autism comes with social and communication differences. So even if you and I, if you and I are both autistic and you communicate in one way and I communicate in a different way, you might be telling me your experience, but I might be, I might be reading what you're saying in a different way. So there's an extra layer of disconnect there. Why does that matter? Because one of the great minority stresses that we have is that sense of isolation, that sense of being other. And when we're around lots of other neurodivergent people, we're more likely to be exposed to lots of other gender-diverse people and see ourselves reflected there. We'll never find an exact version of ourselves because humans are too beautiful and complex. But we can feel so much more normal and included by surrounding ourselves with community when we can. And this is why I love the online space. We critique social media and the internet so much. But for a lot of neurodivergent people who are so cognitively overwhelmed they can't get out of the house. Online communities is how we connect. For people in regional and rural areas, online communities are how we can watch Pride Parades, you know, watch Minecraft, do all of those things that make us feel like we're not the other. And that's so powerful. And the research shows that. And the research is quite clear on that. I think it was Cooper and our colleagues. I'll probably get that name wrong, but we'll link somewhere with the correct name. Um, they really showed that the community is really powerful. Not just my identity as an autistic person or a neurodivergent person, not just my identity as a gender diverse person, but mixing in community with both groups or groups who sit at that intersection is really, really powerful as well. And I won't go into it too deeply, but if anyone anyone wants to look up the notion of neuroqueering, it's that kind of rejection of heteronormativity, gender normativity, and neuronormativity. Not saying that it's bad, just rejecting that we need to be that.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

And the reason I plot that is because that's my great privilege, is I don't feel compelled to be that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah. Um, I say Quaid 53 times. I will ask him, and it'll bring me back on track again. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

I have nothing else to add. I think we can wrap it up at this juncture. I think you've done an excellent job of like taking us to so many different places, and that's part of the reason why I enjoy these podcasts, because we start somewhere and we don't know where we actually end up.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Being tangential, I don't believe it.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

And then we sum up on our way back and then we tangent again, and then we somehow is you reminded me of what I was meant to be talking about. Just a gentle nudge. And yeah. Thank you so so much for that, Aaron. I don't think there's anything else for me to add, and maybe we can just wrap it up today.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Well, thank you very much, everybody. It's been a pleasure to monologue at you again and have Uma keep me on track. We'll see you again in episode nine, I think, if I'm counting correctly. It will be nine. Take care and have a lovely time. See you guys.