Gender Non-Conformity in Cisgender Autistic People : Challenging Gender Stereotypes

I am a cis-gender woman, and I usually find myself in male-dominated environments because of my interests, and I am more comfortable with guys anyway. But I think that society generally values masculinity and it is seen as a positive thing to be "one of the boys", so it hasn't really given me problems. I usually surround myself with other misfits, and it was a shock to me to discover that stereotypical women actually exist in real life. They seem to instinctively not like me, but it doesn't bother me anymore.

I'm a cis-gender female, but inadvertently became gender-nonconforming. To start with, I have the unfortunate characteristic of being "flat-chested". On top of that, I have never liked wearing makeup because I can feel it on my face. I don't like most feminine clothes, especially pantyhose!, because they are uncomfortable. I don't enjoy painting my fingernails and I can't stand them long, because it's harder to keep them clean. On top of that, I tend to either say nothing, or talk too forcefully about science fiction, fantasy, physics, how machines work, and mathematics. Now, I am post-menopausal, have my hair cut in a mohawk, and people can't tell what the heck I am, ahahaha!

Spot on, Paul. As a cisgender woman I am so glad and relieved to hear all of this, even if I do wish I had heard it 50 + years ago when I was in my late teens and early twenties and feeling very gender non-conformist. Thank you!

YES! Thank you for putting this into words. I'm an autistic cisgender woman, and what you are talking about is my experience growing up. As a kid I had some interests that were labelled typically feminine like crochet and knitting, and others that were not at that time, like computers and sci-fi. I remember thinking pretty much exactly what you said - that it's just what I like, and I don't feel like a boy, I feel like a girl, so it must be other people's definition of feminine or masculine hobbies that was wrong.

Thank you for this. I'm a cis-gender woman who is very frustrated by the current discourse surrounding gender. There seems to be a LOT of reinforcement of the boxes, and I step outside my gender box pretty frequently. I wish men were socially given more freedom to do the same. These boxes can be pretty harmful.

This! I grew up baffled by the idea that everything had to be "for girls" or "for boys". Thanks to my fantastic parents, I was confused by the world's weirdness, but not massively intimidated by it. A typical interaction with gender conformity might go like this... Me: [Does a thing] GC: Girls don't do that. Me: I do it, I'm a girl, therefore at least one girl clearly does do this. GC: You're weird. Me: You can't do basic logic. 🙄 I'll take "weird" as a compliment.

I am female and was dubbed "tomboy" pretty much as soon as I could walk. Then puberty hit with a vengeance, and it was no longer "allowed." Even it would have been allowed, I looked distinctly and incredibly "woman." I spent most of my life thinking that all women played this big game of pretend because they felt like they had to. It never occurred to me that people would actually enjoy being a woman. Now that I'm in my 30's of course I know better, but it's still mindblowing when I "rediscover" this fact.

I’m 70 and recently realized I have been, essentially, gender ambiguous my entire life. Thanks for discussing this

I never realised this was an autistic trait, but I'm not surprised! I'm hetero cis-male, but many people have tried to put me into other boxes (mostly during the years when I dressed glam) whereas I've always felt the standard "male" box was ridiculously narrow and an oddly arbitrary boundary of interests and reaction-sets. These days, I don't think that much about it, but I always chuckle when I see the box that Google or Meta ads have placed me into - there, I'm most often an Asian or African-American mother who's looking to migrate to Europe (where I've always lived); no complaints from me, it's certainly a better box than "hetero cis-male"!

Omg! It’s like you’re in my head on this. I’ve been waiting to “outgrow” the reaction “Well, that’s dumb,” when confronted with gender norms. I’m 51 and still feel the same way. My experience is being female is “feminine” bc it’s mine, no matter what preferences or activities that experience includes.

This is definitely how I feel. I’ve always found it hard to make friends with other girls because I had much different interests; for one, I was a huge Pokémon nerd, and I still am. I also don’t like to act stereotypically feminine and I hate wearing dresses. Actually, I wear men’s clothes most of the time. Honestly, I think the idea that everyone has to fit into some type of box according to their gender is ridiculous. Why doesn’t everyone just wear whatever they like? There’s nothing that boys or girls are supposed to do, just be yourself.

When I re-came out as a trans man last year, I felt the need to attach the phrase "gender non conforming" to defend myself from the "but you can't be a man" because of this or that feminine trait, which I unfortunately heard way too much of the first time around and convinced myself I must be nonbinary for about 8 years. Being a man with some feminine traits is a hard thing to accept, but I feel so much more at home now than I ever did before

I'm a Cis man who's never fit neatly into masculine parameters. Reading about other autistic people's gender experiences online since self-diagnosing has been so eye-opening and interesting to me! I'm glad to know there's other people out there like me :) Thanks for another great vid Paul

Thank you for this video, I’m Autistic, and cisgender female, I had to look that up to find out what it actually means, but I’ve never felt I quite fitted in with other girls/women. Never had an interest in all that ‘girly’ stuff, make up etc, all that ‘girly’ chat. I am female, but I never felt quite same as the other females. I dress how I want to, loose baggy comfortable, not interested in fashion, often shocked my friends by not being afraid to tackle DIY, when my health was good, I just did it my way. I had no interest in sex at all, still don’t, it’s just not on my radar. I found out about ‘asexual’ in my 30s and went yes that’s me. I was very late diagnosed Autistic and that made sense of a lot of my life. This video is so helpful. I can now see I’m female, in body and feelings, but I don’t quite fit the female role all of the time. Thank you so much it’s been very helpful.

Hello Paul. I'm a 66 year old woman who was diagnosed with ADHD about 25 years ago. At the time it was the "best" option diagnosis. I could write you a book, but I'm sure you've heard it all by now. I also worked for approx 14 year as a school psychologist and (ironically) spent my career identifying children and young adults who were struggling in school and then assessing and diagnosing the problems. Through your channel I have come to realize that diagnostic criteria has changed a lot and that in reality, I am an Autistic woman. Very Autistic. Anyways, YES. I've never wanted to be a different gender, but I struggled mightily with the issue. I paid my way through college by joining the Air Force and became the first woman Small Arms instructor (my recruiter lied on the form about me being a woman, once I got off the bus, they HAD to take me). I switched to Army ROTC just as the military was shutting down the Women's army Corps and moving all women into the Regular Army. Again, I "fudged" a few things and ended up in a combat military police unit after graduating from college ... I didn't get to stay long, but it was fun for about six months. When I was getting my Master's in clinical psychology I was run through a battery of personality inventories and always scored between 75% to 80% masculine traits vs 20% to 25% feminine. Even so, I never "felt like a man in a woman's body", I've always felt female ... I just really liked different things from my female friends and never questioned whether it was right or wrong for me. I'd just get real pissed if I was told "no", I couldn't do that. Anyways, THANK YOU for this channel. I am starting a journey in Adult Autism Assessment, I believe my years of assessing children will be helpful. You have helped me to accept the Neurodiversity-Affirmative Approach and I shall forever be grateful.

Thank you so much for speaking about this. I'm often told by the younger autistic people that I must (yes, they're imposing me to do that) say I'm a men because I do a lot of manly things and I keep my hair a few mm long and I dress with manly clothes. And if I try to tell them that my mother and grand mother generation fought to have the right to dress as they wish, do the profession they want to, etc. and thus I am allowed to be myself as a woman, they get angry at me for not wanting to comply to their wish that I say I'm a man. This makes me so sad, because it's fellow autistic people who tell me that.

Cultural norm what gender has to look like is a way of controlling what people should do or should not do. It's an instrument of power. Fortunately ourdays there is so much more freedom to dress how we want! Fun fact: knitting once was a male activity , because shepherds did this , because, obviously, there was enough material;-)

I was born AFAB and grew up with two older brothers. From a very early age, in spite of pressure from my mother to be "my dainty and delicate little girl," I wanted to be in the sandbox playing with Tonka trucks with my brothers. I wanted a chemistry set like my brothers had. I got a tea party set instead. I wasn't interested in tea parties. When a friend started playing "tea party" with me, I was kind of puzzled. I knew I was physically a girl, but I didn't feel entirely girl. I knew I wasn't a boy and didn't feel like a boy. I often wished I'd been born a boy, but I never identified as male. The most gender-conforming I ever felt was "female-ish." The closest word at the time was "tomboy," but even that didn't quite fit. That was only about girls horsing around and doing "boy" things and then you were supposed to outgrow that "phase" and blossom into the belle of the ball. And that wasn't me, either.

I was the only girl amongst our group of children growing up that loved playing football with the boys instead of playing with the other girls

I'm a cis male also and I kept questioning whether I was non-binary because of the fact that I just don't see myself conforming to gender norms most of the time. I feel pressure at times to do so and it's always so stressful to me when I do. Gotta say this video definitely resonates w. me and my experience w. not feeling the desire to want to conform