I last blogged about my autism almost a decade ago. I’m autistic and it’s something I live with every day, and the way my autism has changed during transition is something I’ve been wrestling with.
I’ve not found much discussion on the lived experience of autistic people during transition. A few snippets on Reddit discuss it here and there, but much of the wider discussion focuses on the co-occurrence of autism and gender dysphoria, which quickly descends into talking points that are both transphobic and ableist and certainly not of use to me understanding the changes in how my autism manifests itself that have occurred during my transition. (One notable exception is that I’ve been meaning to read Laura Kate Dale’s book “Uncomfortable Labels: My life as a gay autistic trans woman” on her experiences and writing this blog post has finally prompted me to download it onto my Kindle for my upcoming holiday, so we’ll see how that goes).
One thing that is definitely true is that I have autistic meltdowns more often than I used to.
Being autistic is a fundamental part of who I am, and I wouldn’t be me without it, but the meltdowns are the biggest downside I experience. I know how scary they are for the people around me.
Having meltdowns more frequently is something that surprised me. I was completely caught off guard by them—they first started in a work setting in a period of time when the leadership culture was turning toxic and I’d been effectively demoted (whilst being gaslit about this), with the overall situation resulting in me being pushed out of the company I’d given a lot to. Being misunderstood, struggling to manage through poorly defined change as well as being put under pressure to deliver more is a classic combination that can trigger autistic meltdowns, and something I’d never experienced before in a work setting. It destroyed my confidence.
But this was also within my first 12 months of starting HRT and it is now clear to me that the way I experience autism is different now than it was before I medically transitioned and I needed to re-learn things. Even reading about the experiences of autistic cis women I now relate more to the lived experiences described there in a way I did not before. The wonders of HRT never cease, and I guess it’s no surprise that given how much hormones change your sexual characteristics it’ll change my experience of autism too.
The other factor of course is just some of the classic stories people share about transitioning: feeling more comfortable in their own body, and connected to the world. I never realised how numb I was to the world before I transitioned, moving through it on auto-pilot doing what was expected of me and what I thought I had to do. The intersection here with autism is clear of course, I was not only masking my autism in social interactions, I was masking my gender and how I truly felt and putting on a performance of being male and male expectations that never came particularly naturally to me.
I was lonely too, before transition. I kept on trying to look for my “tribe”—a group of people where things just felt right with and we pulled each other up and made each other better. I found parts of this in romantic settings, particularly strongly with my ex Alīna where I felt a strong kinship alongside romantic interest, but also at work with my colleagues at BBC R&D, where with that shared culture around technology and values in public service broadcasting I felt part of something bigger (although ultimately I felt this wasn’t being realised by management and I left rather than deliver yet another project which had limited impact).
I searched for my group of people. I tried to get involved with the Effective Altruism community where the values strongly resonated but never found a social connection, and then got properly stuck in with the Liberal Democrats where I definitely have found people with shared values, but it was still quite lonely outside of the values.
It was only upon transitioning I was able to really fully find my “tribe”. Other trans girls, especially neurodiverse trans girls, where I can completely unmask with every aspect of my life, where we have so many shared experiences, many of which we kept hidden out of fear or shame for years and I could open up to them so much and I really started feeling again. In this group I feel so much more, and I feel more connected and exposed that again adds to the feelings I have.
I am no longer numb to the world in a way I was before. I am connected to myself, I’ve found a community I feel like I truly belong in and can be myself. I feel things a lot more. It’s a classic anecdote during transition too—starting hormones will make you feel more emotional. Yes, I do cry at films more than I used to. (I was genuinely distraught in the establishing scenes of John Wick).
Unrelated to transition, but being a local councillor adds to this. I see the way individuals are failed at many levels, through an error in council administration, left with complex needs and systems that can not cater for these, or where the system is fundamentally unwilling to face up to the scale and radical changes needed to systematically erase this inequities. I am exposed to this in a way I only theoretically understood before and I feel this more. Politics is not a game to be played on Twitter and through debate, it’s real life and must be rooted in the communities whom the political system exists to serve (and often fails).
So given feeling overwhelmed is one of the biggest triggers of being autistic, feeling everything so much more shouldn’t leave it as a surprise that I’ve had more frequent meltdowns.
But I’m more confident about being autistic now and playing with it in a way I wasn’t before. It helps my closest friendship group is incredibly neurodivergent and we joke about it and share experiences, positive and negative (I’m trying to convince my girlfriend autistic jokes are genuinely hilarious, I think she finds them funny because I find them funny but they’re not funny to her).
I just want to end my post with how much I love my friends and despite the downsides of increased meltdowns, no longer being numb to the world is one of the best things that’s happened to me through transition. I genuinely love them in a way I never thought I could before in a non-romantic setting. (As an aside, I suspect this is fairly common and why polyamory seems common in trans circles, finding a tribe filled with a newly intense love, it’s clear to me how the situation can arise). I wish I didn’t have the meltdowns that come with this and I still need to work on re-learning watching out for triggers and taking me out of those circumstances, and I still need to make my peace with the sadness I feel for all those lost years, but other than that, I am who I am today and I don’t want to be anyone else.
I’m trans, I’m autistic, I’m full of love and purpose. And I’m not perfect, but I’m me.
