Revisiting the Link: A qualitative analysis of the diverse experiences of gender dysphoria as a subset of pervasive social dysphoria co-occurring with autism in Japan

Abstract

While the link between autism and gender dysphoria has received increasing attention, the phenomenon of gender dysphoria co-occurring with autism remains unclear owing to the lack of autistic transgender perspectives. Therefore, we explored the gender dysphoria experiences of 15 Japanese autistic transgender adults, obtaining two key findings. First, their gender dysphoria experiences were diverse; some were related to gender incongruence, whereas others were not. The latter were characterized by resistance to the societal gender norms themselves, sensory disgust related to autistic sensory sensitivities, uncertainty regarding the gender norms of the social majority, and the autistic burden of living in a gendered society. Second, by examining the participants’ life stories of being autistic in society, we found that most of them not only accumulate distress over gender norms (i.e. gender dysphoria) but pervasive social norms as well, which we termed pervasive social dysphoria. In other words, most participants experienced gender dysphoria as a subset of pervasive social dysphoria. These findings indicate that future research and practice need to further affirm the internal perspectives, such as by investigating which among the diverse gender dysphoria experiences co-occur with autism or a link between autism and pervasive social dysphoria, and by providing support for both gender dysphoria and pervasive social dysphoria in practice. Lay abstract Studies have suggested that autistic people are more likely to experience gender dysphoria, which refers to the gender-related distress emerging from personal factors and gender norms that some transgender people experience. Transgender people are diverse; some experience gender incongruence (i.e. an incompatibility between a person’s gender identity and that expected of them based on their birth-assigned gender), whereas others do not. Therefore, the association of autistic transgender people’s gender dysphoria with gender incongruence varies, and the literature has overlooked such diversity. Interviews with 15 Japanese autistic transgender adults revealed diverse gender dysphoria experiences independent of gender incongruence, such as resistance to the societal gender norms themselves, physical dysphoria caused by the imposition of gender, sensory disgust related to autistic sensory sensitivities, uncertainty about the gender norms of the social majority, and the autistic burden of living in a gendered society. Moreover, we found that most participants had not only accumulated distress over gender norms (i.e. gender dysphoria) but also over pervasive social norms, termed Pervasive Social Dysphoria. Our findings suggests that future co-occurrence research and practice must affirm these internal perspectives more, such as by providing support for both gender dysphoria and Pervasive Social Dysphoria, as autistic transgender people may experience gender dysphoria as a subset of Pervasive Social Dysphoria.