| Do you have gender issues? |
| Yes, I do have gender issues and I have AS |
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52% |
[ 135 ] |
| Yes, I do have gender issues, but not AS |
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0% |
[ 2 ] |
| No, I do not have gender issues, but have AS |
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42% |
[ 110 ] |
| No, I don't have either of the two |
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3% |
[ 10 ] |
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| Total Votes : 257 |
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CockneyRebel
Mick Avory, Sensitive brown-eyed Sweet Pea
Joined: Jul 18, 2004
Age: 38
Posts: 87361
Location: In a quiet and peaceful garden, where gentle Mick Avory-like Sweet Peas grow.
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 Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 7:36 am Post subject: |
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I have gender issues. I'm female but I feel like I'm a man trapped in a woman's body. I feel that I was born with the wrong bits. All of the WP Rank Titles that I've had over my 7 years at WP have all been titles that you'd expect a male member to use. Some people think that I'm a bloke within the WP realm. I take it as a compliment. I also look like a certain male celebrity from a certain decade and that is all unintentional.
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The darling, unworldly Mick Avory with hands like shovels, who wouldn't dare choose to hurt a soul: I'm the cuddly, adorable Kink. Sweet Peas: http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j37/Cocknee/Kinks/Sweet%20Pea%20Smileys/ Other: http://www.mybrowsercash.com/ |
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Pithlet
Velociraptor
Joined: Jan 20, 2008
Age: 30
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 11:04 am Post subject: |
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| No. I'm for sure a tomboy, and ever since I was a baby I identified more with boys and boy interests than with girls and girl interests. Yet I've never had a problem with being female myself, just a problem with the way I'm expected to behave as a female. I don't think humans are as hardwired as most people think. I think aspies sometimes just miss some of the social steps and tend to end up liking what they want outside of any social context. It's why alot of us don't act our age either. |
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ocdgirl123
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 11, 2010
Age: 18
Posts: 2447
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| Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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Female, no gender issues at all. If I try to imagine myself as a boy, it doesn't feel right. I tend to get along with girls my age better than boys my age. I get along with older men and women equally though.
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I fell. It didn't hurt. Big deal. |
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Sholf
Pileated woodpecker
Joined: Jun 19, 2008
Posts: 176
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| Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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I don't have a gender issue. Society does. 
My sense of my gender is like my sense of whether I'm right side up or not. I usually think of myself as neutral or a boy. When straight guys try to flirt with me with crap like, "Hey sweetheart", it feels wrong and confusing...like they're blind. "Perceived cultural advantage"...like not being pursued by creepy guys who treat you like you're femme, even when you tell them you're not, and that you're not attracted to them? That behaviour makes me feel awful. I've had people TELL me that a "friend" of mine, who flirts with me like that, is very hurt that I don't like him. How about him hurting me? I have trouble figuring people out, so I let him into my life thinking he just wanted to be my friend.
I've had several male "friends" who've treated me in this way, leaving me confused and frightened. Also, straight women accusing me of being a slut when men pursue me and I don't understand. People do not believe that I can be so socially stupid as to not understand men. Here you have gender, sexism, and being on the spectrum combining to create a big mess.
I'd also like to get hired for jobs that don't require lots of social interaction, but retail employers inevitably want me to work the register and "act like a girl". I'm no good at it, and it makes me uncomfortable: is that another "perceived advantage"?
How about being able to go swimming shirtless, without wearing a feminizing bikini, but swim trunks instead? I haven't gone swimming in years because the idea of wearing such a feminine article of clothing is too embarrassing. Is that also a "perceived advantage"? Would society be scandalized by having my A cups on blatant display? Certainly, and I might get arrested!
I am short and have a delicate bone structure, so I do not look butch. My discomfort with my own body has more to do with being small and skinny than with my genitals. If I could have a more butch body that would discourage gendered pigeon-holing of me, I would be happy. If people would treat me like a nerdy, skinny guy, that would also satisfy me.
I recently started cutting my hair very short. That vastly helps in being treated the way I like. I feel more comfortable around people, but now I have all of the problems of being cross-gender in public, like which bathroom to use, or having my ID rejected as fake when I try to buy alcohol. The funny thing is, I don't have to change my clothing or my mannerisms to get taken as a boy: I just need a hair cut.
It just goes to show that the problem is not on how I perceive being male, it's on how people perceive me. That is where the disorder, the disease, or mental illness is. If I believe there are advantages to being perceived as male or as masculine, does that discredit my sense of self, or mean that men are not treated differently? |
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Xinro
Raven
Joined: Dec 02, 2006
Age: 21
Posts: 105
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| Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm a girl. I've always been a girl and I'm happy being a girl. Female is my bio gender and my mental one as well. |
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DGuru
Toucan
Joined: Oct 25, 2010
Posts: 281
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| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:32 am Post subject: |
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The whole idea of mentally being another sex doesn't make sense to me.
Even if there are mental characteristics that tend to go with one sex more than the other it is still socially conditioned that having a certain set of mental characteristics means that therefore you should have a certain type of body or vice versa.
If I had been born a woman but my brain was the same I'd still act the same way. I would be a very butch masculine woman. I would look like a guy. But I would not feel like I had to go have surgery. |
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Verdandi
Miss Kitty Fantastico
Joined: Dec 08, 2010
Posts: 10378
Location: University of California Sunnydale (fictional location - Real location Olympia, WA)
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| Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:32 am Post subject: |
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| DGuru wrote: | The whole idea of mentally being another sex doesn't make sense to me.
Even if there are mental characteristics that tend to go with one sex more than the other it is still socially conditioned that having a certain set of mental characteristics means that therefore you should have a certain type of body or vice versa.
If I had been born a woman but my brain was the same I'd still act the same way. I would be a very butch masculine woman. I would look like a guy. But I would not feel like I had to go have surgery. |
It makes all too much sense to those who have to live with it. Whatever the etiology (and some evidence indicates that it probably is a neurological difference: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html ), the fact is that a measurable fraction of the population seeks out this treatment. Logically speaking, a parsimonious explanation makes more sense: That they're truthfully describing their experiences, even if others do not have a frame of reference to understand them.
I would say that it probably has nothing to do with socialized "mental characteristics" that are associated with members of any given sex. I seriously doubt anyone transitions because they want to wear the clothes or play with the toys, or they think that you have to be a girl to play with dolls or a boy to play with trucks. Your second paragraph seems to be suggesting a process that is backwards from what most trans people self report about the need to transition. I believe that the need to transition is a kind of pain or dissonance that can be resolved (partially or fully) by transition, and that the social trappings are part of the process, not the origin. |
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kinftw
Snowy Owl
Joined: Nov 06, 2010
Age: 22
Posts: 126
Location: Midgar
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| Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:58 am Post subject: |
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| SeaBright wrote: | What is GID?
I never wanted to be a boy.
I am a girl btw.
I also always thought gender stopped with the genitalia, and the rest were items of social mores. Which it turns out is largely true.
I am confused there as to what GID IS exactly. |
Same here. I always though other that biological innate things, what is 'Female' and what is 'Male' was a society thing.
I'm a female, and I love being a female. |
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Jennam
Emu Egg
Joined: Sep 03, 2011
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:01 pm Post subject: Aspergers and cross gender behaviour |
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I am male late 30s and one year into what is called "the real life experience" which is simply become the roll other the other sex for a while to see if you feel netter. I have both aspergers as well as GID gender identity disorder, the primary symptom is called gender dysphoria, characterized as have some sort of strong feeling of wanting or needed to be perceived by others as the opposite sex.
Parents need to be aware of the risks when letting a child play around with gender, approach the subject with caution. Childhood cross gender behavior can lead to devastation and can have rather unforeseen consequences. Boys with aspergers may need to become a female during play to understand how normal heterosexuality works? As well to understand why they like girls? I know that's why I cross dressed. As we get older it becomes more of an imaginary girl friend inside feeling like somehow we become attracted to the image we created to help us understand sex and how it worked. That's when the problems begin. his sex drive for exterior females will have to compete with the female within, and in my vase completely took over. I have not had a girlfriend in 17 years, this van happen so be aware, do you want your boy to end up with a second more serious disoder that van happen. Never promote or restrict the play, let the boy know it's okay that's key, the trouble comes when he becomes angry at himself when is older for still cross dressing, masochism is often the result he he feels bad.
My advice, do not encourage or discourage it, just make sure he knows it's okay and make sure he never feels as though he must hide it, hiding it creates worse problems. I just want parents to be aware of what can happen. Look up autogynephilia the leading behavioral cause of heterosexual transsexuals is an error, a misdirected sex drive. It looks as though its been established well established by the graph above trans gendered behavior is
common among Aspies, as a parent of a boy exhibiting such behavior research autogynephilia I admit, it is an accurate model of all males who cross dress who are also heterosexual, your son is no exception. |
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SammichEater
Now 30% Cooler
Joined: Mar 07, 2011
Age: 19
Posts: 3823
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| Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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| I've always wanted to be more masculine, but it took me much longer to pick up on how to do that, due to a lack of observing human behavior. |
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dopplercb
Deinonychus
Joined: Aug 10, 2011
Age: 32
Posts: 359
Location: Ohio
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| Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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| yes to both. |
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XFilesGeek
Pretentiousness personified.
Joined: Jul 25, 2010
Posts: 1833
Location: The Oort Cloud
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| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 12:18 pm Post subject: |
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From the link:
| Quote: | | Guillamon isn't sure whether the four regions are at all associated with notions of gender, but Ivanka Savic-Berglund at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, thinks they might be. One of the four regions – the superior longitudinal fascicle – is particularly interesting, she says. "It connects the parietal lobe [involved in sensory processing] and frontal lobe [involved in planning movement] and may have implications in body perception." |
You mean, implications like my poor motor skills and sensory issues? Very telling. I wonder.....
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"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced." |
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Joe90
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 24, 2010
Posts: 8431
Location: Great Britain
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| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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I don't have any gender issues or anything. I don't see why I should. I'm born female, and that's that. I've just got to cope with all the social and ''beauty'' pressure women have, but getting to overwhelmed and stressed by it doesn't make me like a man.
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Real gender: Female
From: East UK
Age: 23 |
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puddingmouse
exclamation mark!
Joined: Apr 25, 2010
Age: 26
Posts: 7347
Location: Cottonopolis
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| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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I have gender issues, but not in the sense of feeling like a man in a woman's body. It's more like I feel that gender is silly and I can't be bothered with it. This is how I've always felt. I feel like I fail as a female, but I resent the idea that I should care (though I did used to care about my lack of femininity). My life is too short to spend worrying about gender.
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I'm written in a language even I don't understand - but I am learning. |
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MotownDangerPants
Phoenix
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Joined: May 14, 2010
Age: 29
Posts: 955
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| Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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I think the two are definitely related.
I voted that I don't have AS or gender issues, but I do have and have had gender dyspohria for as long as I can remember. I don't consider this an *issue*. It's not a problem for me, and it's not uncommon, even in "normal", heterosexual people.
It makes sense that so many girls on the spectrum would feel this way, If they indeed have masculinized brain wiring, which I also have, as indicated by a low 2D4D ratio.
I do feel male, but I'm pretty feminine in appearance, and that doesn't make me uncomfortable. I never understood why I should want to identify as another socially constructed gender, just because I don't identify with all the aspects of the socially constructed gender that I was born into. If the roles mean nothing anyway, what's the difference?
I relate with transgendered people in the sense that I understand the thought process, but I see no reason why I should want to be male because I "feel" male.
If Venus and Serena Williams are allowed to identify as female then I'm not going anywhere.
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