Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill last week that prohibits multiple types of gender-affirming care — including sexual reassignment surgeries and hormone replacement therapies — for those younger than 18. On the surface, Georgia’s bill seems like nothing more than the latest in a flurry of awful right-wing legislation to restrict care for transgender youth. But this law includes a clause claiming that “Gender dysphoria is often comorbid with other mental health and developmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder.”
Conservatives are forcing autistic people who are also transgender to choose between their identities.
Set aside the fact that autism isn’t a “comorbid” illness that threatens life; this peculiar phrasing in Georgia’s new law is part of a disturbing new trend wherein conservatives, in their effort to restrict gender-affirming care, are now weaponizing autism diagnoses. In doing so, those conservatives are forcing autistic people who are also transgender to choose between their identities.
The link between autism and gender dysphoria, and queerness as a whole, is well-established. Transgender and gender-diverse adults are more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. In a May 22 study in the journal “Autism” that surveyed 21 autistic adults, one of the participants said, “Being autistic is like everybody else has got the rulebook and you didn’t, so you can understand why gender would come into it because that was in the rulebook you do not get.”
This makes sense in so many ways. Gender is the ultimate social norm, and the social norm for autistic people might as well be a foreign language. So naturally, autistic people will question why they have to perform in a specific way because someone put an “F” or “M” on their birth certificate.
Incidentally, it was only after I started writing about autism that I met and befriended many transgender and nonbinary people. Their friendship helped me, a cisgender heterosexual man, to accept my own identity as an autistic person and liberated me as well. I no longer felt I had to fit into the restrictive roles that society prescribes for men and women.
Unfortunately, conservatives are denying the natural link between autism and queerness and are instead choosing to describe autistic people who identify as transgender and are seeking gender-affirming care as the victims of exploitation. They are delegitimizing the needs of autistic people who experience gender dysphoria and not treating them as people whose self-reported experiences and desires for treatment are worthy of respect.
Author J.K. Rowling was one of the first notable people to peddle this talking point that disrespects transgender people and autistic people when, in her 2020 manifesto, she claimed, “The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment” and that “autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”
The anxiety about a spike in the number of people transitioning bears a striking resemblance to the panic in the 1990s and 2000s about the spike in autism rates.
Insider reported at the time of Rowling’s writing that number appears to stem from a report saying that 40 people assigned female at birth in the United Kingdom sought gender-affirming care between 2009 and 2010 and that number increased to 1,806 between 2017 and 2018, but this was likely due to an increased visibility and understanding about transgender people. Ironically, the anxiety about a spike in the number of people transitioning bears a striking resemblance to the panic in the 1990s and 2000s about the spike in autism rates, when, in truth, better detection, improved services and better detection led to increased diagnoses.
When I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington this month, it became clear to me that Rowling’s argument has made its way stateside.
At CPAC, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., decried what she called a “billion-dollar industry that mutilates the genitals of children” and said many of those she deems “victims” have diagnoses “of autism, mental illness. They have depression, they have anxiety, they have psychosis.” (It’s rare that surgeries are performed on trans minors’ genitals. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health says surgeries should only be performed on those of legal age but is accepting of breast removal surgery for those under 18 who have been on testosterone for more than a year.)
After Greene’s CPAC remarks, Rebecca Cokley, the disability rights activist who served as head of the National Council on Disability, pointed out in response that conservatives will likely use this connection between autism and transgender people to politicize Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for students with disabilities. As soon as Greene exited the stage, on came Chloe Cole, the conservative advocate who has said that she detransitioned. Cole has filed a lawsuit against doctors whom she accuses of “blindly ramrodding” her transition. Her lawsuit argues that “Defendants should have performed psychotherapy to treat Chloe for her normal puberty struggles and for her body dysmorphia, social struggles, depression, anxiety, learning disabilities, autism symptoms, eating struggles, (continuing underweight status) and other related co-morbidities.” At the core of all these arguments is the idea that autistic people cannot know what’s best for themselves, not even as adults. The idea that people are preying on autistic youth to force them to transition reeks of condescension. As somebody who is autistic, I can confidently assert that we are fully capable of making our own decisions. But as somebody who is autistic, I can confidently assert that we are fully capable of making our own decisions. And we should be allowed to make them, regardless of whether neurotypical people think those decisions are good or bad. To assume that autistic people who decide to transition are victims robs them of the same independence and rights to individual liberty that conservatism regularly espouses. By including autism as a comorbidity related to gender dysphoria, Georgia’s new law pits one identity against another, and the likely result is that autistic people who are also transgender will be afraid of presenting as either. And unfortunately, its success will offer conservatives a new template to bully two marginalized communities that often intersect.
Eric Garcia is an author and senior correspondent for The Independent. 
