City Research Online

Abstract

Gender diversity in autistic youth is sometimes assumed to stem from autism, leading to questions about the authenticity of their gender diverse feelings and experiences. If this were the case, different patterns of gender identity presentation would be expected between autistic and nonautistic gender diverse youth. This hypothesis was examined across two studies. In Study 1, we used an explicit measure together with an Implicit Association Test, for the first time, to examine gender identity in autistic and nonautistic gender-referred and cisgender youth, aged 7–16 years. Gender-referred participants, regardless of autism status, implicitly identified with the binary sex opposite to that assigned at birth and explicitly identified with their experienced gender to a similar degree as their cisgender peers. Autistic cisgender youth also demonstrated implicit and explicit gender identities comparable in strength to their nonautistic peers. In Study 2, we used similar measures to assess gender identification in caregivers. Caregivers of gender-referred youth, regardless of autism status, reported weaker explicit gender-group identification, while implicit identification remained unaffected. Overall, the findings challenge the idea that gender diversity in autism is qualitatively distinct and have important clinical implications for improving support pathways for autistic gender diverse youth.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Publisher Keywords:	Autism spectrum disorder, Familial aggregation, Gender diversity, Gender identity, Implicit association test
Subjects:	R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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