(whooshing)
(clicking)
(light music)
- Our next is speaker Finn Gratton.
And Finn is a somatic
psychotherapist in private practice
in Santa Cruz and Mountain
View in California.
Finn's clinical and educational work
are focused on the
intersections of trauma,
neurodiversity, somatic therapy,
sexual and gender minorities.
They identify as non-binary, transgender,
and as neuroqueer.
Please give your attention now to Finn.
(crowd applauding)
- All right, thank you.
I mostly present to kind
of trans conferences,
and it's a really wonderful opportunity
to be at this conference.
I've learned a lot.
I now know why they have that big sign
on my dental providers that says
don't ever put that little sucky thing
in Finn's mouth (laughs)
because I flail and knock everybody away.
So I think it's like, I get
new people that said you knew
and it's like this whole
big page in the front.
Okay.
So I know we're at the place,
we're at the 2:30 place in the conference
and I'm hoping we can,
which is the symposium
which is like, whoa.
So if you need to move around
or sit back or come and go,
I really want to, as
somebody who has those needs,
I really want to encourage you to do that.
I identify as transgender, as non-binary,
and I also identify as autistic.
I didn't go to anyone to
get those identifications.
(crowd applauding)
There's a peace that comes
with being transgender
that is just about ubiquitous,
that is imposter syndrome,
that all your life until you
kind of found your way to it,
you were not seen as who
you are from infancy on.
And then as a trans non-binary person,
I am still not seen for who I am.
I come out every day multiple times.
As an autistic person
who can kind of present
and communicate in some way,
I'm often told either
I don't seem autistic
or I'm doing really well.
None of these help,
so what I've decided to do more and more,
because I am getting older and
there's just no time like now
is to present in a way in
line with how I am inside.
It's scary to do that,
there's a prescribed way
to give a presentation,
I did it, I made a PowerPoint,
and I will do the PowerPoint
because it's helpful
and it's a bridge between
my mind and yours,
yet to do only that is
kind of giving you only
kind of half of the story.
You'll get it, but not get the insides,
so I'm gonna try to do both.
I'm also like, go to poetry things,
and when I get stuck,
everybody starts snapping their fingers,
so if someone is out there doing that,
because at slams, and you
just come up with stuff,
and sometimes it's not there,
everybody's like you got it,
so I'll take that.
By speaking and moving in a way
that's kind of considered
appropriate or expected or assumed
I end up leaving out what I
think I really want you to know.
I want to share about the
work I do with clients,
the work in my community, and
I wrote a few notes about this
when I talk about these things,
I have a lot of feelings.
Yesterday I was in session
with a pretty new client
I've seen about four times,
about 16, trans, autistic,
my clientele is mostly,
includes several people who
are regional center people,
but they're mostly in that space
that receives not nearly enough services
but it still considered
kind of low support needs.
Many of them aren't diagnosed
or identified as autistic
until I see them at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50.
About, I'd say about
half my clients are trans
and half autistic, but
there's such a huge overlap,
I have a few outside,
I have some CP clients and some others.
They range from about eight
years old to about 60.
So what I was saying, this
client came to me and they said,
"I have these enormous feelings",
they have enormous anxiety, rumination,
"And they're so big,
"and they're just about
something I saw or felt",
and everybody's taught in various
ways to try to reduce that
and then they just said,
"It's not working."
And the thing I told her
is that those will help,
you can bleed it off some,
but one thing that's gonna
help and it's gonna take years
is just kind of get big
enough to hold much bigger,
and that's what I'm gonna do now.
So this is the feeling of
what is coming through now,
and I just, usually, I
have somebody I know,
so I'm just gonna count on
you being people I know.
This is the feeling, and
it's been a hard week
'cause I had clients in crisis
too, so there was less sleep
so you know what that does to
being able to be resilient,
of being here and wishing
to share this experience
and being appreciative of who
you are here doing this work.
My singing has no words,
my thoughts come without words,
and then I have to make the
words, which takes longer.
(vocalizing)
Oh, this is so important to me,
it's so important to my clients.
(vocalizing)
I really wish that you hear
it with a great openness
and also a forgiveness for the
places that I stumble over.
One thing that's so important
is to not have any assumptions
about the person next to you
and the person who walks in,
even to the point of you don't
know what their gender is.
You may think you know what the gender is
of the person in front of
you or to the side of you,
but if they haven't told
you, you may not know,
and you may not know their gender history.
I am going to begin this
part, and there's a button.
I am going to also allow my body to move
'cause I did an interview
for Gender Spectrum,
there was a video tape thing,
and I watched, I went, "Oh no,
there's like this happening."
(crowd laughing)
- I'm just trying to find that button.
- This is what my friends live with.
- [Man] Under the table.
- Under the table?
Oh, your paper
was hiding the button.
- Got it.
- Okay.
- Thank you, sorry.
The harms of living with or near me.
Okay, I have lots to disclose,
but nothing about financial things.
(crowd laughing and applauding)
Somebody had a sign up over
the men's bathroom at least
that said gender-neutral, and
I felt much more comfortable
going in it this morning before it was,
fell down and got taken down later.
That's one thing I have to to
disclose, it was much easier.
It's hard every time I go into a bathroom.
I only look neurotypical.
I don't know if I even do that anymore.
That was the singing part.
That's getting bigger, it's the only thing
that's really, really worked for me.
Here's some definitions.
Because I am in the community,
it's really important to me,
both as a trans person,
as a neuroqueer person
to use language that feels
appropriate and honoring.
So I'm gonna go through
some of the language I use.
You notice I don't use the word disorder,
I don't use spectrum even,
unless we can talk about
what my daughter calls not the
line, but the infinite plane.
It's like a circle, and my
kids are a little bit like me
and a little not,
"But not a circle, mom,
it's an infinite plane."
Neurodiversity, so that's all of us.
We have a big range of
neurotypes in this room,
and our cognitive sensory
process changes over time.
Neurotypical, I don't know
where you want to draw the line
but you can draw a line.
Some people would do it
at a standard deviation
off of something, but there's
so many things to count.
I don't use the word normal,
so it's neurotypical.
Neurodivergent is anybody falls on
the other side of that line
or wants to identify that way.
Autistic is one way somebody
can be neurodivergent,
and it's the way I'll talk about the most
because it's the most at least awareness
of transgender identities,
or gender non-conforming identities
are in the autistic community.
And disabled.
Autistic people may or may not
consider themself disabled,
they may consider themselves
disabled in some areas
and not in others, they may
consider themselves disabled
because of the environment they're in,
not particularly about who they are.
And I love that I found this online,
I wear a lot of T-shirts when I change
in the gym locker room, so
that people know who I am.
And this one I found,
it has the colors for the trans flag
in the neuroqueer sign.
Okay, some gender definitions.
I think I was asked because this was
perhaps not a group that
knew as much about gender,
so just to run through some things.
So transgender is anyone
whose self-identification
doesn't match the sex they
were assigned at birth,
designated at birth by
their parents, physician.
Cisgender is anyone whose
identity matches that.
So there's, again, just
as with neurotypical
and neurodivergent, not normal folks,
they are cisgender, or cis for short.
Non-binary means you don't identify
on either end of the binary,
not male, not female.
And there are many, many
non-binary identities
so if you have somebody
come in and say they are
multi-gender, genderqueer,
agender, which is a fairly big one,
those are all considered
part of the non-binary group.
There are more non-binary folks,
autistic people contribute
more to the non-binary group
and the agender group.
And gender non-conforming
doesn't exactly count
as transgender but fits within
the whole community in a way.
Transgender is an identity,
while gender non-conforming may be the way
you express yourself,
or your gender roles.
Cross-dressers are
people who identify with
the sex they were assigned
at birth, and who,
part of their life and their
experience is to cross-dress
whether they do that
publicly or privately.
This is the whole big
transgender umbrella,
and there are many, many names.
The language changes frequently,
so it's just super important
to ask your clients,
ask your patients what names they use,
and sometimes we get, we want
to be cool and know the words
but they change, and
some aren't used anymore
and considered just not right for people.
Okay, so gender dysphoria is a diagnosis.
It's in the DSM and
it's the diagnosis that
it's a conflict between the
gender assigned at birth
and internally felt gender identity.
It doesn't include gender non-conforming
identity and behavior,
that's gender expression.
It's associated with distress
and possibly some functioning problems.
And it's currently a diagnosable condition
for youth and adults.
This diagnosis changes I think
with every edition of the DSM.
Before it was gender identity disorder,
they took the disorder out of it because
there is a strong argument
that it's not a disorder
but it's the experience of dysphoria.
So it's currently
diagnosable and it's also,
the diagnosis is needed for most medical
and social transition steps.
So hormones, surgeries and
also legal gender change.
So therapists and physicians
become gatekeepers
to people's gender identity.
I'm gonna go through
some of the criteria and
it's different for adolescents
and adults versus children.
For adolescents and adults,
you only need two of the
criteria, and for six months.
And I'm just gonna click through
them and drink some water
and let you read them.
I'm glad you're appreciating
my presentation style.
So notice they use the word other gender,
and that has been a nice change,
rather than opposite gender,
so that includes those
non-binary people like me.
And for a long time, people would go into
a psychologist office
and physician offices
and perform a gender so
that they could get their,
whatever they needed.
And how they performed
that gender was dress, act,
do whatever they had,
and the opposite of their assigned gender
that didn't necessarily
match who they were,
even if they were binary,
even if there's a trans woman
who doesn't really want to wear a dress,
that's not the kind of
trans woman they are,
they would do some things for
the doctor's office at least
to do that.
Also for a long time, many
feigned heterosexuality
when there's probably only a
third of trans people I think,
from the last study I read,
about a third are heterosexual.
The rest is a whole mix of
lesbian, gay, pansexual,
and queer, and asexual.
Gender dysphoria in children,
you need six criteria for six months,
and they're quite different.
I'm sorry about the tiny print,
I'm gonna read this time 'cause of that.
I'm worried about the plastic cup,
'cause I knock over
things, but I'm gonna try.
Can somebody come and pick
it up while I'm talking?
A strong desire to be of the other gender
or an insistence that
one is the other gender.
A strong preference for wearing clothes
typical of the opposite gender.
A strong preference for cross-gender roles
and make-believe play.
A strong preference for
toys, games or activities
stereotypically used or
engaged in by the other gender.
I wish they said another gender.
A strong preference for
playmates of the other gender.
A strong rejection of
toys, games and activities
typical of one's assigned gender.
A strong dislike of one's sexual anatomy.
A strong desire for the
physical sex characteristics
that match one's experienced gender.
Okay, I'm gonna come right back to that,
but just think about that and think
what problems would these
diagnostic criteria pose
to assessing neurodivergent children?
Or any children really?
Just want to let you look.
And many of you work with children.
Is this something where,
I know it's a big group,
but can anybody just
mention something they see
as might be an issue?
Yeah?
- [Crowd Member] I sometimes
see kids who don't like
any of their anatomy covered
by a bathing suit ever,
at all, for any reason.
And some folks don't like wearing pants.
Is that a gender problem, or
is that a sensory problem?
- Right.
- [Crowd Member] Is it a
sensory integration problem
with somebody wearing a bathing suit,
or is it a gender problem?
And you think like, pants
on neuro or atypical folks
have fancies like, at all.
- Right--
- [Crowd Member] Or they can
go up tell me, but until then--
- We don't know, yeah.
- [Crowd Member] Children
with both parents
of the same gender are playing house,
and they may be limiting roles.
- Right.
(crowd member talking quietly)
Uh huh, excellent example.
Yeah.
- [Crowd Member] I'm thinking too that,
I've had kids learn a lot by
how people react to things.
And so, what I saw was
the fact they're all,
these custom things were little,
they were all thinking
about things like that.
We didn't say anything about it,
but that some people give subtle,
non-verbal input like that,
and it doesn't seem right.
And then if you don't pick up on that,
maybe you don't get to
socialize with them.
- Right, so you may not pick up on it too,
and you also might not be interested
in the feedback you're getting.
It's like, "I want to wear this."
And that feedback having less weight.
And I guess that's a piece I'd like to say
a little bit about because
often, in my speaking with
many of my clients, since
people in the community,
this kind of idea that not
be able to read social cues
isn't the whole story, and
another big piece of the story is
we see what people are wanting
but it either doesn't seem
interesting to us or
it doesn't fit with principles
of fairness or inclusiveness
or something that they have
that's a principle that's stronger,
it's not always that
they're not reading it,
it may also be, it doesn't really engage.
Okay.
Transgender among autistic people.
I had some fun way to do this,
and that is, okay, transgender,
so the autistic community,
somewhere about 1% in this country.
It's kind of 0.5 to 2%,
depending on which country
you're getting your statistics from.
So I did this fun little,
probably little bit geeky thing
to find out the distribution
of last names by first letters
of the last name, and that
is about the number of people
whose last name starts with Z.
Does anybody here last name start with Z?
Arms up, do we have any Zs?
We're missing too small a sample size.
(crowd laughing)
Okay.
Well, if it was, it would be
one or two people in here.
Now, the population of those
people who are transgender
would be somewhere around
five to 10%, so 5% would be
people whose names
start with W, X, Y or Z.
Any of you, hands up?
Okay, so kind of look
around, that's the crew.
So if you're all, of autistic people,
those people with their
hands up, that might be it.
Okay, now I want to add the letter R.
So letter Rs, add yourself.
If you really need to stand up like I do,
you can stand up, but stick
it up and look around.
So if you're serving autistic community,
you're guessing one and 20, one in 10
are likely transgender.
Onward, that little button.
There are concerns about
the screening tools
and the methods used on this.
The most research that's being done
is trying to nail down these percentages,
there's only two studies.
Here's the big problem, they
both rely upon one question
in the child behavior checklist
that's filled out by
their parents that says,
"Do you wish to be the other sex?"
This leaves out tons.
It leaves out all the things
the kid hasn't told the parent,
it leaves out all the
denial the parent has,
it leaves out all the non-binary people,
it leaves out that the kid
might not have the language
or the understanding to
say something like that.
This is a little different, and it's,
there are more studies in this autism
among the transgender population.
So anybody here want to stand up?
We'll see.
I like to stand up for a change, but okay,
autistic in the general,
so transgender people, less than autistic,
about 0.7% maybe, though that's increasing
amongst younger people.
Letter I, anybody name start
with the letter I, last name?
Stand up please if so.
We got one?
Okay, too small.
(crowd laughing)
Okay, this might change it though.
The highest bunch, the highest
level that we've gotten in the survey,
the highest prevalence is
if everybody whose name
starts with U, V, W, X, Y, Z, M or C,
raise their hands.
That would be the autistic folks
amongst the transgender community.
So that's a lot more, huh?
That's why the trans
providers are really up on,
we need help because they
didn't have any training
in working with autistic people
and they are identifying
them right and left.
And many of them aren't identified.
I know I'm talking more about what I call
lower support needs, autistic people,
and I'd like to really, I
think a lot of this applies
but there's differences
we need to think about in
helping people communicate
their gender to us.
When I get the questions about
why are so many autistic,
why are so many trans people autistic,
I have them come back with,
how come so few neurotypical
people are transgender?
(crowd laughing)
What's up with that?
And why are so few
cisgender people autistic?
And you think it's the
same research question,
but it's not quite.
This is Lydia X. Z. Brown, who's
just a phenomenal educator,
activist, writer, autistic, non-binary,
just put out a book which is so great,
an edited anthology called
"The Weight of Our Dreams"
about racialized autism.
And they say, "I've
started referring to myself
"as gendervague, a specifically
neurodivergent experience
"of trans/gender identity.
"For many of us, gender holds
little intrinsic meaning.
"Being autistic doesn't
cause my gender identity,
"but it is inextricably
related to how I understand
"and experience gender."
So now we know.
We're here, what do we do?
So the first I have is to
shift your expectations.
You have met transgender people
if you don't think you have
met transgender people.
So just for a little thought experiment,
you may know the person
sitting next to you,
so that didn't count, pick
somebody you don't know
that's nearby you.
And you don't even have to talk to them,
just notice what you've
assumed about their gender.
We all do it, I do it,
and I try to not do it.
And so how did you make that assumption?
Is there any way that
you know you're right?
Anybody out there laughing
like, "How would I?"
I frequently have issues
going into either bathroom
or locker room and often,
the polite way people say it to me is,
"Am I in the wrong bathroom?"
(crowd laughing)
So they're looking at me
and they're trying to figure it out.
Or maybe you got into the wrong
one and you just don't know
unless someone tells you what their gender
or their gender history is.
For some people transition,
depending on when they
transition, and also their,
the direction of the
transition and their genetics,
you won't know, you just won't know,
unless you know them personally.
Other people, you make guesses
based upon kind of markers
that we have in our head
about what is male or female?
This is kind of the bane of
the existence of trans folks
and particularly, the
adolescents I work with,
one because they want to
be seen as who they are,
not that they, not for
their transgender history,
but just for the gender
identity that they have,
and two because it's scary.
There is danger of violence,
there's bullying, there's
threatening, it's a huge,
the minority stress is really large.
When I look up transgender,
just do a Google search,
half of them are bathroom pictures.
Okay, button.
So, practice not assuming.
Ask everyone their pronouns.
Thank you Galen for asking
all the presenters their pronouns.
And that may feel kind of awkward
when you think you know
someone is cisgender, binary,
and you think you have it figured out
by the way they're
dressing and everything,
and it may make that
other person look at you
kind of strangely, like,
"Why are you asking me my pronoun?"
But it gives you a little chance
to do a little bit of
education with that person.
And that may help for the next trans
or non-binary person they meet.
You don't know someone's
gender until they tell you,
and they have to feel safe to tell you.
Question all the gender
roles that make you
make those assumptions.
So the first is just
shift, and shift is huge.
We talk about it, but it's a big thing
to walk down the street,
practice it when you leave,
when you go to your car, walk and just go,
"I don't know with everybody
who comes in the office,
"I don't know."
That makes it so much safer
for the folks I work with.
It changes your first questions,
it changes your intake form,
it changes what you
train your office staff
to say to someone when they come in,
it knocks down the stress level a lot.
Next is be prepared, and I
put up this because I know
what people remember, but a few years ago,
somebody made a donation
to The Western Washington Girl Scouts,
and it was $100,000, but
only if they didn't accept
any trans girls.
And they were prepared, they
didn't think about it long,
they immediately said no,
and they put up a GoFundMe
or Indiegogo thing,
and this was it, to raise
$100,000 for every girl,
so they were prepared.
They had already done some training,
some people in their group.
Another way to be prepared
is read autistic blogs and material,
read things written by people who are.
Same thing, read trans
blogs and materials,
and if you go on Tumblr,
all you have to do is type autism, trans,
and you'll get a whole
bunch of people talking.
Develop relationships, join consult teams
with trans providers.
And have resources ready for
clients and their families.
Make your workplace gender inclusive.
That includes your intake
forms, your website,
the pronouns you use when
talking about anybody,
and your bathrooms.
The important thing is
to make the first move.
It's up to them.
It's up to your clients to
tell you whatever they want
to tell you about their
private experience,
but we're all looking for signs that
our providers are trans-friendly.
They look for signs on the website
before ever entering the thing.
And we're looking for
signs around the room,
and we're looking for those basic things,
like asking pronouns.
Here are some great first moves.
Have images and materials
that make it clear
that you understand trans issues.
Even if your client or
patient has a legal name,
you may ask them, "What
name do you like to use?"
If you have a population of any kind,
but particularly autistic,
but I think it's anybody,
just letting them know
that it's really common
for people to be
transgender and non-binary.
It's particularly common
in the autistic community.
If you're working with children,
or with people who are just
being supported along the way,
or the children of your trans parents,
there's some work to do
around normalizing transgender
and non-conforming identities
and behaviors and expressions.
Making a safe space with
parents and guardians
to go through their own trans
issues, their own fears,
their feelings of loss,
that they lost the gender
child they thought they had.
That may be in addition
to if they had loss around
their child's disabilities, the neurotype.
Make that a space that's
safe for the parents,
but also safe for the child,
meaning the child shouldn't be in there.
Support individuals in
communicating their experiences,
needs and desires.
I think in the rest of this conference,
there's just been so many
good examples of how to assist
with pictures, with creating stories
and sharing materials that will help you
talk about this other person's experience
in a way that they can, that
they can jump on and say,
"Oh, that's kind of like me,
"but that part's not like me."
And then there's work to do
on educating around options.
Working as a provider who serves
developmentally disabled,
intellectually and
developmentally disabled people,
neurodivergent people, you've
got a lot to do already.
There's a whole lot of
different people to talk to,
it's not the simplest population.
Serving trans people
is a lot like that too,
you need to talk with endocrinologists,
you need to talk with parents a lot more,
you need to talk with
education providers a lot too,
so it's a very collaborative work,
and you're also talking with
a lot of other providers.
And there are resources.
So in the book you got,
there's a couple pages
of really great resources
to share with people.
And I touched on this,
there's a lot of teamwork involved.
I usually have psychiatrists,
parents if they're involved,
school people, primary care people,
and gender care specialists,
and maybe some support group
or somebody who's helping them
get their legal forms going.
In the group that you work
with, you may be the person
who knows, even if you think,
"I just went to a few presentations",
you may know more about transgender issues
than anybody else in the room.
It just may happen.
I thought there would be a lot more people
who knew a lot about this when I started,
'cause this was second or
third profession for me,
and they weren't.
There's a huge cost for not
responding to gender dysphoria.
There's a huge suicidality rate
and huge depression and anxiety.
That's on top of whatever
else they're experiencing
as autistic or
intellectually developmentally
disabled people.
So, it's really important to
take your role as educator
to the other people on the team seriously.
There isn't a lot of time to
waste with adolescents often,
they're in panic.
They usually hit puberty
and go into panic.
And I don't think I need to say this,
this is the most
client-centered civil rights
kind of group I've been in to present,
advocate is a big part of the job.
I may actually get a Twitter account.
I am one of those autistic people.
(crowd laughing)
I don't even have Facebook,
I didn't do Myspace, I'm pretty old,
and it scares me walking into Costco.
Set aside the transition script.
This is Eddie Redmayne doing
trans woman in The Danish Girl.
Set aside the man in a woman's body,
the woman in the man's body,
set aside there's clothing
and hair and choices that fit,
there's normative gender expression,
set aside that a name
and gender marker change
has to accompany every trans identity,
set aside the expectation
that they participate
in support groups or events,
that's overwhelming for most of us,
and it's just people
with their challenges.
So physically, I work with all
my clients who are going to
do hormones or hormone
blockers or surgeries
to work with their physical sensitivities.
They usually are hypersensitive
and scared of getting shots.
Physical exams are nightmares.
I'm so glad Dora and
Clarissa are presenting,
I've used their healthcare toolkit
since it came out I think.
As soon as I found it on
Autism Women's Network,
it's just really, really helpful,
so you'll hear more about that.
Walk them through what's going to happen.
That means you may need to
talk with the endocrinologist
or people to be able to
anticipate and tell them more
and draw the pictures or map
it out, what's gonna happen.
And I've run into parents who have said,
"My kid's not really, I don't
think they're really into it
"because they're not really working on
"getting their papers in for
their name and gender change."
They have trouble with their
papers with everything.
And so,
there's just work making phone
calls in the office with them
to the next step, doing
the kind of social work.
Crisis care, part of
why I'm like this today
is I've had crisis this
week, which is not uncommon.
Adolescents show up for
the first meeting in crisis
or high urgency usually.
It's not the story of the five
year old if you know who knew
or the three year old, there sometimes is,
but usually with my autistic clients,
it's somewhere around 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
That happens with cisgender
neurotypical people,
I mean, transgender
neurotypical people too
because puberty kind of goes,
"Oh my God, I was ignoring it
"and now I can't", but they're in panic
and it needs to change right away.
They got online, they talked with friends,
they found out what could happen,
they told their parents
they need it to happen now,
and now they're starting
to really get panic attacks
more than they got before,
really depressed, isolate.
You need to assess for suicidality.
And often you need to
work hard to speed up,
which things means doing,
really getting the parents on board
faster than they want to be.
You may need to spend more time assessing.
It's sometimes harder to assess
because you may not be
able to communicate.
Every autistic person,
every neurodivergent person is different,
and even if I am, I don't necessarily know
how to communicate and
understand what they're
trying to tell me always
and it takes me longer.
I usually, if I can do it, I
schedule another session sooner
rather than wait 'til the next one,
because they are panicking.
And it's not uncommon to have to
really look at hospitalization
and residential work,
and this is where I had
this word help appeal.
Help, it's horrible!
They, whether teen or
young adult or older adult,
they will not go because nobody
can handle their sensitivities in the 5150
and they freak out and the
police do something to them
and no, they will not go
because they don't understand,
and then, it's the hardest thing
and there are very few
residential care programs
that understand trans or autistic.
And I've been pulling
kids back after treatment,
after a hospitalization, and
I want to be able to feel
like I can safely send somebody somewhere,
it makes it a very difficult
place for me as a clinician.
So if anybody here is a
physician to talk with me
about what we can do
about hospitalizations
or residential treatment, I'd love that.
And here are the questions I always get,
and it's my last slide.
Good, because it says two
minutes and 24 seconds.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
Is it an obsession?
So a lot of the first studies,
not studies, they weren't studies at all,
there were people saying,
"There's this much higher percentage of
"people saying they're transgender
"among our autistic
clients and that can't be",
because it's just, when
you look at something
and it's more than it should be,
they tend to take those extra and say,
"That's because they're",
whatever the other thing they are.
And so they think, "What could it be?
"Well, they're really obsessed
"about their transgender identity."
Well, if you've known
somebody in transition,
we all get obsessed about
our transgender transition.
It becomes a big, big thing in your head.
And also of obsessions,
if you were gonna obsess
on something, it's a very,
there are much easier things to do.
(crowd laughing)
This one has tons of risk
and pain and difficulty.
You may need to talk about,
you may need to talk longer,
like if they're obsessed
about a particular character
somebody said they're
dressing up as and everything,
then you need to find out
whether they're dressing up
as that person because that
person in that character
has given them permission
to dress this way
and nobody else has,
or whether they just love that character
and want to dress just
like that character,
but you can find that out by spending time
and exploring that with them.
Is it sensory seeking behavior?
Because you like shiny,
I've seen this printed,
and it infuriates me but it,
the shiny fabric and everything explains
the autistic transwomen, but
not the autistic transmen.
So that, I'm shooting
these down kind of fast,
the sensory seeking one especially.
Are they able to make this
decision with everybody,
or their developmental specialist?
With everybody, you need to take the time
to have the communication
to really understand.
I'm out of time on that one, that's me,
I am writing a book on this,
it's probably about a year and a half out.
So that's my little,
you can find me, it's in the thing.
Thank you very much for--
(crowd applauding)
