2025 Volume 96 Issue 2 Pages 79-88
While the link between autism and gender dysphoria (GD) has received increasing attention, the phenomenon of GD co-occurring with autism remains unclear owing to the lack of autistic transgender perspectives. A recent qualitative analysis found that their GD (i.e., dysphoria related to gender norms) may be a subset of pervasive social dysphoria (PSD: dysphoria related to pervasive social norms), suggesting a link between autism and PSD. To further investigate this hypothesis, we described all their dysphoria about social norms, including GD, at each developmental stage, by examining the life stories of 14 autistic participants who experienced GD as a subset of PSD. We also found that GD may become more prominent than dysphoria over other social norms because of the strong influence of gender norms, which have two characteristics: (a) gender norms are more recognizable from early childhood, and (b) after puberty, gender norms increase their influence on and merge with other norms. Thus, future studies should investigate whether there is a link between autism and GD, or instead, PSD.
