The Transgender Movement Is Preying on the Autistic, by Tyler O’Neil.
Some recent studies suggest a connection between autism and gender dysphoria. But an autistic Catholic writer warned against rushing to conclusions, suggesting the transgender movement is targeting children with disabilities as a way to expand its ranks.
“To help and protect individuals on the spectrum, there needs to be greater awareness of transgenderism’s lies and why those on the spectrum could be susceptible to its manipulation,” wrote Crisis Magazine’s Elise Ehrhard, a Roman Catholic writer who herself has been diagnosed with autism. …
Ehrhard told the painful story of Dr. Kathleen Levinstein, a professor of social work at the University of Michigan, whose daughter became convinced she was really a man trapped in a woman’s body. Transgender activists with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) pressured her to take sex-altering hormones and cut off her breasts. Only after it was too late did Levinstein realize the irreversible mutilation of her daughter’s body. The hormones also did not bring peace, but rather further psychological confusion.
“She has been taken advantage of. Healthy organs were amputated,” Levinstein wrote of her daughter. “It is a crime not just against women, but particularly against disabled women. So many of these young women who are ‘transitioning’ are also autistic.” …
Autism appears to have some of the symptoms that transgenderists seek to cure:
Children who struggle with neurological disabilities like autism and Asperger’s have trouble connecting with fellow children. In some cases, this can lead them to seem transgender when they really aren’t, Ehrhard explained. …
“Asperger’s girls growing up often prefer the company of boys and generally find it far easier to relate with males,” she noted. She quoted psychiatrist Martin L. Kutscher, who wrote that “many women who have Asperger’s syndrome have described to psychologists and in autobiographies how they sometimes think they have a male rather than a female brain, having a greater understanding and appreciation of the interests, thinking, and humor of boys during their early school years.”
What does that sound like? Oh yeah, transgenderism. …
“These girls are not ‘boys trapped in a girl’s body.’ These are girls who think differently and are often misunderstood by the other young girls around them,” the Asperger’s writer emphatically declared. “They don’t need to be encouraged to become males. Others need to be encouraged to better understand them as unique women.” …
While Ehrhard could not know the same thing about boys, she had a very good theory on them, too. … “They often have delayed gross motor skills, making it difficult for them to engage in the contact sports through which boys generally bond.”
Autistic boys “who toe-walk due to problems with their vestibular system may be mocked for ‘walking like a girl’ or ‘acting girly.’ Boys on the spectrum are routinely bullied or rejected by other boys, leading them to question their very identity as boys.”
The conclusion slams the left for its usual approach of self-interested ideology over reality:
“For a pseudo-religious movement to target this vulnerable population of youths for their own ideological ends is nothing less than child abuse,” Ehrhard concluded. It is essential to counter transgender ideology, for otherwise “young people with special needs will just be the latest victims in the left-wing cultural assault against human biology.“
