During lockdown, I listened to a BBC radio programme detailing how research had found that transgender and non-binary people were up to six times more likely to have autism. I was interested to know more.
In 2020, a team from Cambridge University led by Professor Simon Baron Cohen formed part of a wider research team that published findings establishing a link between autism and gender identity (https://bit.ly/3ozcCU1).
Gender identity can be fairly fluid until the age of seven, and given that a diagnosis of autism can take more than two years, it is hardly surprising that a link is not identified earlier. Yet the connection between the two is of significant importance because although some gender-diverse children with autism may revert to their assigned sex, others will continue to be gender-fluid, non-binary, or choose a different gender to their assigned sex at birth.
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