This is interesting and mostly just confirms my suspicions. Thanks for sharing. I didn’t know what the tulpa thing was and kind of wish I still didn’t.

As someone officially diagnosed with ASD, I did want to touch on some of the comments that are popping up here/add some more perspective:

1) I think that u/lovelyspearmint is correct that there’s likely a fair amount of erroneous self-diagnosis going on in the Reddit ASD community. This is something that really frustrates me, but at the same time I kind of have to understand because so many women in particular find it difficult to get an official diagnosis/be taken seriously by the medical community. At the same time, there are a lot of Zoomers who just want to be “special” for whatever reason, and saying they’re trans and/or have ASD both serve that purpose.

2) That said, I think that the evidence indicates that there’s definitely something going on. I forget which study, but it was done in the UK and showed that trans-identifying individuals are more likely to have diagnosed ASD at a frankly alarming rate. Add in the fact that scores of young women on the spectrum likely aren’t actually diagnosed, and the real number is no doubt higher.

3) Now on to potential reasons for this: I think that u/RedEyedWarrior has it partially correct that people on the spectrum tend to be more “gullible,” but the question remains as to why, especially when a fair portion of people with ASD are actually very critical of this ideology like myself. I’m involved with the Reddit ASD community, and whenever this topic comes up, it gets super heated with half the people saying derogatory things about trans people and the other half calling those people Nazis. It’s a real clusterf*ck.

I think this divide is a clash between a few different symptoms of ASD: our propensity for being skeptical of the common view/not caving to social pressure, and our serious mind/body disconnect that tends to make us clumsy/cause sensory issues/issues with sex and sexuality. This plays into the DID/multiple personalities stuff. Those diagnoses amount to psychological bunk, but they do, like transgender ideology, serve to explain away these difficulties in a more straightforward and accessible way than an ASD diagnosis. With ASD, we’re just kind of stuck with these problems. Sure, we can work on them, but that’s really hard work, and we’re never going to be “normal.” These other “conditions” offer a framework for understanding ourselves that puts the onus on others, and on medical interventions, not on ourselves, and may offer some (false) hope for normalcy.

So, our propensity for skepticism ends up clashing with our overwhelming desire to fit in somewhere. Which one wins out depends on the person and their mental state, I suppose. I myself experienced severe gender dysphoria for some time growing up, but realized that was related to ASD, no inherent gender identity (because there is no such thing). If someone had offered me hormones to fix it at thirteen, I would’ve taken them in a second. I’m glad I made it to adulthood/a better place mentally before the world went nuts.

I’m not sure what I hoped to accomplish with this wall of text, but I hope someone finds it interesting. I’m happy to answer any questions if anyone has any.