[alicemaz]

oh interesting. I've had a pet theory for awhile now re: trans/autism comorbidity that they're better thought of as symptoms (among others! op's link notes higher incidence of every surveyed mental disorder) of some underlying brain abnormality, rather than being tangled up in some causal relationship with each other. had not heard of gender incoherence theory before

[SubiculumCode]

The point in which autism moves from "neuro-diversity" to "disorder that affects quality of life" is a difficult and controversial discussion. In general we try to use sensitive language, and respect the spectrum.

Many of the genes that control brain development are also linked to sex differentiation, and so it not surprising to me that in the presence of greater number of mutations (technical term) in these genes, the more sexual development will be differentially regulated, and will follow a different trajectory. I suspect, but do not know how to model, that this would tend to result in less sexual differentiation, making the binary male/female extreme phenotypes less likely in ASD.

[crooked-v]

One thing I would respectfully suggest here is to use language like 'atypical' rather than 'abnormal', as it avoids some of the unpleasant subtext of the latter word. (At least so far - the euphemism treadmill makes for an unending race, but it's still worth putting in the effort.)

[odessacubbage]

maybe it's an overly optimistic hill to die on but imo, the best thing we could do for divergent people is to normalize abnormality rather than codify softer language to avoid describing it as abnormal or creating 32 new checkboxes of 'normal'

[gowld]

You mean eliminate "abnormality" and "divergence" as a concept? Yes. Better to focus on needs difficulties and abilities, not irrelevant comparisons to population averages. And better to treat differences as something to accept appreciate, and not arbitrarily idealize the median.

"Normality" is a factor in estimating public health costs, not relevant to individual care.