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My Gender Struggle

Since I was 3 years old  I never dressed or acted like a "typical girl" would, I dressed in “boys” clothes and participated in the more “boyish” activities at school, but back home I would play with all sorts of toys regardless of what gender they were marketed towards. This was something I didn’t tell anyone about though because I always wanted to be seen as masculine, gender was a confusing thing for me because my brain did not understand the construct of what gender is perceived as socially. My struggle with gender was a constant in my life, no matter what it would always be there, this led to self-hatred as I would get bullied for it. I still struggle with gender but have found a label I comfortably identify with for the time being, after seeing others with similar experiences I realized this struggle with gender is likely due to ASD. Many people with ASD struggle with understanding arbitrary concepts such as gender, we have difficulty with social constructs because they ...
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My Youth

  From a young age, I have always felt different and was seen as different by most people, this was due to how I dressed and the way I acted. I did not know why I was different, and I always struggled with this feeling because I was an outcast and felt like I never fit in with people. I had difficulty making friends and was almost only able to make friends through someone else introducing me, this led to feeling lonely very often. I had struggled heavily with this until about 2 nd  grade, which is when I was put into the gifted program where I was met with kids like me. The gifted program was technically a program for kids who were seen as more intelligent than kids in their grade level but when I grew up, I realized this wasn’t exactly the case. While technically this is the point of the program it ended up being a program for neurodivergent children whose brains worked faster than those in their grade level. This was a program that introduced children to similar people and t...
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Realization

Recently  I have realized that I exhibit almost all symptoms of ASD, and through TikTok, I have come across people who are like me. I have found people who share similar experiences growing up that I do, and I have found out that it is common to go undiagnosed especially as an AFAB person. This is where self-diagnosing comes into play, now many people believe that self-diagnosing is invalid because it is not done by a professional, but this is an idea rooted in privilege. Many people do not have the privilege to get diagnosed with mental illnesses such as ASD, this is due to many things like the prices of getting diagnosed, sexism, and racism among other things. So, for someone who does not have these privileges, it can be very difficult to get a professional diagnosis for ASD, or any other mental illness. So while I do not have a formal diagnosis yet there is no doubt in my mind that I have ASD, and through realizing this I have been able to live a bit more comfortably learning ho...
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