As an autistic trans person who works with many autistic trans people, and more broadly with a lot of neurodivergent LGBTQA+ people, I’ve been studying this overlap for a long time, and I now offer talks and training to help people makes sense of this phenomenon.

I’m pleased and proud to have been asked to speak at two conferences recently on the subject. In November, I gave the keynote speech at the Person-Centred Association GSRD Conference: my speech was entitled “therapist encounters with autistic trans people”, which also looks more broadly at, and considers how we make meaning of, the wider neurodivergence/LGBTQA+ overlap. Further training on this topic can be booked here. This is a two-part CPD series in January, the first looking more broadly at LGBTQA+ neurodivergent people, and the second focusing on therapists working with trans autistic people.

The conference talk is available to purchase here.

Here’s a snippet of my talk:

My overriding emphasis is that nature loves diversity and diversity often layers quite thickly in this segment of the population. We don’t need to pathologise, we don’t need to look for causation, we just need to embrace and celebrate quirky people because while many of us face struggles, we are also out here doing amazing things and contributing a necessary richness to society. If we’re accomodated, we thrive, and our contribution will be richer.

I want to leave you with a list of some truly amazing autistic trans/gender diverse people that you should know about:

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, who wrore Care Work and The Future is Disabled, the latter particularly a must-read in thinking about how we rebuild community post-covid.

Nick Walker author of the book Neuroqueer Heresies

Wenn Lawson, one of the pioneers of thinking about autism in AFAB people, and contributer to the monotropism theory of autism

Devon Price, author of Laziness does not exist and Unmasking autism

Sonny Jane Wise, activist and producer of some incredible resourcess for queer neurodivergent folks