TransParent Aspie

Let’s start with the terminology first; I’m assuming you’ve heard the term Aspie before, but just to be on the safe side… an Aspie is a person, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder (ASD), which is a high functioning form of Autism (if you still have no idea what it means, i encourage you to look it up in google).
Now I’m sure you all have heard the terms Transgender and/or Transsexual, after all it is well covered now with Caitlyn Jenner’s coming-out and all; So, when I write TransParent, I’m referring to a parent of a child/ren, who is also Transgender/Transsexual .
Now that we have all that explained, let’s go on to why I started this blog:
I have read a lot of information about Trans (Transgender/Transsexual) people, and also a lot of information about Aspies or people who have Asperger’s disorder, but I haven’t found that much information out there about people who happen to be both Trans and Aspies.
Since I am one and I happen to know there are quite a few out there, who feel all alone and confused, I have decided to lend them my help in form of writing a blog about living authentically; basically draw from my own experience and write a guide that hopefully can help people like me, to embrace who they truly are and show them they can live the life they were meant to live.

In this guide, I will cover as much as I can, from the key to a good relationship/marriage as an Aspie, Trans person to social acceptance, to actual information and resources about the physical transition.

I would like to encourage you, the readers, to comment, share  your experiences and information about being an Aspie parent, a Trans person or both.

Term definitions

Transgender 
(adjective)

1. noting or relating to a person whose gender identity does not correspond to that person’s
biological sex assigned at birth: the transgender movement; transgender rights.

2. noting or relating to a person who does not conform to societal gender norms or roles.

3. (noun)  a person who is transgender.

Transsexual
(noun)

1. a person having a strong desire to assume the physical characteristics and gender role
of the opposite sex.

2. a person who has undergone hormone treatment and surgery to attain the physical
characteristics of the opposite sex.

3. adjective of, relating to, or characteristic of transsexuals.

Asperger’s

A developmental disorder that was names after Hans Asperger (1906-1980), an Austrian pediatrician, who described it in 1944. It’s characterized by severely impaired social skills, repetitive behaviors, and often, a narrow
set of interests, but not involving delayed development of linguistic and cognitive
abilities: now considered one of the autism spectrum disorders. Also called Asperger’s syndrome [as-per-erz], Asperger’s disorder.

Aspie

(adjective, slang)

a person who has Asperger’s disorder

So where do I stand in my Transition?

I have gone through so much in the past 2.5 years!

I still remember thinking Transition would be impossible for me…that it would never happen. Now I’m 2 years and 9 months into it and already I have top surgery as well as hysterectomy and Metoidioplasty behind me.

In about 6 weeks I will go through first stage Phalloplasty, which is known as the riskiest and hardest surgery in FTM transition.
Am I scared?
Hell, yeah! I’d be stupid if I wasn’t, but I’m also excited. Ever since I was 4yo I had the dream of having a penis, like all boys and men do, to be able to pee standing up on a tree or in a urinal and never feel like I’m missing a part that should have been there.
I am finally going to feel whole and after 43 years, I can’t wait for that to happen!

How to Adapt

As a 42yo guy, who has adapted so well to society that people can’t really tell that I’m an Aspie or that I struggle with social interaction, I can offer some of my insight in hopes of helping other Aspies out there; like those who haven’t adapted as well or those who are still working on it. Here are some suggestions based on what has worked for me:

• People watching – the first step in adapting
  In order to be able to change some things about the way you behave or present yourself, one must learn what is acceptable, what isn’t and what is expected of you.
  By watching people close to your age, you can learn the better ways of presenting yourself in public and how you should or shouldn’t act. For example- when a small group of people comes together and chat, pay attention to the order of talking- are they talking over eachother or in turns, is one telling the others something and then they all react or maybe just the person he was talking to directly; if one tells a joke, how do the others react? do they laugh, smile or simply go on talking about other things? if they laugh, how strong is the volume of their laughter…all of these things come naturally to neurotypical people, however to Aspies they involve a learning process. I found people watching to be extremely helpful for me.
• TV- an entertaining way of learning
  I found that watching kids and teenage comic shows on TV to be almost as helpful. as people watching, provided that you remember that a lot of behaviors are exaggerated for entertainment purposes.  I used to watch Degrassi, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters, Punky Brewster, Saved by the Bell, The Facts of Life, Step by Step and more.
• Reading
  I always loved reading and learning new things. Once I was diagnosed, I have looked up every piece of information I could find about Asperger’s, social rules, social expectations etc. I firmly believe that knowledge is power!
• Role-playing
  there are a few ways to approach this:
  – pretending to be someone else, in front of the mirror
  – Role-playing while talking online (or in reality, if you’re able to do that) to people who don’t know you and trying out different reactions to different situations in order to see how they take each one.
  – making an account on one of the social graphic game platforms, such as Second Life,
  onverse, InWorldz and trying out what we have learned by watching people while paying attention to how people react to the new behaviors.

I tried all of these out and have learned something from each of these options. It helped me remendously and today, most people can’t really see that I am different or that I struggle with some parts of social interaction, even if I still do.

being an Aspie and a Trans guy is harder than just being Trans!

Ok so in the past 3 years I have gotten to know many Trans guys from all corners of the world.
I found that I have many things in common with them, but also quite a few Asperger’s-related issues, that I have been dealing with whereas they do not.

Growing up I had to deal with rejection, not only based on my gender identity and gender-role related behavior, but also rejection based on my general way of thinking and behavior. I have always seen the world a bit differently than everyone else around me. I was way more advanced than my peers in my way of thought and my way of learning, yet way behind when it came to emotions and social rules.
How much behind I was (emotionally speaking) was often visible when I got overwhelmed and had a meltdown. Unlike neurotypical peers, whose meltdowns slowly decreased and mostly disappeared by their teenage years, mine have accompanied me all the way to adulthood.
As an adult, I already understood what I was feeling most of the time; however, I didn’t understand why I felt that way or what to do with those strong feelings.
The result was, that I often just locked my feelings down inside and ignored, that they ever existed!
That’s exactly what I did with all the feelings and thoughts about my gender identity and sexual orientation.  My mom never accepted me as a boy, after I declared I was one (between ages 3 and 12) and I had no one I could turn and talk to about it for years;  because of that, once my body started changing, I basically made myself stop thinking about how I differ from other girls or what makes me feel that I’m actually a boy, ignored my feelings, urges and thoughts in this matter, and adopted the female role and behavior that I was expected to have.
The problem was, that these feelings didn’t stay locked up inside me for long. Every now and then they would come up to the surface, overwhelm me and then I would have a big melt-down with the first little frustration that came my way and suppress all these feelings after I calmed down. In between those meltdowns my moods were erratic at times- going from being calm and  productive…and even creative to being depressed and dysfunctional.
Having gender dysphoria made life difficult, especially since I didn’t understand what these feelings meant exactly or why I was having them. For years I thought of my breasts as ugly tumors, with which I had to live; my monthly period cycles as punishment for something I might have done in my previous life…   I never came across Trans people nor have I heard much about them until age 30 or so. So you can imagine my surprise when I realized that I was one, after my psychologist suggested that I researched it.

Back to how things are different for me…
Many of the Trans guys I know find themselves struggling with their partners/ spouses once they start transition; dealing with all the changes isn’t easy… not for themselves nor for their partners. In my case, it’s even harder at times, because my wife still has to take under consideration the Aspie related things on top. for example- like most of my Trans friends, I don’t experience anger more than I did pre-transition, despite taking Testosterone. In fact I feel calmer now. However just like it happened for my Trans friends, the way I handle the anger, when it does present itself, has changed. While some men become more verbally aggressive once angry or on the other pole- find it easier to let the anger go, I become overwhelmed by the anger and frustration and completely retreat into myself. I can feel myself sitting there stimming (usually rolling my thumbs or biting my lip) in silence, going over whatever happened, that managed to anger me, in my mind, and even though I want to be able to talk to my wife, when she pushes for it, I can’t seem to make myself do that for hours. Prior to transition, I used to be very verbal, even when angry…I just used to raise my voice or shout but since I kept talking, I would calm down faster.

Other challenges I had to face were:
– explaining things to my friends and family when I came out to them. Explaining things isn’t my strong suit and I had to do that a lot! I had to explain when I got diagnosed with Asperger’s, then when I came out as “lesbian” and then once I came out as Transgender. Each time to over 20 people in person and through the phone and then later to many more friends through social media and/or email.
– staying strong in the face of losing friends and family over coming-out isn’t easy for anyone, but most neurotypical guys can handle frustration and being hurt much better than I can. I get frustrated within minutes and then I spend hours trying to minimize the anger that goes along with this frustration. Same happens when my feelings get hurt. So, you can imagine how frustrated, hurt and angry I became when I heard friends telling me that they’d rather not talk to me anymore than put the effort to talk to me as male (the “it’s just too difficult to get used to” line). It’s not that I didn’t know I might lose friends over this…I did, but once I did lose them, it hurt and once hurting, I got frustrated which brought on anger and rage, but since I now handle things differently, what happened was that I internalized it all and it was eating me from inside. It took me over a year on Testosterone to get to the point where I could rationalize things when angry and calm myself down. Another anger/feeling hurt related difficulty is that others can’t see it on me anymore. Ever since I started taking Testosterone, it seems that whatever I’m feeling inside doesn’t translate to my facial expressions or body language. In the past, it was like I was wearing my heart on my sleeve; you could see every emotion I had right on my face. That’s why I could never really lie- you’d see it right away. These days, I’m told that it’s very difficult to see what I’m feeling and my facial expression is often misinterpreted. When that happens, it causes some friction between my wife and myself.
– being seen as a man now, I’m expected to be more assertive, take the lead and initiate a lot of things. To most Trans guys, that is not a problem…on the contrary, many of them used to complain they didn’t get the chance to do those things before they came-out and transitioned. To me, however, it’s very hard!
My initial tendency is to be shy and disappear to the background. like most Aspies, I hate being in the spotlights. I worked hard on myself and I guess the Testosterone helped some too and I did become more confident in myself, more assertive too but initiating conversations with people I don’t know and taking lead on certain things, are still  a battle I need to fight on a daily basis!

There are many other things I have to deal with, being both an Aspie and Transgender, but as I said before, it’s hard for me to point thing out and explain them.

So I’ll leave you with this: Life for an Aspie is always difficult! by adulthood many of us are already used to being fighters…fighting for things that neurotypical people take for granted,
and although I find that transitioning from female to male has been harder for me than for many others out there, I also find that I enjoy it more than most would. The fact that as an Aspie I feel things to the extremes may be really difficult to handle, but the pay-off is amazing!  While other Trans men report suddenly being content with their bodies, after starting HRT (hormone therapy), for me it has been more of an extreme happiness, euphoria of a sort…feeling whole and going from hating my face and body to truly loving how I look.
Transition is the one thing, I have experienced in life, that truly makes sense to me and I would do it all over again, if I had to!

Adapting

I only discovered Asperger’s when I was about 30yo.
In childhood, I never got any services or help of any kind, like Aspie kids these days do. Back then, in my country, no one knew what Asperger’s was nor did anyone understand why I behaved the way I did. When asked by my mother, the common answer, doctors and psychologists had, was: “she is trying to get your attention in any way possible, even if it means ‘bad attention’ “. The result….I was punished for being who I was, on a daily basis!

So, here I was a misunderstood kid, all alone to deal with my issues. What does an Aspie kid do in order to survive?  the answer is- learn!

At the age of 11 I started learning about appropriate and inappropriate reactions, about humor, and about social rules in general. From how to laugh without scaring anyone, how to walk without looking weird and/or eccentric to rules of games like soccer or why is it wrong to ‘cheat’…I had to learn everything, that a 5yo usually knows already.
How did I do that?
It was quite simple, really, though time consuming; I was people watching, when I was outside, reading and watching a lot of TV, when I was at home (teenage shows mostly, like save the bell or family ties). I knew that these shows were meant to entertain, but I came out of the assumption that the reactions and sets of behaviors I was seeing on these shows were simply exaggerated and if the actors toned them down by a little bit, it would fit how they should act in everyday life, so I kept that in mind and kept watching.
By the end of that year, I have learned quite a bit and couldn’t wait to implement. I knew that I was going to have the perfect opportunity to start my big “experiment”. When I was 12yo, we moved to another town, where I started junior high-school. That was my chance to make a different impression on kids, that have never met me before; kids that had no idea how different I really was. I was preparing myself all summer that year, so that when school start, I would start fresh with a new and “improved” me; one that was more friendly, one that laughed at other kids’ jokes (even if I didn’t quite get what was funny about them), one that walked in a way that didn’t invoke comments and criticism, talked  in an appropriate way…one that simply got along with others and would be accepted.
It took a lot of work- constantly reminding myself how I should react, what I shouldn’t say and what I shouldn’t, speak less loud, cry less etc.
It was working and for the first time in my life, I have made some friends!
The 3 years I was in junior high, I was a part of a group and no one knew anything about the kid I used to be…the one that irritated everyone around, the one that was bullied and got beat up in elementary school on a daily basis, just for being strange.

For us, Aspies, reading between the lines doesn’t come naturally, just like reading body language and facial expressions doesn’t; adhering to unspoken social rules is also a problem, since we are not born with the knowledge of what those rules are NOR do we learn that unconsciously, like most kids do at a young age. We have to really watch people carefully, we have to be told clearly what the rules are and memorize them and then…then we have to practice it everyday until we get it right!
It’s like going to school and studying for exams; only in our case, the school is life out there and the exam is social situations. The grade is basically how we are perceived by others, when we are in social situations and their acceptance.

So if any of you out there have kids, who are also Aspies, and you get angry with them for watching TV shows about teens and their lives way too many hours of the day – keep in mind, that they might be learning!

Myths about Aspies sexuality and relationships

Myth:

• Aspies have no “higher feelings”; they can’t feel love, be tender or be empathetic to others
• Autistic people are asexual (derive no pleasure from sex).
• most Aspies are gay
• Aspies will never have a sexual and/or romantic relationship
• Aspies will never have a long time relationship
• Aspies are sex maniacs

Answers to those claims

• Aspies do have feelings such as love, hate and everything in between. the difference between aspies and non-aspies is that aspies may show their feelings in different ways and get overwhelmed by the intensity of those feelings to the point of shutting down.

• Although many Aspies are asexual (maybe even more than in the average population), it doesn’t mean that most are.
  In the “sexuality and Gender Role in Autism Spectrum, Disorder: a case control study”, made by Susanne Bejerot and Jonna M. Eriksson,  participated 103 swedish adults;  out of which, 50 were diagnosed with ASD prior to the study (26 men and 24 women), and 53 were neurotypical controls. Out of the 50 adults with ASD only 2 reported to be asexual!
• It is believed that there is a slightly higher percentage of gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender autistics than in the average population. Since in the gay community there is less emphasis on conformity, Bisexual or homosexual Aspies may find more potential for sex and/or relationships. Autistic women may be more successful in relationships than men due to differences in social requirements ( a man is often expected to initiate).

•  Living in a society that puts emphasys on long term relationships and marriage may scare Aspies, who find even initiating a simple conversation difficult, into avoiding dating, but even though, social interaction doesn’t come easily for Aspies and many do have difficulties in forming relationships, quite many of them out there do have sex, fall in love and have relationships, even if later in life (the swedish study shows that Aspies start their sexual ventures a bit later than neurotypicals: Aspies around ages 18-22 rather than 17-18 in neurotypicals.

• Yes, many Aspies don’t keep long term relationships, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean that nonw of them do. I, myself, am an Aspie and I have been in 3 long term relationship throughout my life, one of which was a 20 year marriage! i have also known quite a few other Aspies, who were/are married and keep relationships for years.
• Aspies are not “sex maniacs”!  Some Aspies refrain from sex by choice (due to being asexual, intimidated by the thought of initiating contact, or simply finding other things more important), others may have high libido and  have a lot of sex. some may have “normal” sexual attractions while others are more “kinky”. there is no more one pattern to Aspie sexuality than to neurotypical sexuality. We are all different people!
  That being said, Aspies tend to become obsessive with their interests, so if one would have sex as an interest and becomes obsessive about it, it may translate to the rest of the world as that individual being a “sex maniac”

Resources

• a guide to sexuality/relationship for autsitc people
• “The Asperger Love guide- a Practical Guide for Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome to Seeking, Establishing and Maintaining Successful Relationships (book)
• Amaze– Information about relationship and ASD
• Asperger’s/Autism love success stories (forum)

Asperger’s and parenthood

I was first diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was almost 30 years old. 2 years after my then 10yo son was diagnosed with it. Today my oldest is almost 23 years old.

What did it mean as a parent to have Asperger’s disorder? you’re asking. Well, being an Aspie parent hasn’t been easy in General and being one to Aspie kids has been tough but being a Transgender Aspie parent to Aspie kids hasn’t only been tough but many times, so hard it was unbearable.

Here are some of the issues i has to deal with over the years:

– Those of you who know what some of the more noticeable Aspie-traits are, know that we tend to “get stuck” in our stubbornness and with the thought that we are right and everyone else is wrong, and that we can go on being “stuck” until we win every single power struggle we’re engaged in. Now imagine having this trait and engaging in power struggles with your kids, who also have this trait and can go on until they come out with the upper hand. How does it end? Well, it took a few good years for me to understand and accept that most likely, I would have to be the one that compromises, even when I feel that I’m right.
It’s harder for Aspie kids to compromise than for the adults among us, because as adults we’ve already had time to learn some skills and adapt, whereas the kids didn’t learn that skill yet.

– Low frustration threshold is a biggie for Aspies! Kids can drive every parent nuts at some point or another, and Aspie kids can do that even more than others, but when the parent has a very low frustration threshold, things are even worse. I always had to struggle with this far more than other parents,  I know. I still do even now!

– Phone phobia is one of the problems many Aspies are dealing with. I always had trouble calling people on the phone. Don’t ask me why, I just do!
When people call me, I have no problem, because I can see who is calling and screen calls, if needed, but for me to call others…even if it’s just to make appointments, has always been horribly hard. It came to the point where I had physical manifestations of that fear in the form of rising temperature, high blood pressure, migraines, nausea, fainting episodes etc. So you can only imagine how difficult it can be when you have to call the kids doctor’s clinic or the school.

– One of the things my kids always pointed out was that I’m like a kid in an adult body sometimes. This fact has been both a blessing and a curse. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that my kids, when they were young, loved having a mom, that liked playing video games as much as they did, and was as good at it; a parent that loves going to theme parks and rides the scary roller coasters along with them; a parent that was competitive, that liked  playing rough…one that had water fights with them, that wrestled with them, one that planned the coolest pirate birthday party ever…
When my kids were in elementary school, I used to hear the following sentence a lot: “you’re a cool mom! None of the other moms play with the kids like you do”. However, once my kids grew up and hit puberty, the very same thing that made me into “the cool mom” was the one that all of a sudden caused them embarrassment. That’s when the sentence changed into sounding more like: “OMG! why can’t you be more like all the other moms?!”

Today, my kids are adults. They love and accept me just the way I am! if it’s the childish behavior that sometimes surfaces or the fact that I have been transitioning to a man. We all went through a lot yet we’re all doing well together, and apart, and I am proud to say that despite all the hurdles and difficulties, both of my kids are now independent individuals and amazing people, so I must have done something right!   🙂