Autistic people must often meet others more than halfway in conversations and social expectations. Social interactions are often dotted with unanswered questions, unknowable facial expressions and nonsensical terminology which we are expected to translate, understand and appropriately respond to within seconds. When things are misinterpreted it is usually seen as the Autistic person’s fault, as the people who won’t or can’t ‘get it right’ (Double Empathy Problem).
What does double empathy mean for trans and gender non-conforming people?
Gender diverse people (Autistic or otherwise) can be seen as not doing gender ‘correctly’, this can also affect cisgender people who are otherwise perceived as gender non-conforming in their behaviour and look. Due to this we can be constantly misgendered, intentionally or otherwise.
Relying on social feedback to validate our un/gendered selves can be difficult for those of us who find socialising difficult. We may not be able to constantly correct others, it may not be safe to do so, and the potential of conflict can put many of us off.
I’m creating ways to enable others to get my pronouns correct as I’ve been consistently misgendered by everyone since coming out (my husband, friends, and a few colleagues are the exception to this). When we do correct others we may experience eyerolls, excuses, or be bombarded with long-winded apologies. This is not a comfortable situation to be put in consistently.
Even if we can correct others it is exhausting – we are not just correcting an error in grammar but language which disrespects and erases us, whether that was the person’s intention or not. This constant fight to be recognised and understood for who we are is frustrating, to say the least.
How can we do better with getting names and pronouns right?
Recently, I used the incorrect pronouns for someone. This is what I learnt, and what I continue to learn about making sure I get pronouns right:
- When I get things wrong I apologise, correct, and move on.
- Apologies are only good if they are backed up with changed behaviour.
- If I am struggling with someone’s pronouns I practice them over and over, out loud and internally.
- Understand why I get it wrong – what ideas do I still carry about how I think people should look, behave etc to be seen as a certain gender?
- There is no place for tone-policing. A person will respond in the manner in which they need to if I constantly get things wrong and show myself to be an unsafe person.
- Believe people when they say I have harmed or insulted them. It is not for me to explain how another person should translate my words, behaviours or intentions.
- Just because I am transgender does not give me a free-pass to get things wrong.
I didn’t intend to offend, hurt, annoy or dismiss this person but my intention is not more important than the harm I cause. Gendering people correctly is an issue for all of us.
3 responses to “Double Empathy and misgendering”
As a gender-neutral person who still occasionally flubbs pronouns when not engaging my entire focus, I appreciate the struggle for all of us. We are humans in a journey striving to be better daily and understanding and forgiveness are very much appreciated.
It’s very important to me to honor each person’s gender. So most of the time I engage desired pronouns. The more I know a person in daily life, the easier this is to do. That is, the more I know about aspects of a person’s gender that are important to them.
That said, I wonder how to navigate the executive function of the process you’ve described related to interrogating myself given declining cognition & autistic elderhood.
I’ve noticed that sound of voice is where my intuition or lack thereof lies. Apersob whose gender I had greatest difficulty with was a therapist I saw a few sessions whose voice sounded more masculine. Yet they did they went by “they/she”. “They” is the most accessible pronoun I can work toward. Yet I kept finding cognitive dissonance within myself re thinking of the person as other than masculine.
Come to think of it, reflection is feasible over time. But as a pre-verbal thinking, in-the-moment is where I struggle most.
[…] communication and vice versa. This can create issues with mutual misunderstanding including double empathy and misgendering. All of this can leave trans autistic young people feeling like they don’t belong […]