"I Don’t Understand Their Sense of Belonging": Exploring How Non-Binary Autistic Adults Experience Gender

Background: The term “nonbinary” refers to all gender identities that are not exclusively male or female. Nonbinary identities are more common in autistic people than in nonautistic people. Yet research meaningfully exploring the unique intersection between autism and nonbinary identities is limited. Furthermore, little is known about how the experience of being nonbinary and autistic impacts access to autistic and queer communities; spaces that can protect against poor mental health outcomes.

Methods: We examined: (1) how nonbinary autistic people make sense of gender and (2) how they negotiate community. A participatory approach was adopted, involving a consulting group of 18 nonbinary autistic people at every stage of the research process. A separate group of five nonbinary autistic adults from the United Kingdom took part in semistructured interviews about autism, gender, and community. We analyzed interviews using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.

Results: Within an emergent framework (gender as two dimensional), we identified three themes: (1) Where do I belong? (2) (Re)framing difference. (3) Space to be (neuro)queer. Participants understood that being autistic and nonbinary problematized how they connected with “gender,” a self-defined concept of high significance. Crucially, the queer community was felt to facilitate positive identity development, but participants emphasized a continued struggle with being misunderstood, largely by their nonautistic peers.

Conclusion: This study celebrates neuroqueer ways of being. We recommend that nonautistic people are given improved education on nonbinary autistic identities; supporting autistic people to understand their differences and facilitating positive identity development within queer spaces. Creating autistic-led community groups is furthermore key, due to the linguistic and embodied complexities of autistic gender identities.