The ‘new’ trans population: An exploration of the uses and abuses of autism

Abstract

Gender-critical discourse often cites autism as a possible causation of trans identities in young people. The possibility that young trans people might be autistic and not trans holds an apparent gravitas wherever one sits on the issue of trans health care. However, this article argues that these mobilizations of autism are a violent act of inclusion and function to preserve whiteness from a trans threat that emerges from within whiteness itself. The so-called ‘new cohort’ of trans youth is productive of a white trans imaginary. The prior affordances of this population present a unique danger to the naturalized status of the sex-gender binary that reproduces whiteness as the telos of development. By situating anxieties around white plasticity as central to the pushback on trans youth, this article expands upon recent work that positions plasticity as a biopolitical mechanism. Autism, a neurodevelopmental condition, is in a unique position to foreclose transness as it holds a minoritized space within whiteness itself. The racialization of autism gives it a specific plastic capacity that is used to impress the impossibility of trans and autism co-existing and simultaneously offers the possibility of rehabilitation ‘back’ to gender normativity. This article adds to the work that situates plasticity as a racial mechanism of biopower and highlights the co-centrality of race to gender-critical movements.