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The Problem of Essentialism in Autism and Gender Diversity Research

This post is by Ruby Hake (University of Birmingham), one of the authors of 'Autism and Gender', a chapter in a volume forthcoming for Routledge, Contemporary Philosophy of Autism. The chapter offers an in-depth discussion of essentialism and argues that critical phenomenology is well placed to prevent this issue going forward.


Ruby Hake


Essentialism has been a problem in autism and gender diversity research from the beginning. For example, the biological-essentialist theory of the extreme male theory of autism (Baron-Cohen 2002; 2012) has been used to explain the prevalence of autistic trans men (Murphy et al. 2020; Nobili et al. 2018; Kung 2020). The theory cannot explain the prevalence of autistic trans women, however, and ignores the experiences of non-binary autistic people. 

It has also been common in medical literature to argue that “symptoms” of autism, such as ‘black and white thinking’, ‘obsessions’, ‘developmental rigidity’ etc. can cause gender dysphoria or mistaken trans identity (Van der Miesen et al. 2016; George & Stokes 2018; Strang et al. 2018a; Pecora et al. 2020). This is causing many autistic trans people to be denied gender affirming care (Walsh & Jackson-Perry 2021; Maroney et al. 2025). 

Such arguments ignore the heterogeneity of the autistic trans population. Many autistic trans people are non-binary / gender fluid / or don’t feel they have any gender, i.e. do not have a ‘black and white’ or ‘rigid’ idea of gender (Kourti & MacLeod 2018; Purkis & Lawson 2021). 

Some literature against this kind of essentialism has leaned on many autistic people’s experience of gender fluidity or lacking a sense of gender. They do so to argue that:

autistic accounts reveal [gender] to be there, but not really; something that slips in and out of their awareness, that’s felt to circulate around but never quite settle in their lives, or on their bodies

(Davidson & Tamas 2016: 61) 

Autistic experience of gender is presented as distant, lacking, as performance (see Jack 2012; Kourti & MacLeod 2018, Atkinson 2021), when only some autistic people experience it this way. Some feel gender to be a constant, solid, embodied and essential part of their identity, preferring a binary gender identity (see Sparrow 2020; Purkis & Lawson 2021, 49-50, 63; Adams & Liang 2020: 75; Strang 2018b: 4047). 

Arguing that 'autistic accounts of gender' 'reveal' gender to be a certain kind of thing amounts to essentialising autistic experience of gender, even though this work is against the essentialism that came before it.


Cover of Contemporary Philosophy of Autism



In reality, there is no essential connection between autism and any one experience of gender. As anti-essentialists we need to be really careful: we can be against essentialism without generalising, universalising and reducing experience. We need to be aware of the implications our theories of gender have. We can’t just treat people who experience gender in a more binary way as having less access to the ‘truth’ about gender or doing gender ‘wrong’. Their experience is just as real and tells us just as much about what gender really is as other experiences do.

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