The thing about the intersect of autism and queer/transness for me is that it’s all a blur, and has been since childhood, on a personal level. It’s *all* part of the same fabric of oppression, teasing it out in terms of what happened diagnostically is murky at best.

In childhood and through to my teens, I was weepy, angry, avoidant, aggressive, bookish, stimmy, social (but with the “wrong” gender), reclusive, and basically a queer happy mess, as long as people left me alone, which they most definitely did not. So then, i was a miserable queer mess, and they still didn’t leave me alone.

Both at school and in my sort-of-home, everything was an intervention, constantly, from the moment I showed up the first day of school to the moment I left the school system when i was 15. Autism, queerness, transness, problem behavior, asocial behavior, all the same tapestry of “stop doing that”.

That said, they did all sorts of soft and hard intervention-like things to me, back when ABA was just starting to get off the ground. “Stop being queer/trans” things. “We’re testing your ability to match faces to emotions” things. Rorschach things. EEG things. “The tests are to screen for your mother’s neurological condition, but only you get tested repeatedly” things. “Look me in the eye, no, *look* me in the eye” things. “Staggering from the EEG drugs” things. “Stop toe walking, people will think you’re gay” things. “Stop looking at shiny and stacked things” things.

I tried to self-advocate to get my school records, but my mom bullied me out of it.

It took me over 40 years to talk about this publicly, and the only reason I am now is because I lucked my way into support materials for autistic women, or as seems to still be an ok thing to say, autistic females. (Yes, females in that sort of way, ladies.)

So I hate to break it to folks, but clinical diagnosis or no clinical diagnosis, school records or no school records, you’re never going to get rid of me.

I am well the damn hell right here, I will remain here until we all are free, and you can’t stop me. To paraphrase Rodrigo De Souza, “My paperwork is in the blood”. (Cancelled? Boo.)