Presentation Information
[SY-73-04]Gender Dysphoria as a subset of Pervasive Social Dysphoria: A Qualitative Analysis of the Life Story of Japanese Autistic adults with Gender Dysphoria
*Shoko Shimoyama (Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo(Japan))
Keywords:
autism,gender diversity,neurodiversity,gender dysphoria,pervasive social dysphoria
Recently, there has been increased attention on putative relationship between autism and gender dysphoria (GD). To understand the nature of co-occurrence, exploring these individual’s experience is essential, but previous research has little focus on them. Therefore, Shimoyama and Endo (2024; 2025) explored the diverse GD experiences of Japanese autistic transgender adults. And we found that most of them not only accumulate distress over gender norms (i.e. GD) but pervasive social norms as well, which we termed pervasive social dysphoria (PSD). In other words, their GD, the gender-related conflict caused by the imposition of gender norms, was a subset of PSD—the conflict related to the broader sense of self caused by the imposition of pervasive social norms. Thus, the co-occurring phenomenon with autism may be PSD from the inner perspectives, which should be investigated in future. Additionally, the PSD concept has implications for understanding the social experiences of autistic people today. Within the conventional medical paradigm, autistic people have been viewed as having a disability, which WHO (1980, p. 143) defines as 'any limitation or lack of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being', due to their impairment (i.e. ASD; APA, 2013). However, our studies indicate that autistic participants found it difficult to perform 'normally' because social norms and their manner of sharing are not inclusive of autistic people. Additionally, their desires, and circumstances of experiencing uncertainty and burden from social norms were not accepted by society, which led them to develop PSD. This finding suggests a divergence in the conceptualization of autism between the conventional medical paradigm and the inner perspectives (Shimoyama & Endo, 2024, p. 2595). At the symposium, the implications of PSD and the importance of including autistic people’s perspectives in autism science will be discussed.