Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Even as a trans and autistic individual, I am clearly not the intended audience of this book. Still, "Trans and Autistic" represents an excellent step forward for academic research on the trans-autistic community. I expected more first-hand accounts and found a collection of ethnographic case studies on ten different folks who fall under trans and autistic umbrellas. I appreciate the breadth of the reports given on each interviewee, which further humanizes this often marginalized (and dehumanized) community. I especially enjoyed reading about the activism some of the research subjects were engaged in and hearing about how they all have come to understand both their autism and their gender, as I saw myself reflected in so many stories. There's power in seeing yourself reflected in media, and for me that feeling has been amplified by this academic recognition.

I received an e-galley of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who is trans and not autistic but knows and loves many autistic people (some of them trans), I was really interested in reading this book. It’s one of those strange facts of life that a lot of trans people are autistic, and no-one really knows exactly why – or, indeed, if it even really matters why. So often the concept is leapt upon by the transphobes, terfs, the medical establishment et al as “vulnerable autistic girls being convinced they’re boys!” and other such ableist nonsense. Personally, I think it’s because autistic people are just cool like that. Anyway.

There’s not much written on the subject as yet, and I think this book’s greatest strength is exactly that – a whole book presenting autistic trans people as not a problem to be pathologised but just as a fact of life. Each chapter of the book is a summary of an interview with a different person who is both autistic and trans. I’m grateful too that the authors were able to cultivate a variety of interviewees from different medical, national, and socio-economic backgrounds. This book is a great starting point on the topic, but unfortunately it doesn’t get much further than that. There’s very little synthesis in the conclusion, just repetition. I couldn’t help but compare it unfavourably to Gender Explorers by Juno Roche which I read recently, which used the form of interviews (in that case, interviewing trans children and their families) but to much greater effect: Gender Explorers recorded its interviews in question and answer format, while Trans and Autistic uses reported speech and summarises the contents of the interviews, which I just feel made it lose something.

Still, the contents of the interviews are really interesting and provide lots of points for future discussion on this topic. There were lots of things I hadn’t thought about like the intersection of race and religion with transness and neurodiversity. This book claims to be “the first book to foreground the voices and experiences of autistic trans people” – bring on the next ones.

Being trans and autistic myself, I really enjoy reading about this intersection. I found it really valuable to see so many very different perspectives in this book, and that's ultimately why I did end up enjoying it. However, the writing was very unpleasant to read as it was extremely repetitive and it read as if the authors had just put their interview transcripts in third person.

Being the mother of an autistic transgender child I was excited to read this one. Unfortunately this fell flat for me. Each individual’s voice was lost and the stories were told in a very textbooky style.

Thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

A very well thought out look at the intersection of these two identities. I have a lot of respect for the care with which this research was pursued, the diversity of experiences, age, other identities, and so on of those interviewed, and the transparency regarding the process.

I was disappointed with the format of this book. Hearing the voices and stories of the Trans Autistics in this book I felt was important. Where this fell down was that the interviewer did not let the stories be told in the "voice" of the individuals involved. By doing it this way each voice was lost and it is just the author speaking. It sounds repetitive and without depth.

These are individuals with their own journey to tell and not including their personalities and style of speaking and sharing really removed that individuality. You began to predict what topics would be spoken about and a lot blurred into sounding the same. I don't feel this did justice to those who chose to open themselves up and share.

I have read other books in similar format about different autistic individuals and adding the aspect of their Trans journey alongside their autism was really intriguing to me. Sadly, as other reviewers have stated I would have preferred to "hear" them speaking in their own style. I think that's incredibly important.

It lacked the heart it needed to really make the impact it should of. I "got" the vision of what was trying to be achieved with this book but sadly the format being written in just the one voice meant it lost so much in translation.

In theory, this is a very important, really good book.
In practice?
I agree with other reviewers, there's so much in it that makes me think that instead of paraphrasing, we should have seen the essays untouched or lightly touched, at best. It feels like the impact and maybe some of the power of the actual essays has been diluted, so while this is still a good book, there are places it could be better.

This book was a disappointment.

I read and loved another book by this publisher (Nonbinary Lives) where the editors chose to collect personal essays on the experience of being nonbinary and then loosely group them into categories, allowing each voice to shine through. That book was a joy to read.

This book... not so much. The main problem with it is how it was approached: The author chose to interview trans&autistic people and then write up their stories. This meant that the voice didn't change with each person, making the stories run together. Additionally, the voice chosen for the write-up is dry, clinical, and textbook-y. I read several sections and came away with no sense of comprehension at all. Ultimately I chose to DNF.

It is incredibly important for trans autistic voices to be heard, especially now that research is being done on the connection/correlation between gender identity and autism. This book is an interesting and sensitive start to this area of research. The researchers, who also belong to the autistic and trans communities, subscribe strongly to the idea of 'nothing about us without us', and this shows in the way they talk about their research subjects.

There is a methodology at the beginning of the book, describing the research in detail. This is clearly a well thought out piece of research, hopefully providing a good grounding for future research in this area. The subjects are very diverse, which is on purpose, and was refreshing to see, as a lot of prior research in both the areas of autism and trans issues seem to skew heavily towards white people.

The interviews are presented in third person, which feels more academic, but at times can feel a little distanced from the person, less 'in their own words'. However, the interviews are written sensitively, without judgement. They can be hard to read at times, due to anecdotes about mental health and suicide, family rejection and disownment, abuse and ABA therapy. But there are also positive anecdotes, and a sense of hopefulness towards the future in many of the interviews. Containted within the interviews are lots of different opinions, many conflicting, because, as it's said, if you've met one autistic person (and/or trans person), you've met one autistic person. The book gives an interesting overview of the subject from the perspective of actually trans autistic people and highlights some intercommunity issues and debates. There is a lot of repetition, due to people having similar experiences, but the differences are what I found most interesting, for example how the age of diagnosis affected someone, and whether or not they transitioned before or after their autism diagnosis and how that affected their transition.

In regards to whether autism and gender identity are connected, the research is still being done. Several different theories that could be explored were floated in this book. One that stuck out to me was that 'gender could be seen as a part of neurotypical culture that is often inscrutable and inapplicable to many autistic people'. That being autistic changed the way that gender was viewed or understood, either making autistic people more likely to explore their own gender, or more likely to be seen as gender nonconforming. Plenty of further reading is suggested at the end of the book, for people who want to explore the subject further.

I hope future research is carried out in a similar way to this piece of research, and is beneficial for both communities.

This review will be posted on my blog on 4/4/20

Advanced copy received through netgalley in exchange for review: first, I’d like to say that I am so happy that content like this exists and more research is being done that actually includes voices of trans and autistic folks. I really wish they had kept each interview untouched, instead of paraphrasing each one. The voice of each participant was lost to summarizing, and potentially drawing some assumptions for the reader to have to decide what the participant was actually saying. I’m sure that each voice was so unique, and we didn’t get to see it! This book is very research-oriented and I assume is a part of an academic project. I’d love to see the authors transform the data into a more of a showcase of each participants’ unique voice on the topic of transgender and autistic intersection.

This book was very informative about autism and trans life experience. I especially liked how each persons narrative was split into sections. Enabling an easy understanding. I felt like the final thoughts at the end of each chapter was redundant though especially because the book had a conclusion.

"nothing about us without us"

I have very mixed feelings about this book. Firstly it doesn't read like a non fiction book, it reads more like a dissertation or discussion. It's very accessibly written and I would have no hesitation recommending it to young people I work with for whom it may be relevant.
I was very aware that I had little to no knowledge of the experiences of individuals who identify as trans and autistic so I'm grateful for the stories this book told.
I found the 'final thoughts' sections to be very repetitive and a but unnecessary.

This was a good read, beginning to fill a gap in our knowledge of the experiences of trans and autistic people. I'm grateful to have been able to read it.


*I received a advance reader copy through Netgalley in return for an honest review*

I initially wanted to read this as I wanted to learn more about autism and being trans, but I quickly tired of the writing style, and I had to give up. The way it is written feels really impersonal and dry, and you don't get the feeling that you're reading about real people. Something that would make it A LOT more interesting to read, was if each person wrote for themselves, or at least dictated to someone who wrote it as "I did this, and I felt that...".

This is a fairly short but interesting collection on interview-based research on people who are both trans and autistic, two groups that are incredibly underrepresented in any sort of sense.
While some research profits from random samples to show an average population sample, this kind of research profits greatly from having purposefully chosen a diverse range of interviewees of different ethnicities, gender and sexual identities. This is in so much relevant as people who are not straight, white, and assigned male at birth are quite underrepresented within these groups as well. And don't get me started on the general gender bias in autism diagnostics and research!
I found it quite interesting to see such a diverse mix of people's opinions on relevant autism and transgender specific problems such as health care and family relations. The book showed people using person-first or identity-first language or only just the Asperger's label, different kinds of pronouns, having very different opinions on the intersection of their identities etc which just shows again the "if you've met one autistic person you've met one autistic person" saying.
Still, the authors manage to illustrate parallels and differences in their summary quite well which just highlights the relevance of their research.
My criticism is that the conclusion of each interview, while being a norm in this type of writing, is very repetitive to read as it basically just summarizes everything a second time and it can be skipped over.
Two very positive things I want to highlight apart from the general awesomeness of the book are the glossary and the small introduction to each interviewee.
I hope I will manage to get my hands on a finished copy of this book when it hits the shelves to add to my collection of books that are just really up my academic research interest alley.
Finally, it is only to say that I fulfil at least 50 percent of the topic as well, being autistic and at the very least gender nonconforming, so I am both knowledgable and slightly biased on the topic.

As a parent of two autistic children I really needed this book.

Hearing from people with real experience is so valuable. And it re-iterates that early diagnosis and supports are needed to help our little humans grow into happy adults.