How Autism & Anorexia Unlocked the Mechanism Behind Gender Dysphoria

In this episode, the hosts dive into a thought-provoking analysis linking gender dysphoria, anorexia, and autism. They explore statistics and research to argue that gender dysphoria in the United States is a culture-bound syndrome similar to anorexia. The discussion delves into how autistic traits may contribute to these conditions, emphasizing the significant overlap and suggesting that societal acceptance of such identities is complex and potentially harmful. They highlight the emotional and social struggles faced by individuals with these conditions and propose alternative perspectives. An engaging and enlightening conversation sprinkled with personal anecdotes and cultural references.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone! Today is an interesting day because I had a revelation as I was studying some data where, you know, sometimes I look at data I'll be like, hmm, that's weird. I've seen a number really similar to that somewhere else and I'm like Bring data. Bring data. Oh my God. Oh my God.

This explains everything. And I now feel like I have a much better understanding of what's causing the transgender phenomenon in the United States. Do tell.

Here's what Simone had to say at the end of this episode

Simone Collins: wow. I've now experienced a paradigm change. And I have a lot more empathy for people who have gender dysphoria

Malcolm Collins: What we are going to be arguing using data is that gender dysphoria is the same phenomenon as anorexia. Not a similar phenomenon, but literally the same phenomenon.

And as we read through this, we will both see what is causing the phenomenon. As well as why it is [00:01:00] specifically hitting the autistic population at such high rates and Yeah, i'll just jump right into it All right So the thing I was reading that first got me thinking this because it was like two statistics that overlapped and I was like that's weird Why do these statistics keep overlapping?

So statistic one was a scott alexander piece on

culture bound mental illnesses, specifically what a culture bound mental illness is, is it something like, in the recent episode we did, on the phenomenon in Africa or East Asia called Koro, where people think their penises are being stolen by witches.

And they, like, really believe this and there's lots of others that we're going to go over. But in the United States, one of the particularly best studied cases of a likely culturally bound illness, which will go over evidence that is culturally bound is anorexia. And when Scott Alexander was trying to judge because he said, yeah, but everything is like partly biological and partly culture bound.

So he and his piece was trying to judge how much is this, right? And he goes, well, I suspect that anorexia is [00:02:00] about 80% Culture bound and 20 percent biological. That checks out. I'm gonna be like, yeah, that, that checks out. Then at the end of the piece, he's like, now a lot of people reading this piece are probably thinking about gender dysphoria and the transgender phenomenon in the United States.

Is this a culture bound phenomenon? And his estimate, and I will note, Scott Alexander is a very, very, Pro trans person. Okay. And, but he also has like an incredible amount of integrity to be willing to say this because in San Francisco saying what he said is like walking down the seats was like the sign from die hard with a vengeance.

Oh, no, you're right.

In this scene. I imagine Samuel Jackson's character to be Scott Alexander's trans friends,

Trying to get him to take the piece down after it was first published. As I imagine quite a few, probably did.

Speaker: dial 9 1 1. Tell the police to get up here quick. Somebody's about to get killed.

Now you got about 10 seconds before those guys see you.

When they do, they will kill [00:03:00] you. You understand? You are about to have a very bad day.

Speaker 2: Tell me about it.

Speaker: Fellas! Fellas! Nature boy here hates

Malcolm Collins: This guy wrote a piece, arguing being trend is in large part of social phenomenon.

Speaker: Now, what are we going to do about that? Oh, s**t!

Back! Back up! Back the f**k up! Now!

Malcolm Collins: Like, I'm pretty sure he lives with transgender people, like, in the comments under the thing, I, like, I don't have any confirmation of this, if he's dated transgender people before, like, this is not, he's against transgenderism, he's just laying out the facts as he sees them, he says it seemed to be about the same as anorexia, about 80 percent cultural and about 20 percent biological, which, It's exactly what I'd agree with.

I actually might, I might put it above Scott Alexander here. I might say at 30 percent biological 70 percent cultural. When I look at things like endocrine [00:04:00] disruptors and the tide studies and stuff like that which you can read about in our other trans videos, but there is like evidence that males due to chemicals they're being exposed to, at least males, at least are, they really are turning the frogs gay.

Speaker 4: I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin frogs gay! Do you understand that? Turn the friggin frogs gay! Boo! Boo! Serious crap! Gay! Frogs! Friggin frogs! Boo! It's not funny! I'm gonna say it real slow for you.

Malcolm Collins: They really are showing less gender presentation as males due to biological reasons. But then I saw a separate statistic that linked these two things, which was really high rates of autism. And we'll go over this sounds like Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm noticing something here. So estimates of autism prevalence in anorexia populations range from 20 to 30%.

A study at the National Specialist Eating Disorders Service at Maudsley Hospital found that [00:05:00] 35 percent of women met the criteria for an autism spectrum disorder. We also know that autism and ADHD commonly co occur in a recent meta analysis that range from 63 studies between 40 and 70 percent with bulimia.

This was Rong et al. 2021. And then anorexia nervosa carries the highest mortality rate of any health disorder at a 10 to 20 Suicide or death risk from this is bernstein 2023 and martin et al 2015 All right So what I'm pointing out when I point out like the suicide risk here This is to say that even if transness is a culturally locked phenomenon That doesn't mean that these people are not experiencing something that is loud enough to get them to kill themselves and simone is a like sane logical person who you guys apparently like hearing her opinions She almost died of anorexia and she also happens to be autistic.

So, do you want to Do you want to talk to that at all before we go further here? [00:06:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. When you're saying this, hearing it and you, you putting the pieces together, this does make a lot of intuitive sense. And I think it comes down to autistic people committing to the bit. And, and having, when they have a special interest, they just actually go all the way.

They just actually do it. Other people dabble. Autistic people go all the way, you know, there are train enthusiastic and then there are autistic train enthusiasts and you know, you know, like those are the ones are the train conventions. Those are the ones going to the train pilgrimage sites. And then, you know, you have people with eating disorders.

It takes a lot of discipline, like an inhuman level, you know, beyond the level of proper intuition or. You know, the human body has a lot of ways of resisting starvation, right? Like, it's pretty good at controlling for that. So I think you need something else super out