Because my autism wasn’t typical of the autism most boys had. I was very good at communicating with adults and obsessively hid any behavior that people might find weird. The clinicians didn’t see how poorly I got along with my peers, which is where my autism manifested most prominently. To them I just came across as a shy kid, while at school I was often despondent and prone to crying fits.

I got sent to social programs for kids with autism when I was young, and I always felt so out of place. The kids were almost exclusively boys, and the vast majority of them didn’t mask as much as I did. I would often feel second hand embarrassment from the way they behaved, as it felt like a reflection of how I might look if I wasn’t diligent enough in trying to appear normal. It only made me even more obsessed with normalcy, and burned shame into my very soul.

From my anecdotal experience, transfems are under diagnosed for autism in a similar way to cis girls. It isn’t just that the cultural expectations of femininity allows girls more leeway to avoid socializing, girls really do express it differently.