| Research has shown that an increasing number of autistic individuals also identify as being
gender-diverse. As a dually marginalized population, these individuals likely experience
stressors and stigma related to their identity that can lead to negative outcomes such as lower
quality of life (QoL). Additionally, the relationship between minority stress and QoL may be
further influenced by protective and risk factors such as parental acceptance and level of autistic
characteristics, respectively. The proposed study addresses the paucity of literature regarding
outcomes for gender-diverse, autistic individuals. It was hypothesized that gender-diverse
autistic individuals would have lower physical, psychological, social, and environmental QoL
when compared separately with neurotypical, autistic, and gender-diverse individuals.
Additionally, gender-diverse autistic individuals were expected have lower autism-specific QoL
than the comparison autistic sample. It was also expected that greater levels of autistic
characteristics would significantly predict lower levels of autism-specific QoL. Lastly, it was
hypothesized that participants' combined rating of their parents'/caregivers' acceptance of gender
diversity would be positively predictive of QoL, with disagreement between caregivers
decreasing the strength of this relationship. For the current sample, the group of gender-diverse
autistic individuals had lower physical and psychological QoL than the neurotypical group.
Similarly, this group had lower physical and environmental QoL than the autism group. Notably,
the gender-diverse autistic group had lower QoL in all areas, including lower physical,
psychological, social, and environmental QoL than the gender-diverse group. These findings
were consistent with the hypotheses. However, the gender-diverse autistic group had higher social QoL than both the neurotypical and autism groups. Regarding the hypothesis examining
autistic characteristics, it was revealed that participants’ level of autistic characteristics
significantly predicted lower reported autism-specific QoL. In examining the relationship
between the combined ratings of caregivers’ perceived parental acceptance, perceived parental
acceptance did significantly and positively predict autism-specific QoL; however, disagreement
between caregivers did not significantly influence this relationship. Overall, these findings
provide much needed information on the patterns of QoL for gender-diverse autistic individuals
as well as factors that influence their QoL.
Keywords: autism, gender diversity, quality of life, parental acceptance |