When I finally found a specialist to assess me for ASD in adulthood, however, I was pegged very quickly. All of a sudden, the horrible tantrums that lasted well into my teens, the obsession with order (coupled with a lack of basic organizational skills), my lack of social success both in friendship and romance, my academic giftedness, and the sensory sensitivities and physical clumsiness I’d dealt with all my life, coalesced around a single explanation. At some point, I’d seen at least one doctor for each of these issues in my childhood, but never did anyone suggest that they might all be related.

So when I read about those young boys in Fox’s article series, left out of social events and milestones for reasons they don’t understand, capable of achieving high test scores and academic success while simultaneously being unable to turn in assignments or show up for class on time, and looking at the girls like some mystical and unattainable alien species speaking a whole different language and engaging in a whole different culture from their own, I saw myself in them. Not just myself, in fact, but also my closest friends, all of them male and similarly academically gifted, and many of them now identifying as some brand of trans.

Here’s the thing about ASD: One of its hallmark symptoms is discomfort in one’s own body, and with the physical world more generally. Especially in this day and age of self-diagnosis, and the sea of misleading “autism” memes on social media, it’s hard to realize that there’s more to the condition than social anxiety. In fact, I’d argue if you’re hyper-aware of your own social ineptness, especially in childhood, you probably aren’t on the spectrum. The issue here is social obliviousness, not social anxiety. Sure, the anxiety often comes along later, when you finally realize you’re doing something wrong, but it’s not the source of the problem.