> Anybody who struggles to instinctively navigate social norms and behaviors will also struggle to instinctively navigate gendered norms and behaviors, simply because the two are inextricable.

But if masculine and feminine gender roles are equally difficult to navigate, that doesn't explain why transitioning would help. You'd just be swapping out one difficult gender role with another.

They may be "equally difficult to navigate" in a grand scheme of things, but they're probably not equally difficult for a particular person. Everyone got their own set of traits and interests that may make adhering to a particular gender role easier than the others.

So that would imply that non autistic people may also feel like their brains don't match their bodies, but since they're better at navigating gender roles, they're more likely to just adapt around the dysphoria instead of transitioning?

I think this is exactly right.

Maybe a neurotypical boy who is born with predominantly feminine traits gets them overridden by social learning, but without that mechanism they would persist.

> But if masculine and feminine gender roles are equally difficult to navigate

Suicide rates are much higher among males. So maybe this assumption does not hold.

Suicide rates are higher for men, attempted suicide rates are higher for women. Men just tend to use more successful methods in their attempts.

Even within a given category of method of suicide, men are more successful. If you look at countries where gun suicides are pretty much nonexistent, men still "successfully" complete suicide at a rate approximately 10x that of women.

That should be taken as a sign that "suicide attempt" numbers shouldn't be taken at face value as evidence that women have it harder than men.

That pretty much describes my relationship with gender.

I was undiagnosed as a kid, gender was confusing, different standards were confusing. I just didn't care, among other reasons, I decided to transition.

Very happy, but still have an idea of how I would navigate things different... but that's life, right?