Are autistic people more likely to be LGBTQ+?

What the gender research found

The largest study on this used five independently recruited cross-sectional datasets, together covering 641,860 people who reported their gender, their neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses, and their scores on measures of autistic traits, empathy, systemising, and sensory sensitivity (Warrier et al., 2020).

Transgender and gender-diverse participants had higher rates of autism diagnosis than cisgender participants. Compared with cisgender men, the odds ratio was 4.21, and 3.88 after accounting for age and educational attainment. In one of the constituent datasets it reached 5.5. Autism showed the highest odds ratio of any diagnosis examined, above depression and schizophrenia.

The pattern held beyond diagnosis. Transgender and gender-diverse participants—autistic and non-autistic alike—scored higher on self-report measures of autistic traits, systemising, and sensory sensitivity. They also scored lower on a self-report empathy measure, which is worth treating with more caution than the rest: self-reported empathy in autistic populations is a contested measure for reasons covered in are autistic people empathetic?.

A related finding sits alongside the diagnosed rates. Transgender and gender-diverse participants were also more likely than cisgender men to suspect they had undiagnosed autism, with an odds ratio of 4.32. Self-suspicion isn’t diagnosis, and this doesn’t establish that the diagnosed figures undercount anything—it’s a separate self-report result reported in the same study.

What the sexual orientation research found

The gender studies don’t answer the orientation question, and a separate survey was built to.

Researchers administered an anonymised online survey to 2,386 adults aged 16 to 90, of whom 1,183 were autistic, asking about sexual activity, risk of sexually transmitted infections, and sexual orientation (Weir, Allison and Baron-Cohen, 2021).

Autistic respondents were less likely to report sexual activity or heterosexuality than non-autistic respondents, and more likely to self-report asexuality or an “other” sexuality. The sex-specific patterns diverged: autistic men were more likely to be bisexual than non-autistic men, while autistic women were more likely to be homosexual than non-autistic women. Comparing autistic men and women directly, autistic women reported more diverse orientations overall.

Two findings in the same study cut against common assumptions. There was no difference between autistic and non-autistic groups in the age at which sexual activity began, or in lifetime risk of sexually transmitted infections. The authors’ lay summary makes the point plainly: most autistic adults are interested in relationships and do engage in sexual activity.

The direction of measurement matters

These two studies are often quoted as if they were the same finding. They aren’t, and the difference changes what you can claim.

The gender study measured rates of autism among transgender and gender-diverse people. That’s gender-diverse cohort in, autism rate out. It supports the statement “gender-diverse people are more likely to be autistic.” Turning it around into “autistic people are more likely to be trans” is a different claim, and while the association is symmetrical in principle, the base rates and the sampling aren’t, so the odds ratios don’t transfer cleanly.

The orientation study runs the other way. Autistic cohort in, orientation out. That one does directly support “autistic people report a wider range of sexual orientations.”

Both are cross-sectional. Neither followed anyone over time, and neither can establish that one thing produced the other.

What these numbers don’t cover

Both studies are large by the standards of the field, and both have limits that shape what you can take from them.

They recruited volunteers. The datasets come from people who signed up for autism research or answered an online survey. That’s not a random sample of autistic people or of gender-diverse people, and the direction of any bias isn’t obvious—a survey about sexuality may over-recruit people for whom the topic is salient, while the same survey may under-recruit anyone uncomfortable answering.

They’re cross-sectional. Each is a snapshot. Nobody was followed over time, so nothing here describes how identity or diagnosis develops, and none of it can order the two.

They rely on self-report. Diagnoses were reported by participants rather than verified from records, and the trait measures are questionnaires. That’s standard for research at this scale, and it’s still a limitation.

They skew Western and anglophone. These samples are drawn largely from the UK and comparable settings, and both sexuality and gender are reported inside cultures that shape what people are able to say about either. Whether the association holds at the same strength elsewhere hasn’t been established.

Diagnosis is a proxy. Diagnosis rates measure who reached a clinician and received a diagnosis, which isn’t the same as who is autistic. That’s a general limitation of any study counting diagnoses, and it cuts in directions this data can’t resolve.

None of that undoes the finding. It’s been replicated across independent datasets, which is the thing that matters most. It does mean the precise multipliers should be held loosely.

Why the association exists is unsettled

Several explanations are on the table, and the evidence doesn’t currently pick between them.

Less deference to social expectation. One hypothesis holds that autistic people are, on average, less governed by implicit social convention. If that were so, and if some proportion of people in any population would report a non-heterosexual orientation or a gender other than their assigned one absent social pressure, a group less responsive to that pressure would report it more often. Neither step is established here; it’s offered as a candidate explanation requiring no special mechanism.

Shared biology. Warrier and colleagues found elevated rates of several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses among gender-diverse participants, not autism alone, which some read as pointing to shared underlying factors. That reading is speculative and the study doesn’t test it.

Measurement and sampling. Both studies recruited volunteers online. People who join autism research and answer detailed questions about their sexuality are not a random slice of the population, and the authors are explicit about their designs’ limits.

The responsible position is that the association is robust and the mechanism is open.

What this doesn’t mean

Two conclusions get drawn from this research that it doesn’t support.

The first is that autistic people who are trans or queer are confused—that the autism explains the identity away. Nothing in these findings supports it. A correlation between two things says nothing about either being less real, and the study authors’ own recommendations run the opposite direction, calling for affirming language and better access to care for people who hold both identities.

The second is that being LGBTQ+ makes someone autistic, or the reverse. Cross-sectional data cannot establish that, and no one has shown it.

What the research does support is more mundane and more useful: if you’re autistic and queer, or gender-diverse and autistic, you’re part of a well-documented overlap rather than an anomaly—and the clinicians and services you deal with have a research literature telling them to expect you.