People keep asking me when the political climate is going to settle down.
As if my existence is a weather pattern. As if what they’re describing as a political debate is not, for me and people like me, just… Tuesday. As if being at the intersection of multiple identities that other people argue about—out there in public, in offices, in courts, in legislatures—is something you can take a break from.
You can’t take a break from being who you are.
This is the part of intersectionality that gets lost in the theoretical version. In the academic version, intersectionality is a framework developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how multiple systems of oppression overlap and compound. In the lived version, intersectionality is having to calculate—in real time, in every space—which parts of yourself are safe to show, which parts will get you ignored, dismissed, targeted, or harmed, and which version of yourself you can afford to be in this specific room on this specific day.
For people who are queer and neurodivergent—and specifically autistic—there is a particular texture to this calculation. Because there’s a real, documented, researched correlation between autism and gender diversity. Studies have consistently found that autistic people are significantly more likely to identify as LGBTQIA+. The reasons for this are not fully settled in the literature, but some of what researchers and autistic people themselves have identified is this: when you’re less subject to social conformity pressure from the start—when your brain processes the world differently and you’ve always been a little outside the script—you may be more likely to notice that the script around gender and sexuality was also just a script. Written by people. For particular purposes. That you never actually agreed to.
So here I am. Autistic. Nonbinary. At the intersection of two identities that, in 2026, people are actively legislating against, actively trying to eliminate from public life, actively arguing are either not real or are a “trend” or are somehow a danger to the children they claim to be protecting.
And I’m supposed to keep explaining myself patiently?
The exhaustion of having to justify your existence
There’s a thing that happens when you live at an intersection of marginalized identities. Every community you belong to has some members who still make you feel like you’re too much. Queer spaces that aren’t fully welcoming of neurodivergent people. Autism communities that still center the neurotypical gaze. Disability spaces that have work to do on gender inclusion.
And then outside all those communities is a larger world that doesn’t know what to do with people who won’t fit into one simple box.
The autistic community, to its credit, has done a lot of growing around gender diversity in recent years. There’s more understanding—particularly among actually autistic advocates—that gender nonconformity and autism often travel together, that this isn’t a coincidence, and that autistic people deserve support and affirmation for all of who they are. Not just the parts that are easier to explain.
But we’re still fighting the same fights. We’re still in courtrooms, still in school board meetings. We’re still watching politicians use the bodies and identities of trans kids as culture war currency, and we’re still watching that hurt real children in real ways while the debate rages.
The thing about being “too political”
If you’ve ever shared something about trans rights, or LGBTQIA+ advocacy, or autism acceptance versus awareness on social media, you know the comment. “Why do you have to bring politics into this?” Or its cousin: “I liked this page until it got political.”
Here is the thing about that.
There is nothing political about me existing. Nothing political about being autistic. There is nothing political about being nonbinary or trans or queer. What is political is the decision—made by people with power—to argue about whether those existences are acceptable. That’s where the politics entered. Not from us.
When someone says “you’re too political,” what they usually mean is: your identity makes me uncomfortable and I’d prefer you kept it out of sight. But I can’t keep it out of sight. It’s me. It’s not a viewpoint I can turn off and turn back on. It is the thing I am.
And the communities, the platforms, the spaces that claim to be about advocacy but want the comfortable, digestible version of advocacy—without the parts that might upset the moderate? Those spaces are not as safe as they think they are. Safety that’s conditional on you staying small is not safety. It’s a cage with better lighting.
What living at the intersection actually requires
It requires a particular kind of stubbornness. Not the angry kind—although anger is entirely valid and I would never ask you to let go of it before you’re ready. The quiet kind. The kind where you just keep being yourself despite the volume of everything that tells you you shouldn’t.
It requires community. Real community—not just an aesthetic, not a flag in a bio, but actual people who know your name and hold your story and don’t need you to justify the combination of who you are. This is harder to find than it sounds, and when you find it, you hold onto it.
It requires grace toward yourself when you get weak. When you don’t have the energy to educate the person in the comments. When you can’t go to the rally or sign the petition or stay current on every policy development because you’re already at capacity just living your life. Advocacy is not all-or-nothing. Showing up when you can and resting when you can’t is still showing up.
And it requires—I’m going to say this even though it’s uncomfortable—it requires being willing to look at the ways even marginalized communities replicate the harm they know. The way some queer spaces have been unwelcoming to neurodivergent people. Same way some disability spaces have been unwelcoming to trans people. The way some autism spaces still center parents over autistic people. None of us are exempt from this work.
The version of yourself you get to be
The headline of this piece includes the phrase “done with explaining yourself.” I want to be clear about what I mean, because it’s not “done caring” and it’s not “done fighting” so there isn’t any confusion.
It’s done shrinking. Done offering a gentler, softer, more digestible version of your identity to make it easier for people who were never that invested in understanding you anyway. Done presenting your pain as a philosophical position for debate, and done asking permission to exist as the particular, specific, irreducible person you are.
You are queer and that is not a trend. You are autistic and that is not a diagnosis that cancels out your humanity, and you are at an intersection that makes some people uncomfortable, and that discomfort belongs to them, not to you.
The version of yourself you get to be is the whole one. Even when it’s hard. Especially then.
We’re here. We’ve always been here. And we’re not going anywhere.
