Autistic Disruptions, Trans Temporalities: A Narrative “Trap Door” in Time

The desire for transgender futures has grown exponentially in recent years, but many of these futures are traps, concealing a demand to assume normative and neoliberal priorities in exchange for citizenship and belonging. This article argues that some of these traps might be undone through autistic disruption. Dwelling with the life writing and memoir of individuals both autistic and trans, it suggests that, by choice or by circumstance, autistic-trans narratives defy the chrononormative mandate of the able-minded future. By claiming autism and gender nonconformity as mutually inclusive, foregrounding alternative sensorealities, and interrupting the incitement to get better, this article argues that cripping trans time through autistic disruption offers what Gossett, Stanley, and Burton call a “trap door”: a route of escape from the normate trans future and a way for autistic life to insist on its own continuation and survivance.