Ayman Eckford is many things – a human rights activist, a writer, a Ukrainian refugee to name a few. Ayman is also trans* and has ADHD. In this personal piece, Ayman shares their take on the intersection between trans* and ADHD experiences, and how we can all do better to support trans* and ADHD kids to live life as their authentic selves.

Note: Ayman has chosen to use an asterisk after the word “trans” throughout this article, which denotes a number of identities within the gender identity spectrum.

There is a lot of commonality between being a trans* person and being an ADHDer. For example, most of the books about your condition are written by people who have never experienced it.

At the same time, there are a lot of people like you in the modern day media, even some celebrities are trans* or ADHDers, but despite that, if you are young, it may feel like you are the only one in the universe. Maybe you don’t even know who you are. Or if you do, you may feel doomed because the world is trying to change you.

Being trans and neurodivergent

At least this is how it was for me, when I had no idea what the world “trans” meant but was a three-year-old transgender child who was considered to be a girl but knew that they were anything but a girl. I was also a kid who was “naughty,” a kid who was always rushing and fussing around. I spent almost all my time in kindergarten running around, unable to concentrate or speak with my peers. I couldn’t sit still in my school lessons. I didn’t want any attention, I didn’t want to be different and be bullied, but I couldn’t help it. I just stood up and began to walk around the class during lessons, knowing how angry my parents would be, knowing how other kids would make jokes about me – maybe even kick me – because of it. But I just couldn’t help it. My parents didn’t know that I’m an ADHDer and Autistic, or, more likely, they were too scared to find out. My parents also didn’t know that I’m trans, bullying me for any attempts to use a male pronoun. They would abuse me even more if they knew.

For them, I was sinful, lazy, and broken, and I believed that I was, until I realised that it’s the world that is broken because of its ignorance, not me. This realisation helped me to create the first pro-neurodiversity group in Ukraine and Russia, and become one of the first people to speak and write about trans* neurodivergent experiences in Eastern Europe. I was trying to be the person I needed when I was younger.

Society lets trans* and ADHD kids down. Even some modern Americans and British journalists that accept the LGBT+ community and behave respectfully toward neurodivergent adults, are trying to silence trans* and neurodivergent teenagers, and justify all those “well-meaning,” conservative parents who broke their queer and neurodivergent children.

It is interesting that despite the hardship of living with a double stigma, there are a lot of openly trans* ADHDer activists both in the disability rights space and in the LGBT+ community. Some studies show that there are more trans* people among ADHDers than among the general population, but the reason is still unknown. Maybe we are just used to being different. Maybe, despite everything, it is not so scary to recognise one more “atypical” trait when you’ve already considered it to be weird. Maybe there is a real correlation.

Transgender and neurodiversity acceptance

And I think that the neurodiversity paradigm could help a lot in trans* acceptance. Neurodiversity paradigm is basically an idea that there is no one right way that the human brain should work, and that neurological diversity is as normal as different ethnicities and sexual orientations.

Let me make it clear: I am not considering ADHD and autism to be a disorder. I would hate the idea of research with a goal to prevent people like me from being born, or prevent another child from thinking the way I’m thinking. But at the same time, for me, ADHD is a disability, not only because society disables me but also because I need dopamine medication to better deal with everyday tasks. Of course, in a world where everyone is ADHDer, non-ADHDers would also need some additional support.

The same with being trans. I feel like I need hormone therapy and surgery to be me. In many ways, being trans has a lot in common with being disabled, especially if you have gender dysphoria. Trans* people often need additional medical support, but this doesn’t mean that trans* people are “sick” (which is why I support the de-pathologization of “transgenderism”).

Being trans* is also not about being politically left, progressive, or sex-positive. It is not about being part of any dominant queer subculture. Just like ADHD and autism, is not something that you could be “groomed into” or something that determines your views on economy, religion, and politics. When I was a libertarian right and conservative Christian teen, it didn’t automatically make me cis and neurotypical. It just made me a trans* teen for whom it was more difficult to figure out their identity.

One of the biggest mistakes that the media is making is trying to made trans* existence and trans* rights, especially trans* youth rights look like a part of an ideology. This is why I believe we can all learn a lot from the social model of disability and pro-neurodiversity movement that could really help trans* activists, and LGBT+ movements in general.

You can support Ayman by following @ayman_eckford on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).

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