Transgender School Shooter Was High-Functioning Autist

A link to my piece on mass shooters and personality dysfunction

From a trans protest March 27, 2023, in Oklahoma City, OK.

From the Daily Beast:

The suspect accused of storming a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday morning, killing three kids and three adults, has been identified as a “quiet” 28-year-old former art student who once attended the church-based school.

A source close to the Hale family told The Daily Beast on Monday night that [Audrey] Hale was autistic but high-functioning.

“And relatively recently announced she was transgender, identifying as he/him,” the source said, asking to remain unnamed so as to avoid additional family strife.

A search of Hale’s home turned up “maps drawn of the school, in detail, so, surveillance, entry points, et cetera,” Drake said, as well as a “manifesto” and “some writings that pertain to this date, the actual incident... of how this was all going to take place.” Inside a Honda Fit that Hale drove and parked at the school campus Friday morning, cops found “additional material written by Hale,” police said in a tweet.

It was only a matter of time.

Mass Shooters, Drugs, and Personality Disorders

Elevated rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses, and autistic traits in transgender and gender-diverse individuals

It is unclear whether transgender and gender-diverse individuals have elevated rates of autism diagnosis or traits related to autism compared to cisgender individuals in large non-clinic-based cohorts. To investigate this, we use five independently recruited cross-sectional datasets consisting of 641,860 individuals who completed information on gender, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses including autism, and measures of traits related to autism (self-report measures of autistic traits, empathy, systemizing, and sensory sensitivity). Compared to cisgender individuals, transgender and gender-diverse individuals have, on average, higher rates of autism, other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses. For both autistic and non-autistic individuals, transgender and gender-diverse individuals score, on average, higher on self-report measures of autistic traits, systemizing, and sensory sensitivity, and, on average, lower on self-report measures of empathy. The results may have clinical implications for improving access to mental health care and tailoring adequate support for transgender and gender-diverse individuals.

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Gender Dysphoria/Incongruence. A systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

The suggested overlap between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and gender dysphoria/incongruence (GD/GI) has been much disputed. This review showed a relationship between ASD traits and GD feelings in the general population and a high prevalence of GD/GI in ASD. Our meta-analyses revealed that the pooled estimate of the prevalence of ASD diagnoses in GD/GI people was 11% (p < .001)¹ and the overall effect size of the difference in ASD traits between GD/GI and control people was significant (g = 0.67, p < .001). Heterogeneity was high in both meta-analyses. We demonstrated that the chances that there is not a link between ASD and GD/GI are negligible, yet the size of it needs further investigation.

Lobaczewski writes the following in reference to schizoidia:

They tend to assume extreme, moralizing positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situations and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others. (Political Ponerology, p. 106)

On a small social scale, such people … easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals … (pp. 107-108)

1. The prevalence in the general population is estimated to be 1 to 2%.