The Lamb’s Binary Fate: A Neurodivergent Reflection on Imposed Identity, Gender, and Consent

As a middle-aged bloke living in Perth, Western Australia, one who was diagnosed with ADHD aged 48, I have found myself going back over my life a lot over the past three years. Reflections I have described to a small number of folk as being like standing in a house with a never-ending hallway, which is lined with a never-ending number of doors.

Since my diagnosis, I am pleased to reflect on how I have sometimes uncomfortably and confrontationally opened just about all of these doorways. Sometimes poking my head inside for a quick period of reminiscing, other times a quick exit or a rushed escape from an uncomfortable memory that I have not been ready to deal with at the time.

Prior to my ADHD diagnosis and subsequent therapy sessions, that I have today come to really enjoy, I recall how I used to struggle to reflect, let alone talk to anyone, least of all a therapist or in my case a psychiatrist at all.

These days I can see that I have always processed the world a bit differently. More patterns, fewer unspoken social rules.

For years I carried a quiet, ongoing question about my own gender: does the “male” label I received at birth actually match how I feel inside? It was not a constant storm. It is more like a background hum that flares up in quiet moments. A younger version of me would catch themselves thinking, “Why do people care so much about fitting into boy/girl boxes when my own world often feels like a muddle?” Even to me as a child, it was obvious that some folk lived at the far end, others everywhere else in between. I even sometimes wondered if my attractions, which on occasions were not aligned with what mates joked about in high school, were just part of the same wiring that makes small talk exhausting and routines impossible.

One memory from my teenage years keeps pulling me back. I had a summer job on a mulesing team out in the Wheatbelt. Gruelling days in the dust, shearing sheds smelling of lanolin, sweat and piss and shit soaked wool. In a sheep’s life, before shearing, there is an essential practise where skin folds around lambs’ groins to stop flystrike are removed, then drenched, tagged. The animals are also sexed and separated during this process. I remember the first time I came across an intersex lamb: swollen, ambiguous bits that did not neatly slot into boy or girl. The farmer glanced over, muttered something about freemartin odds, and made the call without hesitation.

Functional? Keep it for the flock. Extreme ambiguity or sterility obvious? A quick, humane end. Boy/girl, live or die.

I stood there, knife in hand, feeling this weird mix of intrigue and unease. It was so final, so pragmatic. No debate, no long-term therapy, just nature’s blunt efficiency. Death ends it all anyway, so why waste resources on something that will not thrive? That black-and-white moment stuck.

Years later, in a comparative moment which ironically was in the birthing suite with my son, I found myself rapidly unpacking his and my own identity questions. It was there that the mulesing memory first resurfaced (some 20 years later): humans do not do blunt. We layer on complications, deciding for infants before they can even babble.

Holding my newborn son by his tiny little hand while the midwife and some spontaneously arrived doctor checked him over, everything felt so vulnerable and immediate. “He’s unmistakably a boy” was the doctor’s declaration about my son.

But here was a human baby, full of potential futures, and suddenly all the ways society imposes labels, norms, or even physical changes on tiny bodies hit differently. It was a stark contrast: the farmer’s quick pragmatism versus our human tendency to intervene early, often without full consent or understanding of long-term outcomes. That moment cracked open another door in my endless hallway, forcing me to confront how those early decisions on bodies, gender, or identity can echo through a lifetime.

Intersex Infants: Rushing to “Normalise”

Babies with differences of sex development (DSD/intersex) come along in about 1 in 1,500 to 2,000 births for clearer cases. Back in the day, the fix was early surgery to make genitals look “normal”: assign boy or girl, cut to match, sometimes with parents or a priest weighing in on what “God intended”. Many grown folks now talk about the fallout: numb sensation, infertility scares, endless check-ups, and a deep mismatch between assigned body and inner self. Advocacy groups like interACT push hard these days: delay non-essential ops until the person can say yes or no. What felt like compassionate “help” at the time looks more like overreach now, another tragic mistake in the books.

Neurodivergence and the Layers of Gender and Orientation

For me, neurodivergence colours all this. I do not feel the same pull toward gender performance that others seem to. In school, when mates obsessed over “being a man” or chasing girls in a certain way, I would nod along but internally file it under “social script I do not get”. My attractions? They did not always line up with the expected hetero narrative either. There were moments, crushes on unexpected people, or just not feeling the spark everyone raved about, where I would think, “Is this me being wired differently, or am I missing something?”

Research backs the pattern. Autistic and neurodivergent folks are three to seven times more likely to identify as gender-diverse (up to 7 to 20 percent in some samples), and three to eight times more likely to be non-heterosexual (15 to 35 percent diverse orientations, including bi, ace, queer). We often care less about fitting norms, less social pressure, more literal thinking, so identities emerge freer, but also slower or more confusing.

I recall one quiet Tuesday roughly two years ago, I’d joined an online ADHD support group call, which was in Zoom. It was there scrolling through chat history, I came across stories from other neurodivergent people: one describing gender as “meh, idgaf” rather than a strong pull; another saying their autism made them question why society insists on boxes at all. It hit home. My own gender correctness feels analytical: I observe the “male” role, test it against how I move through the world, and find gaps. Same with orientation. It is not rebellion; it is just not auto-pilot. That freedom brings richness but also isolation when the world expects quick labels.

These overlaps feed into dysphoria risks, higher self-harm stats, and the rise of movements like Pride, Neurodiversity Celebration Week (March), ADHD week (October), IDAHOBIT (May), Intersex Awareness Day (October), Transgender Day of Visibility (March), and Transgender Day of Remembrance (November) etc - these are all occassions saying, “Let us define ourselves.”

Routine Circumcision: A Declining Western Norm

Closer to home, routine infant male circumcision was once huge in Australia, 80 percent plus mid-20th century. Now it is down to about 18 to 20 percent of newborns. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians does not back it routinely; risks outweigh tiny benefits in our hygiene era. It was just “what we do”, parents deciding on a baby’s body for tradition or perceived cleanliness. Some men later feel short-changed on sensation or autonomy. Another case of assuming we know best, then rethinking it.

The Extreme: FGM/C as Control

Then there is female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C): over 230 million affected globally, persisting in cultural pockets to control women’s sexuality and “purity”. Decided on girls too young to speak, often by men enforcing norms. Barbaric harm, no health upside, condemned worldwide but not gone. Another imposed fate.

The Spectrum and the Ethical Thread

Lamb’s quick call to intersex surgeries, rigid gender/orientation boxes, circumcision, FGM. Adults deciding for non-consenting kids to squash ambiguity or enforce control. Nature is blunt; humans complicate with cuts and labels that can scar.

Death comes for us all. Why force paths that risk regret or trauma? Why not leave room for unfolding?

That mulesing memory is not just a farm story anymore. It is a mirror. As a neurodivergent person who has spent years humming over my gender and attractions, it reminds me: restraint can be kindness. Let people discover themselves. Consent matters. Bodies and identities are not for premature fixing.

History judges harshly when we do not. Let’s do better.

What about you? Any moments where imposed norms clashed with your inner world? Drop thoughts below.

#ADHD #Autism #AuDHD #LateDiagnosed #Neurodivergent #BodilyAutonomy #GenderDiversity #SpectralBinary

L