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Many children who are diagnosed as transgender may actually be autistic, whose “fixation” with the opposite gender may be as fleeting as a toddler’s obsession with trains or trucks, according to a new theory that is already drawing ire.

Doctors working in gender disorder clinics are seeing a higher-than-expected number of children with autism, while recent studies have found young people with autism were nearly eight times more likely to exhibit “gender variance” — the wish to be the opposite sex — than normally developing children.

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Now, a prominent but controversial Canadian psychologist claims autistic traits of “fixating” on issues could convince children they are the wrong sex.

In a new BBC documentary, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, hastily dismissed two years ago from his 30-year directorship of the gender-identity clinic at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said children identifying as transgender often display autistic tendencies.