Hmm, I have an article about asperger's in women and girls but would have to locate it first. In the meantime, this is one that I wrote last year:
Pink Is Not My Favourite Colour.
The above heading does not mean that I hate pink but it is an attempt to explain why women and Girls with Autistic Spectrum conditions do not always fit into societal norms and expectations of how females should behave.
Firstly, like most others with autism, we have what is called a “male” brain. That means we are good at systematising, at organising information into categories, and thinking logically. Our ability to empathise (which is a highly prized trait for females in Western society) is often impaired.
Unless I know a great deal about a person and their individual circumstances, I find it hard to imagine how they are feeling and how to help them if they are upset. Words can be so inadequate sometimes.
It is often assumed that we don’t care about others, that we are self-centred and even rude. I care a lot about other people but have trouble expressing it, especially through the spoken word and by gestures.
I seem to understand more about other people’s body language than what I can transmit to them by my own body language. This causes endless misunderstandings and a certain degree of frustration, which sometimes overflows into emotional outbursts. From what I have read about autism, this kind of scenario is very common.
From what I can see, women and girls are continually indoctrinated into how they should behave in order to fit societal stereotypes. I fully realise that there is a whole different, and often just as unreasonable, set of expectations put upon men and boys. In this article, I’ll just talk about the females for now.
Females in our society are frequently expected to put themselves and their needs last if in a family situation, to be continually fussing about their appearance (heaven forfend that they might be a couple of kilos overweight or that they might have a bikini line or some cellulite on their hips and buttocks), to be smart but not too smart in case they intimidate males, and the list just goes on and on.
I find this kind of thing quite perplexing as the idea we’re sold is that by dieting, being “nice” and smiling all the time and by minimising our abilities, we will become better and more popular people. I care enough about my presentation to have regular baths and wear clean clothes but that is about it. It doesn’t matter to me if I’m a little bit chubby, don’t own a lot of shoes and clothes and don’t wear make-up. I’m not going to pretend I’m stupid just so someone else can think they are smarter than I am.
Unfortunately, I’m often torn between wanting to be liked and wanting to be true to myself. I’m not good at telling lies, even when it would be to my social advantage to do it. I tend to not always suffer fools gladly but at the same time, will do all I can to help people as much as I possibly can. There is a lot of social isolation associated with having autism and while it is nice to have my own company sometimes, it can be lonely and boring at other times.
From meeting and communicating on line and through reading about them, I’ve found that females with autism often place a higher priority upon things such as learning, discussing politics and science, collecting things, working with computers than worrying about make-up and clothes. This means we are often seen as “strange” and don’t fit in with our peers.
I used to get very upset (and still do some of the time) about being different but I now realise the price of being popular is to turn my back upon who I really am. That price is simply too steep to pay and I Now realise that I have been paying this price for far too long. This is also an issue for males with Autistic conditions. It ends up being an individual decision as to how much we can afford to sacrifice in order to “fit in” with the rest of society.
I didn’t like boys when I was in school (apart from a few who used to make me laugh by being the class clown or who were kind and gentle) but now I much prefer to have male friends. There tends to be less of the competition and cattiness thing that you often get when you have females together. The type of woman I would be a friend with is one who is real and honest but not to the point of being rude and who won’t play mind games with me. I’ve been lucky to have some friends such as this
throughout my life.
However, because of societal stereotypes about who I should be friends with, I can’t count the times I’ve been told “you should just concentrate on being friends with women and forget about being friends with men”. This annoys me but I guess they just don’t understand how differently we are wired up in our brains to what they are.
Oh, and just to finish off, I have lots of favourite colours but my all-time favourite is maroon.
_________________
Break out you Western girls,
Someday soon you're gonna rule the world.
Break out you Western girls,
Hold your heads up high.
"Western Girls" - Dragon
05 Aug 2007, 9:27 am
