Can the term "Aspergers" generally be applied for

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Reading the threads "list of female AS traits" and "Being compared to male Aspies" I wonder if there shouldn't be another term for women who match the milder spectrum of autism. As "Aspergers" is the result of research on boys and there is this difference in man and women's way to behave and - in this case - compensate, diagnosticians should be familiar with the most common traits of female autists and it should probably get another name. It's a difference to other disorders, because here the differences between genders do have an influence. In Schizophrenia for instance I guess a symptom as hearing voices from outside of your head happens in both genders equally and I guess this applies to other disorders, too.
But in autism, girls and women don't get the help they actually need - and is it simply to be able to understand what you are dealing with - because the diagnosis-manuals list the traits of male persons only.

What is your opinion about this?
Is a new term necessary?
But maybe it won't matter after all when the new manual will only talk about the broader autism spectrum.
Still they shouldn't ignore the female compensating strategies any longer.

English is not my native tongue. If I write mistakes it's because of that.

I wouldn't think it would need a new term, asperger's is asperger's- Once you know one aspie, you know one aspie, so if you take it from that perspective, you'd have to give it a different name for everyone. There are several similarities between males and females, and several differences.. But there can be significant differences between one male or another, and same with females. This is why it's a spectrum disorder, and the spectrum is a broad one.

Thank you for your answer.
You are right, autism is a spectrum and the traits can differ from person to person.
The only thing is, that women have it in general harder to get diagnosed - if it is the case at all - whereas it can be very helpful for them as well.
Anyway diagnosticians should be more familiar with the more female traits as they are listed in the female AS list.

I am not convinced that the traits required for diagnosis are actually present to a lesser extent in females with AS than in males. I think that often there is a bias towards explaining them by other diagnoses and causes e.g. mood disorders, psychological and environmental factors, "normal for a girl" etc. Of course I could be completely wrong, but maybe it warrants further investigation...

I don't think a different label should be applied at all. Females do not have milder traits than their male counterparts. There is a bias against diagnosing us, but that doesn't mean we have different traits or any more mild of traits.

Every person has a different case, that doesn't mean that everyone should have a different name for their disability. Females do not necessarily meet the female aspie traits and males don't necessarily not meet them. Some traits that people strongly associate with females on the spectrum I don't meet despite being a female on the spectrum, while there are female traits that males I know on the spectrum meet.

I don't think it would help get females diagnosed at all to apply a different name to them. I think it'd be more likely that we'd get less understanding and less help rather than more. Already I have to face people not understanding that me having Asperger's means I'm autistic (and trying to deny it), if I had a label that was even less known it'd require even more explanation and even more people arguing that no I'm not autistic I'm only "socially awkward".

[quote=]"Tuttle"I don't think it would help get females diagnosed at all to apply a different name to them. I think it'd be more likely that we'd get less understanding and less help rather than more. Already I have to face people not understanding that me having Asperger's means I'm autistic (and trying to deny it), if I had a label that was even less known it'd require even more explanation and even more people arguing that no I'm not autistic I'm only "socially awkward".[/quote]

This is definately a point that I didn't consider well enough. I also experience that people don't understand "Aspergers" and think it's a disease you can be cured from. Also the fact that I put a lot of effort into "acting in social situations" makes people think I am shy and simply nervous instead of being autistic. But I feel very lost in social situations and it's very exhausting, because it's a lot of work for my brains to analyse constantly and still not "getting to a point".

I also agree with what LittleBlackCat is writing, I just do not know how to put more quotations but one. The traits are not present lesser but can express in a way which can be "misleading" if a diagnostician is less familiar with Aspergers in general and with the fact that women can have it too but maybe express it somewhat different.

Now I see that even one quotation didn't work properly. Guess I did some mistake somewhere.

There is plenty of reasonable disagreement here, but from my own experience, I wish they would give it a name, at least as a variation.

I didn't know there were any differences so I thought I didn't have it, since in some ways I don't fit the male criteria very well. But as I was looking around for what the heck I *am*, I saw the list on here about women's traits and then I knew. If there was a separate category for it, more doctors as well as more women would notice that there is a difference and consider it as a possibility .

Since then I've read a lot of the threads here and am becoming more and more convinced that this is it for me. When I had been just looking at a list of maybe 6 main traits, I didn't pick up on all the details, and maybe a lot of busy doctors don't either, especially non-specialists.

I'm inclined to agree fairly strongly with tentoedsloth, here, on the last two paragraphs of her post.

If I hadn't found this forum and its resources, I'd probably still be poo-pooing the idea that I could even remotely come close to being autistic, in any way. Lots of the 'symptoms' that are usually listed in the most visible places don't necessarily apply to me, so I'd be inclined to rule it out without further thought.

However, the more in-depth and detailed lists of both genderless and female-specific charts REALLY changed my tune. I had absolutely no idea that my life was so heavily affected by my as-yet-undiagnosed AS. This speaks more to the fact that information about the autism spectrum is really lacking in mainstream information than anything else! Gah.