Thoughts on Rudy Simone?

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bump for more thoughts on Rudy Simone's work. I'm reading her book now (for the second time; it didn't make much of an impression the first time).

I don't think highly of the information provided by Rudy Simone regarding autism.
She presents many common traits found in many non-autistic people as signs of autism.
Her list of female asperger traits is useless, in my opinion, as most of the listed traits have nothing to do with core traits of autism.
Any support of self-diagnosis based on the list and its description of "autism" in females is unwarranted, in my opinion.

I know this thread is an older one but I found out recently that Rudy Simone decided to no longer identity as aspie.

http://www.rudysimone.net/blog/?p=75

For some reason I found this quite disappointing. It seems tossed out like a used suit.

I would like to know if she was formally diagnosed.

Well, if she honestly believes that autism is ONLY a "gut issue," and her gut problems and most of her autistic traits and problems are gone, then it seems like a well-reasoned decision to no longer identify that way.

On the other hand, I can't tell from that page how she views herself. Her decision to stop identifying as Aspie may only pertain to public identification. That seems particularly likely given that she mentioned the desire to dissociate herself from self-identified Aspies who don't meet ASD criteria.

I wonder what's up with the "big tit anime school" link at the top-left of that page. Hacking?

This is just going to make it harder yet again for us that think Aspergers is real or ASD is actually underdiagnosed in middle age adults and adult women or that ASD is a lifetime condition to argue our case. Now people that disagree with us have a weapon to verbally hammer us with over and over again. This will only increased the skepticism towered every newbie that are wondering or think they have an ASD particularly Aspergers.

I do not know if she was self diagnosed, but just the fact the question was asked shows there are consequences when public figures that identify as Aspie then retract it.

I'm confused.
Was Rudy Simone diagnosed?
Or self-diagnosed/identified?
It's ironic that she says that she doesn't like people claiming to be on the spectrum but not having hallmarks of autism.
Her activities contributed to that, I think, people who don't have core traits of autism coming to believe that they have autism from her list of female asperger traits.
I am generally tired of autistic people, diagnosed or self-diagnosed, blabbing about themselves in public.

As of 2011 No
Girls on the Spectrum: Q&A with the Author of Aspergirls

Sorry for double posting . WP time limited me before I could complete my thoughts.

I do not know or care that much if she is an Aspie now in denial or never was one. I won't question her motives. My main concern is the damage done from public figures proclaiming they are autistic then retracting it in some way. We will disagree on whether most of the damage is done due people falsely believing they are "Aspergirls" based on her books or actual "Aspergirls" finding out after lifetime of invalidation now given a reason for doubt or others given another reason to invalidate them.

Rudy Simone has lost all credibility in my mind, but there was little to begin with, so it doesn't matter.
I hope others don't buy into her aspergirls crap from her self-diagnosis era that has now ended.
But why is she now criticizing others for claiming to be on the spectrum and building little whatevers she said around themselves?
Isn't that the same thing she did?
I am so tired of these types of people in the autism community.
A person with no autism diagnosis but being so vocal about autism and gaining attention for themselves while misrepresenting autism, this is really bad behavior in my view.
I am really tired of self-diagnosis too.

I'm disappointed to hear that Rudy Simone now backtracks on her own possible autism.

One point in favor of her book "Aspergirls" is that -- as ASPartOfMe points out -- Simone did compile the book largely of direct quotes from formally diagnosed women and girls whom she interviewed.

One may not like her writing style or some of her assertions, and it's also unfortunate about the mystery surrounding her own true status diagnosis-wise.

But the fact that the book is so full of real and diagnosed women's accounts of things they experience which differ from the male experience of the spectrum, has to count for something at least. Focus on those interviews and quotes rather on what Simone says outside of them.

When I read THOSE WOMEN'S quotes I was having "ding ding" bells going off for myself. That's all I needed to know, during my read of this, and if I got that much out of Simone's book, then at least that was something. Later that year I pursued my own diagnosis at last and it was confirmed I'm on the spectrum.

I think it's always valuable to be exposed to real (diagnosed) people's experiences if one is only on the discovery phase of possible pursuit of diagnosis.

Me too btbnnyr.

The idea that she made a site, books and blogs trying to come off as a professional is just not right. It's pretty clear she has no idea what she is talking about, but she is pretending she is. She is lying. I dislike her the more I find out about her, and I didn't really like what she was saying to begin with. Not to mention she's a huge hypocrite.

I am female and getting diagnosis, but I really do hate this whole "autism in girls" thing she fueled. People just can't take the fact more males have autism than females and think there's sexism. I think it probably does present maybe slightly differently in girls, but the idea that people suggest it's "less severe" and girls can "mask" is better seems to me like any "quirky" girl should be diagnosed with autism just to meet the 1:1 ratio.

What happens to the girls already diagnosed with autism? Because they clearly do meet the criteria, they clearly have the same impairments as males. Why should it be different for girls if it has the same name? Why should they change it so more girls can have autism? Because the girls newly diagnosed, under what she was trying to do before people realized her flaws and she gave up, would clearly be much more high functioning than the girls with high functioning autism. So what, do they change those to moderate autism instead? Then those with moderate to severe? Those with severe... what do they get changed to? It should be left how it is

She's just an example of why you shouldn't believe everything on the internet. Just makes me angry the damage she's caused pretending to be professional It's a reason I am hugely skeptical about those self-diagnosed. They are fed BS and their self-diagnosis can be based off of that.

iliketrees --

please do not take what I'm about to say as a defence of Rudy Simone, as I'm not very happy about her either.

But even Tony Attwood, a far more credible "expert" than Simone, confirms that there are differences in the way in which some girls and women can present and mask.

For a formal diagnosis in the affirmative, naturally it is mandatory that their traits and symptoms should still fit the official diagnostic criteria, the same ones applied to the diagnosis of boys.

And clearly women do meet the criteria otherwise there would be no diagnosed women at all. But there can still be presentation differences.

Just because a dodgy, non credible person got behind that doesn't mean she created that idea. She didn't. It's real and it's out there. It's no more a creation of Simone's than when a pop singer sings a new version of another person's song. She's not the one who postulated the theory, she just wrote a book that expanded upon it (or exploited it) so don't put down the idea that it presents differently in girls just because one woman you don't like got behind that notion.

As for the self diagnosed, well I'm not one of those, I was diagnosed eight months ago.

But because I am middle aged and from a generation that DID NOT have a diagnosis to get back then, inevitably I had to go through a stage that could be called self suspecting in order to even pursue my actual diagnosis.

I got diagnosed by a specialist eight months ago now. Just so you know I'm not another Simone-type female, OR "self diagnosed" based on bull s**t...

Yeah sorry I worded it wrong.

I know it does look different in girls. But it's when suggestions of girls not being diagnosed because they are "more mild" i.e. they are not autistic and are just quirky is when it pisses me off.

But that being said... what are the differences? Like, credible ones. Ones which don't cross into the BS region. Because I just can't stand reading up on it because of all the s**t out there written by either her or others like her.

Yeah I agree, the whole "mild" thing is another minefield actually, because not to stray from this topic but even men with ASD can point out that although they are deemed a "mild" case, there can still be moments of struggle when nothing about that difficulty seems "mild" at all. I relate strongly to that semantics problem.

For more about the differences in presentation in females, try some of Tony Attwood's Youtube clips; this one is a bit rough (a Skype interview) but he has informative things to say about women on the spectrum.

Beware Rudy Simone's name does come up as she submits a question to this radio show, but listen more to Attwood's thoughts on women on the spectrum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBOTkvM1mJw

I don't believe anyone is invested in changing things so that more people "can be on" the spectrum -- I truly don't think anyone wants that. It's not about changing anything so that it can now magically include "quirky girls". If that's anyone's objective then that's obviously execrable. But people like Tony Attwood are sensible about this and understand that there is a legitimate phenomenon in which girls can fall under the radar and yet be found to meet all the criteria.

Wow, she's had Asperger's speaking engagements. I wonder if the people who invited her to present on AS didn't know or didn't care that she's undiagnosed.

Also, this b.s. about people "having to" self-diagnose is getting old. I wish that people would take responsibility for their self-diagnoses and stop acting like barriers to diagnosis forced them to do it.

I think people didn't know. I sure didn't. And any mention to her actually says she is diagnosed with asperger's because she was on purposely vague as to what she meant by diagnosis. She was counting her self-diagnosis as a diagnosis. I think that's misleading and lying. And the fact she thinks she's cured it goes to show, at least to me, that her self-diagnosis was false.

That video wasn't really long enough for me to form any strong opinions but I have no negative ones for Dr. Tony so it's a good start. If I'm interested enough I will look up more. I'm just in the middle of a completely non-related video at the moment.