Difference in autism between male and female?

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Hi everybody,

I recently read an article about differences between male and female autists. For the first time I really feel comfertable with my diagnosis now, so I was wondering what you think.

Do you think there is a difference? What are your experiences? How is your social life?

Love,

Nathalie

Since all the articles Ive read on female autism says that theres differences, I believe them. As for personal experiance where ive seen differences, not nessarily. I've known 5 male aspies and 1 female aspie in both RL and online. They've been pretty relatable on most aspects where ive seen a certain traits that I have in someone. Even some problems where I thought would be more "female" Ive seen in males, such as:

Obession with being social
Depression
Talking about my problems to people I dont know well
Anxiety problems( this 1 is the only 1 I havent seen in other aspie males, or any1 ive known)

My social life is fine mainly cause Ive worked to get up to this point. But there are still times and enviorenments where I still feel very withdrawn from people. Like I dont know how to make small talk in certain enviorenments. I come across as very normal for the most part.

Start by thinking of the general personality differences between males & females in general. Females aspies/auties I've known tend to be more emotional than males and have more noticeable sensory issues. Unfortunately, the autistic males I've known and still know are at least twice as tactless socially/dating wise than the females.

I don't see why a lot of people tend to view this as suprising (not to say that the original poster does). There are differences between non autistic males and females, so it only makes sense that there would be differences between male and females on the autistic spectrum.

Yes, I think women do have to adapt to their environment more. It is more acceptable for people who are male to, for example, speak in what I view as the default tone of voice (monotone). I was noticing this during the Oscars when James Franco, who is not to my knowledge autistic, and Anne Hathaway were talking. Any intonation that is not monotone conveys some sort of information, either formally encoded into the language (like tones in Chinese language) or expressive of the speaker's emotional state in a language like English (e.g. "Yeah!" from an enthusiastic person vs. "yeah..." from a person who is bored or weirded-out by something). My point being: if Anne Hathaway were to talk in as much of a monotone as James Franco does - which is not even that much of one - she would be regarded as sounding "weird."

Yeah, the daycare professions thing seems right to me - little kids can't tell who's socially "off" or not so I have no fear of working with them personally!

So the steriotype of females in general is that were more caring and empathetic? So thats true for autistic females too? Cause that certainly is not the case for me. Even when someone is more obviously in pain to the point were an aspie can easily recognize it, that caring, empathy really doesnt kick in.

Examples:
1) My roommate fell of the bed in the middle of the night, it woke me up, I didnt see it all I heard was a crash and she sounded like she was hurt, I was confused, I asked her if she was ok and thats it. And she said yes, I went back to sleep. An caring person would have instinctively got up, and came to her aid.

2) My friend hit his head, he was on his bed in pain, I just asked what happen, he said he hit his head, and I was just like, "ohh", and continued what I was doing. A caring person would have instictively made sure he was ok.

It only came to me later that I was dumb,uncaring and insensative of me and that I should have came to there aid.

Are you also having trouble emathizing with someone during a conversation? When someone tells you about his/her worries for example?

I'm very much the stereotypical emotionally-immature female Aspie-
if y'all have checked out the list of female-specific traits (I think it was stickied...no clue)
all but three apply to me.

I read somewhere that a very common characteristic for Autistic girls is an intense love and empathy for animals,
and that definitely describes me.

I'm a bleeding-heart animal lover.