Question about detecting women on the spectrum

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See its commonly said that women on the spectrum are underdiagnosed because they're able to camoflauge their autism. It seems that a lot of women on the spectrum dont socially/emotionally clique with other women. Wouldnt that cause us to stand out, if we appear to be very cold and not making emotional connections?

Unless the female completely adapts a chameleon persona which she is completely putting on an act and perhaps limits her contact in order to carefully manage her perceived outside identity. Or the female taken under the wing of a "mother hen" type of women.

I dont know about how other females on the spectrum got diagnosed. But in my senior yr of HS, the school counselor saw me acting very rudely. The first thing, she thought was Aspergers...shrugs. But I was previously selectively mute for almost 10 yrs and I had no friends. As for now 4-5 yrs later, after increased awareness and with 90% of my social skills have been self-taught. Almost no one would think I was Aspergers unless I told them.

In many instances, however, the women actually present no differently than the men.
Or the girls no differently than the boys. What obscured their diagnosis is societal bias. This is the same bias that makes people say "that guy just cut me off" when a driver cuts them off and they can't determine the sex of the individual, and the same bias that used to make people assume doctors were men and nurses were women, lawyers were men and secretaries were women.

My non stop talking and inability to read social cues is always a dead give away for me!

So you disagree about all the numerous claims about women insisting that autism is presented differently in females on the whole? I dont personally know? I only know one other female on the spectrum, and shes an online friend. I've never known any other females in RL on the spectrum. I've known about 4 males in RL on the spectrum, total of 5 counting online. You dont agree with people such as Tony Attwood and Rudy Simone who are creating the concept of a female autism. I do agree that a lot of the autism signs that are presented are perceived differently depended on gender.

I think some traits aren't recognised by others as they focus on the wrong things. Take my daughter as an example. Most people see her as a tomboy as she likes boy toys and stands with a group of boys in the playground. They fail to recognise that she's obsessed with certain toys and putting them inches from the boys' faces, because all they can see is that it's the 'wrong' sort of toy for a 5yr old girl. They are more likely to notice the 'ungirliness', which overshadows everything else. More significantly, they don't even spot that she's being picked on. They see her with a group and think she obviously has friends. I'm not saying that all AS girls are tomboys, but it's the case with my daughter.

One of her actual friends is the little boy next door with probable AS (total coincidence, but helpful to have an understanding mum just over the fence). They are the same but opposite too - it's hard to explain, but his mum thinks the same thing. I don't think that's related to gender, it's just the way the AS is expressing itself in two very different individuals. Then yesterday, I overheard a conversation between two mums (they were sitting close to me in the leisure centre as I waited for my daughter). One was talking about her little boy with a possible ASD. He sounded identical to my daughter and I could see him playing in the same way she does too and getting reprimanded for the same sort of bad behaviour.

I really don't know what people think of me. It's easier to put others under the microscope than to examine myself.

I am going to assume you were addressing me and answer this: I don't know if I agree or disagree about the claims about how autism is presented in females. I haven't met many female Aspies. The only ones I know are myself and my daughter. I have met 2 more female aspies at my support group, and they are as different as night and day. One of them is older, unkempt, and a motor mouth. She has to be constantly asked to be quiet and let others speak. The other was older too, and had very grim visage. She was also very focused and intense. It is hard for me to lump people into a behavior category since I may not be perceiving them the way others do.

I'm sure I've probably met other women Aspies, but I can only confirm one. I got to observe her on a regular basis for 6 years. She was an older co-worker. Why do I suspect Aspergers? Well, she's quirky, makes lots of little odd noises, has some unusual sayings, very outspoken to the point that she doesn't care or notice when her POV is hurtful to others, likes comfy clothes over fashion, prefers being alone, loves to read. She also always claimed to be shy, even though she's very outspoken which is a trait I share with her (sometimes I just cannot keep my mouth shut even if my life depended on it). Plus I also worked with her son who is also probably an Aspie (had his own quirks: anxiety, brilliant with numbers & design, somewhat distant, always tense). His youngest son was DXd with autism, & his mom claims one of his older sons has Aspergers too. Not sure if she recognizes herself as being a possible Aspie. Obviously, this is something that runs in this family.

The old saying is true...if you've met one person with Aspergers, you've met one person. Since it's a spectrum disorder, symptoms/quirks are going to vary widely between individuals. I also think that life experiences have a profound affect on our symptoms too.

come to think of it, i really haven't ever personally known a girl or woman to have the traits other than myself. it runs in my father's side of the family, with a cousin (suspected cousins), both young men. i don't get out much, though, so that might skew the results of this survey.

I'm not sure I believe in the existence of aspie women (or humans in general) capable of putting off such perfect act as to mask the whole personality and "pass" as NT.

I've never met any openly aspie females but out of the ones I've made friendships with, there are at least two that I'd strongly suspect of being somewhere on the spectrum. I can usually sense the ones that are more logical than emotional as I try to avoid the latter ones (a lifetime of getting hurt has taught me so) and I assume that it being such a rare trait in females, must have at least some correlation with the introverted/spectrum-y end of the scale.



you sound a lot like me. I'm sure that if more people knew what the "aspie" traits were, I'd be so easily and immediately identifiable...

Oh no! I was not replying to you, I was replying to Chronos.



I keep taking this concept of chameleon TOO literally. Whenever Attwood refers to that, Id like him to elaborate this more. I went to an event yesturday and I was very careful to follow social ettiquete rules to the book. I was very fearful of saying/doing the wrong thing. I dressed up, looked pleasant, allowed people to make small talk with me. I was very limited in my personal self-expression, people thought I was just very shy. No one would have suspected aspie. Perhaps thats what Attwood meant by chameleon?

Thanks for clarifying!

What I think he means by chameleon (and I might be wrong) is what I used to do in the workplace. I would somehow start to imitate whomever I was talking to, and usually it was perceived as flattering. I had a boss who was very petite and elegant looking, and I would unconsciously imitate her way of sitting, gesturing and holding her hands in repose. When I interacted with other co-workers, my outward way of acting was a hybrid of my boss and myself. After I stopped working at that particular place, I stopped acting like her.

My parents and teachers didn't pick it up at all... it was only when my younger brother was diagnosed and they read a bunch of different symptoms and so on that the penny dropped for my family.

This is the way I feel for me personally. My symptoms are very typical autism symptoms (that which you could find in any autistic male of the same severity level). I do believe the reason I was not diagnosed until the age of 27 is because I am female and there was a bias (especially when I was a kid and earlier) to not diagnose many females with autism.

I'm a chameleon. I automatically adopt the mannerisms and speaking styles of the people I know, and it has helped me seem NT at work. I also tend to behave completely differently with different people. (This, of course, leads to problems and is one of the reasons why I don't function well in groups.)

These chameleon personas are very effective with men, but not with women: they usually perceive me as a threat and lash out or shun me. When I was a teenager I was extremely withdrawn, and often fell in with semi-predatory "mother hen" type girls, but not anymore. I feel like I've outgrown women, and I really don't want anything to do with them, unless they are very un-girly and easygoing.

I can't maintain the chameleon thing convincingly for very long, it's just for necessary, superficial interaction like dealing with bosses/co-workers/neighbours etc. I avoid getting into real conversation with people because it really seems to turn them off, and I worry about what negative conclusions they might draw about me. It never occurs to anybody that I'm on the autistic spectrum.

I read something about the differences between the brains of AS males and females- from what I remember, it is thought that actually it's the females who have more differences/unusual brain biology/genetic mutations than males. If you compare a similarly functioning male and female with AS, the female will actually have more of these genetic mutations and therefore brain differences than the male, and if the male had the exact same mutations that the female had then they would be considerably lower functioning.
So it could be that women on the spectrum are more difficult to detect because they have a wider range of milder problems? Not sure about this?

So we're you diagnosed with something else. It seems that if you did have the typical autistic symptoms then they would have at least thought there was something wrong. Maybe you were misdiagnosed with a mood/personality disorder?



Semi-predatory? How? Where they manipulating your naivety? I was wondering because recently fell to this "mother hen" type of person, who was treating me as her charity case and making herself look good by helping me. I unfriended her once I figured out what she was doing. Would I say she was slightly predatory, no.



That must be tough. I kinda wish I had that ability but Im working at the supermarket right now which is teaching me how to create an acquaintance mask. Im good at having deep subject based conversations with people but I have trouble interacting with multiple people in glimpses of superficial small talk.