Any women here meet all classic Hans Aspie?

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the pattern included " a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements." Asperger called children with AS "little professors" because of their ability to talk about their favorite subject in great detail. It is commonly said that the paper was based on only four boys.

If you are a woman what is your obsessive interest?

I was more of a classic-style Hans Aspie when I was a kid. I am somewhat more diversified as an adult. As a kid my main interests were doll making and doll collecting and singing...but I was an info sponge...I HAD to be because I was too sensory-overwhelmed and too busy being bullied to learn anything in class...I was academically way ahead of my peers and socially way way behind.


As an adult, my interests are mostly doll making, doll collecting and singing.


As a kid though..I was much more of an info-collector..I toted reference and other books around with me everywhere I went...All of my interractions with people as a child were very "little professor" style...

Even though I am not particularly intelligent...never had much of a college education..etc...it is one of the reasons I concidered that I might possibly be an aspie.

Thx, there's an article which is posted in another area that speculates asperger's might be very different in females (is then still asperger's??! !)

In many ways, it is speculated that women do present differently...but is still considered Asperger's...I don't very much resemble my male aspie peers, even though I do fit the criteria....more or less.

I was a 'little professor' on dogs. I knew about every breed of dog. I had dog pictures plastered up all over my wall. I taped every bit of footage of a dog on tape.

Now my knowledge is on cameras/photography, Ben 10, and my favourite music groups. I do read about mental illness but don't know everything about it.

I read the encyclopedia in elementary school, and you could not shut me up. My passion was the encyclopedia, and that was my single focus perseveration. How many metric tonnes of potash was produced by Poland in 1956? I could tell you, along with the prior and subsequent year and how the percentage changed. What type of woolly aphids do the larvae of the Harvester butterfly eat? I could bore you with it for hours!

and songs, any lyrics of songs on AM radio (I thought no one could hear the words but me!) commercial jingles, radio station call signs, announcers lead in to TV shows, I had it all flowing into my ears, wrapping around in my head and erupting from my mouth. (and with a good strong voice with almost perfect pitch)

I rocked the 'little professor' trait!

Merle

My special interests are imaginary friends and fantasy worlds, both my own and other autistic peoples'. I also like anime/manga an awful lot.

When I first started seeing articles describing Asperger's syndrome eight or so years ago, they described the original Hans Asperger "typical male presentation", and always to a quite advanced degree. While I immediately felt a kinship and recognised striking similarities, I always left with the overall feeling that I don't have the "real thing". I did know of people who fit the definition perfectly, further removing from consideration that this might be the explanation for my differentness. Furthermore, I had "shadow" RainMan-type abilities - particularly remembering numbers and mental arithmetic - not to the extreme degree of being genuinely prodigious, but enough to work out from people's persistent curiosity that I was the only one they ever met that could do these things.

Only when I stumbled across articles describing autistic women did the frightening but ultmately very relieving realisation strike - now this is SO TOTALLY me! And a new special interest was hatched...

People familiar with autism generally received my pre-diagnostic speculation that I might have AS in pretty much the same manner they might have had I instead proposed a theory that the Pope might be Catholic, and for my formal assessment I wasn't exactly regarded as "on the bubble."

My obsession was first cats and related animals for most of my childhood.

Then in my mid teens it was death and mutilation.

I used to do really complicated maths problems really fast in my head, then show off to everyone about how fast I could do it....

I can remember all my childhood, so will outline traits in relation to your list.

I had limited empathy, but was compassionate and concerned with social justice. I couldn't exchange emotional gestures, particularly with family. I've never expressed love to a family member (and couldn't, even if I were to become capable of feeling it). I couldn't/cannot express concern for them, even if I feel it, and I rarely feel what they might be experiencing.

I had little ability to form friendships and would passively accept anyone's advances. I had no emotional bond to the people I knew. It's only quite recently I've felt capable of it. It's painful, but also pleasant.

I rarely conversed, but did like to concentrate on only my side when I did. Being very quiet disguises this trait; it encouraged others to take advantage of me, offloading all their problems, and I'd have no idea how to get them to stop.

The majority of my free time would be spent alone and absorbed in interests for hours, even though I had siblings.

I wasn't clumsy, but always felt very awkward walking and don't have a good posture. My other motor skills seem fine.

I wasn't a "raging aspie" until my teens. In childhood, I fit the commonly described female presentation very well and relate to that better than the original descriptions. For instance, I was more a "little philosopher" in childhood, and became the full-blown "little professor" in my teens.



In adulthood, the most pronounced ones (some beginning in my teens) have been:

Star Trek
Physics
Psychology
Genealogy
Autism

I won't list the offshoots and short-term obsessions.

[quote="outlier
"raging aspie" .[/quote]

haha I like that.

Anway I don't think I was the "little professor" type, I was just called rude or a "know-it-all" I still am now haha. I also have always liked reading dictionarys or books with statistics in them, beats any novel.
My longest lasting special interests have been:
Dreams
mythical creatures, especially mermaids
the internet

then you will LOVE the 'book of lists' I spent most of 1978 immersed in the whole series.
http://www.amazon.com/s.html/ref=pd_lpo ... ex=blended

Merle

I've never really reached an encyclopedic knowledge of anything, even though I have set out many times to gain one. I think I'm too ADD to get far! I have so many interests that I can't do them all justice. What I am still fascinated by and know a lot about are old movies, and modern voice acting. There's still a lot I don't know about both, but I have to consider it my obsession since I could talk endlessly about nuances of comedic performance or about who voice acted in what cartoons (Did you know that the girl who played Barbie in all those kid movies also does the voice of Sango in the English dub Inuyasha? How could that NOT be interesting? To me, anyhow) or just what I like so much about Jimmy Stewart in a particular movie. I have been known to watch a movie to death and then drop it for years (but I can now play it in my head anytime I want). Also music... I have no talent for it, and no illusions either, but I adore it. I'm selective and when I like a piece, I want to learn all the words if it has any, and to know it well enough to play it in my head at will. If I get a song stuck in my head, I need to be able to replace it if it bothers me (I once got the song "I Can't Get it Out of My Head" by E.L.O. stuck in my head for 3 days. I like E.L.O. but I was ready for it to stop. It was like some sick cosmic joke. Amusing trivia).

But yeah, I fit a lot of that stuff. I was always a bit on the boyish side, whether due to my five brothers I dunno. I think I tend to get odd reactions for this, you know how people get when you fail to perform to expectations. Assumptions are drawn without evidence.

I am a little professor about art history, Greek mythology, Japanese culture, and Japanese literature, as well as 19th century Russian literature.

My obsessions these days:

Mutants or neo-humans. For some reason I am hugely fixated with the idea of someone enhanced to be a perfect warrior. It dominates most of the stuff I write.

Mustelids and canids. Don't ever start a conversation about wolverines with me, unless you want to be bored to insanity by details about their morphology and behaviour.

my childhood interests were astronomy and dogs.. nowadays it turned into linguistics and ambient music