What is the difference between Men and Woman with AS

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-mxBDuRaZ8


^^^what I mean by a tomboy.

I do think it's a misleading assumption to say that more males have it than females, when the criteria for AS might simply be missing females as seems to be many people's experiences here...

One problem is that the focus on traits is often in areas more likely to be found in males rather than females. For instance, computing, maths and transport are all activities in which males are much more encouraged to participate than females. Females are being missed here because of what might be more accurately described as a gender bias in childhood development and rearing rather than any notable difference in AS traits. I wasn't permitted to take studies in computing because I couldn't do math despite there being boys in the class who weren't that much higher in mathematical ability. I was actively discouraged in my avid hobby of ship-spotting and instead encouraged to collect postcards and bookmarks(!) which I soon became bored of doing. If this gender pressure is commonplace, then females are being missed not so much because their AS traits are different, but because the diagnostic process is not accounting for any gender bias in childhood development.

On socialising, there have been studies that suggest that females learn social skills earlier than boys do, but it doesn't mean that girls are therefore naturally any more sociable in reality when all they're doing is acting out a well-rehearsed set of behaviours. Whilst I'm female, I'm not at all sociable (though was silent rather than disruptive at school as a child). I won't answer the door or phone, I am much happier not to have the obligation of 'friends'. I have far less in common with other females than I do males. But I'm quite presentable publicly. I don't think any of my aspieness shows at all! I'd definitely miss a chance diagnosis.

I agree withthe post above, I think its because most females with AS are extraordinary and very eccentric, so they never have problems making friends.

When people view AS, they think of a lonely male who only has one interest. This may be true with a lot of AS males, but with females it is basically the exact opposite. Female Aspies probaly jump up on other people for no reason, get right in your face, and be very eccentric. They are probably rarely diagnosed because they are females, and normal girls do those things too.

With me, one of my teacher's in High School who didn't like me in High School because I was late to class the 3rd day said "He is the most unhappy and unsociable kid he had ever meet in his 25 years of teaching at the parent conference."

Yeah, he was kinda a dick.

I agree with what others have posted about the fact that females are less likely to have been diagnosed.

However, if AS had been known about in the 1970's when I was at school I have no doubt that I would have been at the front of the queue for being referred for a diagnosis.

I was always really good at Maths, could read fluently before I went to school, & was not at all interested in girly stuff such as dolls - I much preferred train sets!

I always got on much better with adults than my peers, and often took an "adult perspective" on things rather than a child's one.

For example, as a 9-year-old at Primary school I had bought the "teachers' book" for Maths and remember coming home and saying "I like my new teacher this year, because he's teaching us exactly the way it says in the book!"

(And while "going along with" the class I was actually working on the book ahead of that in my free time at home!)

I am not into computers (but I think it's mainly because I don't like the fact that as soon as I learn all about something, it gets superseded by something completely different - I was pretty clued up about Windows 3.1 but that is of no use whatsoever to me now!)

I was into transport though, mainly buses - I was interested in routes & timetables & sat at the front of the school bus "bus-spotting" instead of socialising with the smokers - sorry, popular kids! - at the back.

But some of my interests were/are much more girly - old-fashioned school stories, shojo manga, & writing fiction. (I wonder how many female aspies you would find on the "Girls Own" boards?) So I am interested in people & what makes them do what they do - but in an academic sense rather than an emotional one.

My personnel officer in a previous job once expressed amazement about my result in a personality test where apparently I had scored very highly on "interest in people" but very low on "empathy"!

My answer at the time was that this was probably because I was a writer - but I now realise it was more likely to be AS........

i have been been trying to figure out what to say on this thread and have started to post many times and then stopped...
It may be that I don't even have AS, but if I do, this is the way I was as a girl...

Very creative with above average intelligence that I could not, for the life of me apply in school because being in school was such a stressful and traumatising experience. At school I was tortured by the other kids and the teachers hated me because they couldn't get me to follow directions....I was sorta detached from the rest of the class...I didn't really know what was going on around me alot of the time. All of the anger and the shuffling me around seemed sorta needless and confusing.
Once I discovered that I could exactly mimic the children singing on the record in music class, I became seriously fixated on singing...and my favorite thing to do was mimic the singers on musicals like Oklahoma (the first musical i memorised)..Annie was my second...(i have been in choirs and later singing in bands ever since)...(i have gotten turned around and seriously messed up some church pagents as a kid)
Once I discovered that I liked to read, that is all I would do every day for hours...in fact, to a certain extent, I became inactive and started gainijng weight because all I would do is hole myself up and read for hours and hours instead of playing with the other kids. I absorbed information like a sponge, so while I couldn't focus what was going on in class I could tell you everything about whatever I happened to be reading about at the time.
I DID (and do) read Fiction and nonfiction...When I read Fiction, I wanted all my fictional stories to be based around the same sorta subject, and I would go through phases. Non fiction...I would try to teach myself Spanish or French. I must have read every book about cats in the entire library...I was also addicted to bizarre factoids...so I read tons of "strange stories, amazing facts" type books. I loved the People's Almanac and the "Books of Lists"

I wanted to have friends, but I was socially oblivious...I would frequently impose myself upon others without realising I was doing anything wrong. I insulted people unwittingly...like the older siblings and parents of my friends...There was also something about the notion of "personal property" that I did not understand....I would give things away, and also take things that belonged to other kids...they usually didn't mind, but their parents did.
I was emotionally immature and gullible...so lots of things went over my head. This made me the frequent butt of jokes and weird pranks. Some of my friends kinda liked me because they saw me as someone they could boss around. My most egalitarian friendships were with kids who couldn't speak English.
Later on, despite DEPLORABLE grades I was placed in honors classes and did stuff like write for the school newspaper (it took me longer than anyone else to turn in my articles) and participate in "academic decathalon" events (where I often disrupted the protpcol and answered out of turn)

In my early teens I was still very childlike. I would be the oldest kid at the children's museum...which was a place I liked to go and hang out by myself...save for the teen vollunteers. I enjoyed the company of kids who were alot younger than me. Once I met this weird girl there who was actually my age and alot like me. We struck up this very brief but congenial friendship. Apparently she went to a special school. She told me it was because she was "dyslexic"..She also said I was the weirdest kid she had ever met.

One thing that sorta haunts me...is that there might have been whisperings about autism regarding me. Mybe it was from my grandfather who was worried I'd turn out like his brother...I have a hunch that someone might have said something to my mom about it. Alot of people did notice that I was akward and different as a child, but I never saw a doctor about it.
I remember my mom saying "You're not autistic, you're artistic"....Once, while riding in the back of the van on the way back from some embarrasing academic decthalon experience, I blurted out that when I was little, they said I was gonna be autistic, but I turned out ok. I remember saying it, but for the life of me, I can't remember why...this was in the mid 80's....I might have said it because I had a lifelong self-awareness of being "different"...but I don't know why the word "autism" kept coming up.

Sorry, I'm going off subject here but this reminds me of me except I do have kids. Only because I thought it was the "normal" thing to do and I didn't know I had AS then either. I always knew I was different but as a Mom I really knew I was different. Even as my kids were growing up and doing all of their socializing I never could relate to other Moms or talk or get close or any of that. Even now, people I work with comment that I never talk about my kids or anything personal, I'm just like "Yeah, I know, I just don't". They look at me weird so then I usually ask them what they want to know.

Close relationships or friendships just don't happen with me, I can't do it. It's like there's this invisible, protective barrier around me and hardly no one can get in. My kids are the only one's who have and even then I don't feel as close to them as I think I should.

My oldest 2 are grown and I still have a teenager but I often wonder how they are doing so well after having a Mom like me. I'm not Mom material but I'm glad I have them. The few relationships I've had with friends, my ex-husband included, have come and gone but they are still there. I'm sure they would have liked for me to have been more like Mom's you see in Peanut Butter commercials or something like that when they were younger but I couldn't and still can't be like that and they know that.

My mom is kinda like that, and i take alot after my mom. I really have AS symptoms on both side sof my family.

That is me to a T. I have only a couple of female friends, both of whom I've known for over twenty years (one I've known since Kindergarten), and though I care about them very much, I rarely see them or talk to them in person (my choice), and the older I get, the more I stay away. I'm able to enjoy their company, laugh, talk, etc., especially when I was younger, but I always feel uncomfortable, like I want to run away. It's hard to explain...

When I was a young girl, I had two or three very close relationships, but after about age twelve or so, I no longer was capable of maintaining a tight friendship. It's like I lost the ability to connect.

My thirteen-year-old middle daughter, who also has AS, is the same way. She is able to make friends -- for a while -- but grows bored with them or becomes angry at them for frivolous reasons. She prefers hanging out with adults, or listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana. She also loves staying after school and hanging out in the science room, but not for scholastic purposes, unfortunately -- she's in awe of her obviously on-the-spectrum science teacher, who she says resembles Billy Corgan. Well, he does have the bald head, at least.

I can relate, though, as I've always preferred the company of older men (not in a romantic way), and enjoy spending time with them.

I saved the original version of this article to my Times file when it came out, and also emailed the article to the Disability Services director at my university. He was the one to first suggest to me this past June that I might have AS, which I had never even heard of until then (I'm Dx'd ADHD w/o hyperactivity). So I went online and read a bunch of stuff, and based on that, concluded that though I do have a lot of AS traits, I can't be Aspie b/c I'm not a math person and I can handle small talk. Then I read that article. Things started to make more sense, and then when my new therapist suggested last week that I might have AS (w/o any prompting from me), the reality of it began to sink in.

I don't fit some of the "classic" Aspie traits--at least on the surface--because the diagnostic criteria seem to be based on masculinity as the norm. For example, I lived in NYC four years while pursuing acting/directing/improv comedy and working as a waiter/legal secretary--which are all pretty socially-intense. I worked my way through college as a hotel front desk clerk, worked for six months as a "greeter" in the S.F. BMW dealership, bartended here in Oregon, and [back in the day] have worked a lot in promotions (e.g. as a "Guinness Girl," "Sauza Girl," "Goldschlager Girl," "Lucky Strike Girl," etc.), where your job is essentially to flirt in packed bars for five hours straight (and get touched by drunk people a lot).

The jobs themselves weren't too hard, since it's easy to pretend to play nice for finite bursts of time. (It's the sustained relationships that are hard for me.) After any one of those promo shifts, I had to lock myself down in my apartment for at least 24 hours just to recuperate. As for NYC--eventually, I left because it was so stimulating (smells, sounds, visuals) that I thought I'd completely go nuts if I stayed (which is the sad irony of the place, because I could identify with more people there than anywhere else). Another example: a few months ago, I went on a first (and last) date that lasted five hours; we were out and about, and I felt the need to be "on" the whole time. Eventually I finally told the guy that I needed to get home, and when I got there, I just curled under a blanket on the sofa and sobbed for some inexplicable reason (this before I knew that AS existed).

The "lack of empathy" thing perplexes me, too, as I'd at least like to think I'm an empathetic person. I sometimes get teary when someone I care about is telling me something sad about them. I wasn't always like this, but it seems to be something I've grown into over time. Some would call me hyper-emotional, even. But then I go into the garden and can spend 8 hours digging up dandelions, or all night on the internet, or be unable to stop obsessively researching for a 4-page paper, or get so detail-oriented and OCD on a project that it never gets into a presentable form, that I wonder how it could be anything but AS.

For the record--no formal Dx at this point.

I wish this was true. Never happened in my case, never ever. I was always friends with either much older kids or much younger - & all male. The people in my age group were horrible, especially the girls! We moved from country to country & state to state too, it was like this all over. Other female posts I've read in here seem to back this up.



It's funny this, most info I've come across in my own research on AS say people with AS aren't dreamers, this article conflicts all of them, this is the first I've read otherwise. I know not everyone is going to fit all the AS 'rules', but I was always into fairy tales, imaginary games & especially horses/animals.




Female aspie here... first part fits me, last doesn't. I stand out like a sore thumb myself. Because I'm mostly quiet the first thing people do is think I hate them, quite the contrary usually. People fear what is different (at least in my experiences) it's easiest for them to jump to conclusions. I've re-met people through friends months or years later only to have them tell me I am completely different then what they assumed of me before...



I think the doctors still under-estimate a great deal of us ASers, making statements that we don't feel remorse because we don't show it. I read things like that & go back in memory to where family made similar mention, just because I don't show it does by no means mean I do not feel it! Course that is just me..

I have my issues with empathy. I am often confused by my own feelings on things. For example, I have trouble grieving at the proper times for lost loved ones...and then other times I will feel too much about trivial things. I have often felt more sadness at not being able to feel the right emotion at the right time than about the actual issue at hand..(which I guess is pretty self-centered)..or I will feel things in a weird backwards sorta way that i hardly understand. I am also not very good at experiencing real and logical anger...it translates in this mixed up round-about way.

It is often difficult for me to adequately express sympathy...
For example....an acquaintance comes up to me and says "Tonight I am back on the wagon because I just found out my brother died"......I say "Oh..ok"
I guess I was supposed to say "oh, I am so sorry to hear that...please have a beer on the house"

I can often be cold at times when i should be..um...the opposite....it is hard sometimes to want to be troubled with things that you don't feel anything about. Often I will not speak or display emotion about something outwardly, but I will carry it with me and mull it over and over for a long time...but I guess that doensn't do anyone any good.

I also have difficulty participating in "group think"
Once upon a time I was sorta in with this liberal/radical activist crowd...but I had such a difficult time bonding and feeling a part of their collective anger/drive to change society and wahtnot... I just couldn't feel it. I was too wrapped up inside myself to "catch" the wave....and I couldn't talk to anyone about it...that is just something that you can't seem to talk about with radical activist types....Ironicly, I attended a seminar as part of this sorta "activist camp" about neuro-diversity...where one of the leaders (assumably an Aspie) sternly lectured about the need for the "activist" community to reach out to people who have difficulty communicating because of the way they are mentally...It was the only part of the "activist camp" that i could really relate to..but of course..i wasn;t able to to talk to anyone about it.

I think that goes for men as well.

so..see? in that sense I am similar...I don't feel more empathy just 'cause I'm a girl...or something like that...(not that girls would necc..be expected to....or are they???)

p.s. sorry for the long ramply posts..I have entirely too much time on my hands...

I think AS is more common in men isn't it? I think that AS women might get judged by other women more harshly than AS men, but men have more trouble in the relationship dept.

Yes, there are some differences and I can relate to many of the descriptions in this thread. I was shy(still am) and I never acted out. I Wasn't interested in what girls talk about. I got kind of annoyed by my friend who would only talk about boys, and when I spent time with her all she seemed to care about was makeup and put it on me and do my hair, and try to make me wear uncomfortable clothes. I couldn't stand being around her and eventually for the most part I broke off contact with her. Unfortunately my parents are still friends with her family so every once in a while I'm forced to be around her again.

As a girl I was much more interested in my books, science stuff, and playing on the computer.

Totally. I can be the same way, even though when they say [thing to be sympathetic about], I think to myself, "wow, that sucks" or "she must be really happy about that." I always thought it was something ADD-related that made it hard to react appropriately--kind of like remembering names when you're introduced to someone new. I mean, if your mind is in 20 different places, then you might actually miss or overlook the gravity of what someone just said to you--even though (had you been fully present when the statement was made) you'd be able to sympathize.

Like this one time, I was talking with my cousin on the phone. She's French, and we speak French together, but for me it's a second language. So it takes extra focus to process what she's saying. Well she was talking about her life at college, and I was interjecting now and then with "uh huh....hm, okay," etc. Then all of the sudden, she became quiet, and it occurred to me that she was expecting a reaction from me. But although I [thought I was] listening, I didn't know what she expected a reaction to, so I was like, "wait, what did you just say?" And she was like, "my housemate just committed suicide." And I was like, "Oh. I'm so sorry--are you okay?"

So it's not that I'm not sympathetic, it's just that I'm not always paying full attention to what someone is saying, even if I think I am. HOWEVER, I still have had to train myself to SAY the appropriate response, even if I feel it. I literally have to pause and think, "this person just told me her brother died; what would I want someone to say to me if I were in her shoes?" When someone tells you someone else died, there's not much you can say other than, "I'm so sorry." (I learned that the hard way, by once inappropriately responding to my former lawyer-boss after he told me his mom died in an accident.)


Whoa there, Nelly! I don't think it's fair to generalize like that. Firstly (as has been pointed out earlier in the thread), just because more men are Dx'd with AS doesn't mean that more men HAVE it. As far as having "more" or "less" trouble with relationships, it's likely very challenging for men and women alike. (I don't think access to sex counts as "relationship success" (and even that varies hugely from person to person).) I'm 33 and have been single for years, but if you saw me, you probably wouldn't think that I'd have any problems "getting" guys. If other AS women are like me, then it's incredibly difficult for us to get/stay in a "relationship." I'd say more, but this is the general forum, not the adult one.