autism - extreme male brain

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do you agree with borat's cousin that autism is an extreme form of the male brain?

I don't have a male brain. It's very female in fact. Male is typically very Left-brain - math and science. I'm very right-brain and complete opposite to that.

I don't know. I have a male brain. But that doesn't mean everyone does. I don't think thats what ASD really is.

As a woman on the spectrum who has many of the characteristics on the list of female Asperger's syndrome traits (http://help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58d4f6 ... 83e339.JPG), I disagree with this assessment. It is just that, as with many other issues related to physical, emotional and mental health, the definition of the condition was originally written based on male subjects. This happens in many other areas as well--for instance, heart attack symptoms in women differ than those for men yet for years the medical world did not acknowledge this and provide women with a list of symptoms that related to our bodies (http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-pra ... 77.article)

I've always felt more male than female. So much so, that I've changed the gender on my profile last Spring.

From personal experience as a female Aspie, yes. I happen to look very female but behave very much like a typical Aspie male.

Lot of people seem to think I am a lesbian when they first meet me because of this but I think a more appropriate description would be a gay man in a woman's body.

to clarify, by male and female. s b-c means:

male brain vs. female brain
logical vs. emotional
better with systems, tools, machines, math/physics vs. better with people, body language, empathy
can't handle unpredictable situations well vs. can handle unpredictability well

so, take the male traits, amplify them, and you get autism.

with caveats of course:
this is not to say all male/females are like that. there are plenty of exceptions, but this is the overall average even when you mix in outliers.

My psychologist tells me, that my way of thinking and focussing is very male, but to myself I cannot really fix a "gender" as I look female, but I am very skinny though, but I cannot feel "feminity" in the way I see it with other females (eg I do not wear jewelry, because I do not feel anything about it or "fancy" haircuts or "hanging out" with females and doing this thing called "gossip"). Age 15 there was a girl who "bounded" somehow to me and kept telling about a guy she was bounded to and I had zero empathy and stayed in my mind with my special interest, which were airliners at that moment (->still get a fuzzy feeling writing the word "airliners". The new A380...). I just visualized the models I had and her talking about this guy was a disruption for me.
I guess I have some male brain-traits more than non-autistic women.

No.

I'm terrible with the body language and social cues, completely inept in fact, so these things don't apply black and white across the board that way.

I hate that he decided to call it "male brain". Males are not more autistic than females to begin with; and autistic traits are not usually male traits. The only aspect of autism that could be called "male" is the tendency to have highly localized brain functions and to think in concrete and detailed terms; and that is not so different from male to female as it is from NT of any gender to autistic of any gender.

There is more to being "male", and more to the "male brain", than that systematizing tendency. To call it so globally an "extreme male brain" is highly misleading. It feeds into lots of fallacies--the idea that autistic people must be good at math; the idea that autistic people are incapable of empathy. It tangles up stereotypes about men--which are already annoying enough for men to deal with--with the stereotypes about autism, and makes both worse. It may mislead professionals, especially those with little specific autism training, into the belief that girls with autism are "masculinized" and that boys with autism are "more male" than their NT peers. Autism is not related to gender nearly that much; in fact, it seems from what I've seen on WP that autistic people are not as likely to follow traditional gender roles as NTs are.

And on top of that--autistic males and autistic females work somewhat differently, too, just like NT males and NT females are a little different. Add to that the hormonal and social differences, and you have gender-related autism issues that should be addressed without obfuscating them with "male brain" assumptions.

The idea that autistic brains work differently, that we are more likely to be detail-oriented, focused on concrete ideas, and skilled in narrow areas, makes sense, and is an idea worth investigation to see whether it reflects reality. But calling it "extreme male brain" makes no sense at all, whether the autistic in question is male or female.

No.
I'm not
Don't believe in the stereotype either

I'm creative, a visual thinker, have poor spatial skills, can organise and be driven, need routine, analyse everything, love science and facts but can't do maths to save myself. Also can't read music. To confuse matters more I can be unempathetic and overempathetic.

I'm both left-brained and right-brained and so don't believe one sex is dominant in either. It's just some society stereotype.

I object!



Well, that would mean that it is impossible for any females to have aspergers, which is something that seems to have been concluded by most people is not true. Also, I agree with what Callista posted above.

lol!