Boys are at higher risk for ASD than girls.

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Something else that is not an unfamiliar concept is sexist bias in medicine and diagnosis. For example, familiarizing people with the typical symptoms men experience during a heart attack but not even bothering to find out what the symptoms are for women. Or another example is stuff like "hysteria," which while it has gone away a lot of women still have the experience of not being taken seriously by medical professionals and having real symptoms ignored or written off as anxiety. Or this:

http://www.physorg.com/news205403863.html

I do not know what the real ratio is for diagnosis and sex, but I do recall Tony Attwood's statement that while more boys than girls are diagnosed with AS, adult diagnosis is fairly close to 1:1.

I think a big contributing factor is that women and girls are less likely to act out and be physically aggressive.

As a whole, males are generally more aggressive than women, which a walk through any prison will confirm. I've noticed that people are a lot more likely to get diagnosed with a disorder if they have "behavior problems," and I find this to be true of males as well as females. Today, one of the main reasons people doubt my DX is because I never had a discipline problem and everybody knows that "crazy people" are bad apples.

My mother noticed I was odd, but she described all of my Aspie traits as "cute and funny."

It was adorable that I didn't play with anybody until I was two, and then, I would only play with her, and only for a very short period of time.

The reason I NEVER spoke in elementary school (not even to ask to go to the bathroom) was because I was "very, very shy." One of my second grade teachers called a meeting with Mother to talk about how I refused to respond to questions and just blankly stared at other people when they approached, and, according to her, this was because I was horribly snobby with a bad attitude. My mother brushed it off as "extreme shyness."

My constant pacing, stimming, and tics, even in public, were "something I'd grow out of." I didn't even realize I was doing anything odd until people outside my home started making fun of me, and visitors to our house keep asking my mother, "What the heck is she doing?"

My point is, since I was a "good" kid, no one thought to get me evaluated. I was just "quirky."

This happened to me to some extent, although not greatly. I didn't have a lot of "behavioral problems" and the only thing I was constantly in trouble for was supposedly being "too lazy" to do my schoolwork. People thought I was "shy," etc.

Heh. When I did get in trouble, it was usually for being a "smart-a$$," or for being lazy and making too many "little, stupid, mistakes."