AS a male problem

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I read somewhere that the majority of men have more Asperger traits than women, even if they are nowhere near Aspie at all. Most men that I know seem to have different views from women, and don't express their feelings as much as women do (I've seen more women get emotional than I have men), and men can even interact differently. Often I've heard people say that men can typically be more selfish and unempathetic for other people, and I've even seen a lot of men with bad posture. This does not make them Aspies.


But I can't be sure - this is what I have read in various magazine articles. I am not saying I strongly believe it, but I don't strongly disbelieve it either.

It confuses me though, because then I would have thought AS in females would be more easier to define, if you know what I mean.
But I also read that females are better at hiding it, and still have that typical social trait in them, I mean females on the mild end of the spectrum, like me.

If AS were caused by higher male hormones, you'd expect to see a lot more buff and bald aspies out there.

In addition, I think the group mentality is stronger in men than it is in women (women go in pairs, men go in packs etc. etc.), so I don't think it's universally true that NT men have more aspie traits than NT women. As an ASD male, I think I am more like NT women than like NT men in many areas (less understanding of group dynamics, poor spatial abilities, less aggressive/confrontational, etc.).

Furthermore, women can get away with being passive, shy, clutzy, and bad at driving, and no one gives a hoot. Our society's expectations for men are just higher (and unreasonable) in some areas, so deficiencies in these areas stand out more.

A quiet, passive, awkward, but hot female with no sense of direction probably has no trouble getting a boyfriend, but the same characteristics in a male would cause far more difficulties in dating and life. By withdrawing and being the "shy [ideally, pretty] type," women can still meet society's expectations and, thus, may not be diagnosed.

Fair or not fair, women are judged primarily on looks in NT society while men are judged primarily on personality. Thus, it makes PERFECT SENSE that women would not be diagnosed as frequently, all else being equal.

Last edited by Tyri0n on 30 Nov 2012, 12:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know about the cause, but the women with ASD have higher testosterone levels than the NT ones.

http://keithsneuroblog.blogspot.fi/2012 ... order.html

Your link doesn't say it's a masculinization disorder: "...ASD, rather than being characterised by masculinisation in both genders, may constitute a gender defiant disorder"

It's no wonder I used to think I really might be, deep down but repressed, gay or trans (as a male). Of course, I am straight, so some things never quite fit.

It might also explain why I am most attracted to women who are slightly less feminine while most men are the opposite.

This.
Autistic girls aren't diagnosed as much. Instead we get the joys of anxiety/depression/eating disorders etc etc etc. How lucky we are.

It doesn't help that the criteria for diagnosis were drawn from the study of Autie/Aspie males only.

Exactly.

The extreme male brain theory postulates that men are more adept at systemizing and being analytical, and that autism is the male mind in its most extreme form, I assume.

Not a theory that I necessarily agree with. As the theory implies that men are less empathetic. But I do think the theory holds some water as more males are diagnosed with autism.



It seems logical to me that high-functioning autism follows a similar pathology to low-functioning autism. So it makes sense to me that if most people being diagnosed with low-functioning autism are male, then it's reasonable that those with high-functioning autism are too.



I think me and you are living in a different world. As I see group mentality in both genders, but during my school days the overwhelming majority of the kids that were misfits, nerds, socially awkward and outside of the social world that the "cool kids" inhabit were male. I only remember few girls being "geeks" or socially awkward, and they still were far more adept at socializing than their male counterparts.

Males often failing to abide the invisible rules of propriety.



But that to me goes more in line with the stereotype that females are "feminine", and everything that connotes, such as being more passive and so on... Shyness is not necessarily a precursor that someone is on the spectrum. It seems, from personal experience, more men who are not autistic are oblivious to social cues, and being able to read other people's responses to their own behaviour. Some Aspies I know aren't shy at all, just incredibly inept at socializing.

For me, shyness is manifested and derived from being socially conscious. A quality, that to me, seems much more apparent in women, and something that is indicative of them being able to read and understand social cues and body language better than men.



But I've always found that those issues that seem to affect women more than men are due to being more self-conscious and aware of how other's perceive you. More symptomatic of extroversion and "Neurotypicality".

The extroverted world is cruel, I'm not surprised that some are driven to misery.

Last edited by Acedia on 30 Nov 2012, 7:33 pm, edited 4 times in total.

No we can't.........

Maybe not clutzes, but aren't women expected to ask a guy out on a date, for example? I didn't mean to be disparaging towards women, which was not my intention at all. I just wanted to speculate on why women might be diagnosed less frequently ... and to point out that the unfairness of this situation goes both ways.

Men are supposed to be successful, Type A, and makes lots of money. Women have more flexibility in this area. Shy women also seem to get hired more often because it seems that our culture equates all shy men with the psychopaths who pull out a gun and start shooting just about every week.

When I get lost, everyone is much more surprised than if a girl gets lost. I have heard from many NT girls who say they broke up with such and such a guy because he wouldn't take enough initiative in their relationship. How do you think it is for those of us who are always going to take 0 initiative?

I think it's hard to deny that being passive or shy is one way to mask many of the AS symptoms. As the Bible says, "A wise man keeps his mouth shut, but a fool opens it and removes all doubt" (or something like that).


The song "Good Girls Go Bad" is just an easy, concrete example of an NT woman who is "shy" but still gets plenty of male attention. A man who is "shy" is not going to get an equal amount of female attention. In fact, the popular male equivalent in that song is known for being an aggressive baddass who "makes the good girls go bad," and the girl just "wants to lose control." If that's not unequal expectations, I'm not sure what is.
If women can more easily get away with passivity, it makes sense that's why fewer women would be diagnosed -- which is exactly what multiple other people on this thread were saying before I said the same thing from the male perspective.

And here I am ... being the type of argumentative aspie that NT's love to hate ...

I agree with XFileGeek, we don't have it easier and besides, each gender has problems. I'm expected to be chatty but I hate small talk, expected to be ladylike and empathic, this list of social expectations could go on and on. My classmate joked once that I'm some kind of serial killer because he argued "the quiet ones are the ones to look out for". Thanks classmate

No it is NOT due to being NT. I am definitely not NT, nor are the other Aspie girls I've met.
The issues I mentioned are down to realising that you aren't the same as others (because you get told off for things and don't know why, because you don't have tonnes of friends like everyone else, etc etc etc) and trying to fit in, only to find your anxiety ends up through the roof.

I think you misunderstood what Ashuahhe was saying. I think they meant that females with AS are more likely to be misdiagnosed with depression or bipolar, not that they are more likely to be diagnosed with bipolar than males. If I have understood correctly.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1025054610557?LI=true
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047279707004632

Higher-functioning autistic girls are often underdiagnosed, but nevertheless, it is genuinely more common for boys to be autistic than girls. Epidemiological surveys that assessed everyone in a large population sample for autism spectrum condition have found more autistic boys than girls, typically around 2-3 boys for every girl on the spectrum.

I don't think this means autistics have a 'male brain', since so many different neurodevelopmental conditions are more common in boys. Severe mental retardation, specific learning disabilities, ADHD, psychopathy - generally about the only neurodevelopmental conditions that are more common in girls are the ones where the affected boys tend to die (Rett Syndrome, for example, in girls the mutation causes severe motor and cognitive disability, in boys it causes a neurodegenerative disorder that kills them before their first birthday).

What I think it means is that boys are more fragile. And it's because they have only one X chromosome. See, in girls, each cell (with the exception of ovarian cells) has one X randomly turned off, and they end up with a mix of cells with either X active. So if there's a problem in one X, it gets diluted by the other X. In addition, if the problem is severe enough, the body will recognize that it should preferentially keep one X active instead of the other, and as a result some girls will be silent carriers of serious X-linked problems because they have highly skewed X-inactivation (a lot of mothers of boys with rare X-linked MR syndromes are like this, and it can give a partial test for carrier status before they've identified the gene). This means boys are more prone to genetic problems than girls are. To add to the complexity, each time a cell divides, it has a slight chance of making an error in gene transcription. If this occurs with an the X chromosome in a girl, her body can just turn that one off. In boys, that cell would be stuck with that X. And if the error happened early enough in embryonic development, it might be an entire cell line that gets affected - for example, say, the line all neurons are descended from.

In addition, if you look at the pattern of fetal development, girls are the 'default', and boys start out looking like girls (hence why guys have nipples) and then a cascade of hormonal influences cause them to go on the male path. This is why XY individuals with female external genitalia are far more common than XX individuals with male external genitalia. (I'm guessing this would also be why male-to-female transsexuals are more common than female-to-male.) It's also possible that the cascade of events that makes a boy could go wrong in ways other than causing intersexing, thereby increasing the risk of various issues.

Women have their own problems in the dating arena which are neither "harder" nor "easier" than men's problems.

Having AS exacerbates these problems whether one is male or female. That's why it's considered an impairment.



No we don't.



Citation needed.



Your narrow personal experiences are in no way reflective of what it's like to be a female with AS, or Western society's attitude towards AS females.



See above.



Being well-behaved and getting good grades is a good way to "mask" AS. This is just as true for males as it is females.



No it isn't.

I am a FTM transperson so I have experience of a few of the things being discussed in this thread - growing up as an undiagnosed female, understanding of the effect of higher levels of testosterone on the human body, and an interest in the links of incidence between autism and nonstandard sexuality and gender identity.

Ettina's post about the reasons behind male prevalence is very good. I also think that the idea of autism being an "extreme male brain" is nonsense. However, many studies have linked autism with hormone levels/testosterone. This does not mean "testosterone is the sole cause of autism" or "people with autism have male brains". It just means it is something which is related to the development of autism in some way, probably more in some people than others, and it is likely there are other factors involved, but autism does seem to be at least in part affected by hormone levels during brain development and/or during life. This would also explain why autistic people have a much higher than normal tendency to have non-standard sexuality and gender identity, as these are also things most likely to be caused by unusual hormone levels in brain development (it is interesting to note that, as well as the higher incidence of developmental problems in males noted in Ettina's post, the tendency toward having non-standard sexuality and gender identity has also always been higher in males than in females). There is a definite circle of causation here involving testosterone levels in some way. Some people claimed that we would know if this was the case because there would be outward signs of high testosterone or by doing tests, but this information is useless as we are probably talking about hormone imbalance during the period of brain development in utero, not something present in adulthood. And this idea is consistent with the tendency for female aspies to be less feminine than most neurotypical women.

I completely agree with the stance noted by some other posters about the difficulty of diagnosing females - I have direct experience of being a quiet, withdrawn, socially awkward female without any hope of my difficulties being noticed or diagnosed. This is very sad - I wish someone had reached out and helped me earlier in my life, but as it was I wasn't diagnosed until my 30s.

It is also interesting to note that in my own experience and that of other autistic transpeople I have spoken to online, the change of body hormones involved in transition can have an effect on autistic symptoms. I am looking forward to the point at which someone decides to do an official study about this, as there have recently been studies confirming that there is a much higher level of transgender experience in autistic people than in the general population. Studying transitioning transgendered people who are undergoing HRT would be a unique opportunity to shed some more light on the nature of autistic traits.