Callista wrote:
Like... 85%, maybe?
The trouble is that these are very general traits. I think, if you gave the list to the average NT of any gender, you would still get at least two-thirds agreement, and the only ones that Aspie girls would agree with more are ones specifically related to social skills problems, sensory and executive dysfunction, and general effects of living with a disability.
The writer of the list seems to have been going for sheer number of traits over usefulness for describing the experiences of female adult autistics. Traits like, "Takes criticism to heart," or, "Adapts self in order to avoid ridicule," are extremely common.
It's an interesting list, but not really a useful one.
I can totally see what you are saying and I thought of that too. What was surprising to me and why I thought that this list worked well for me was not the questions themselves because these are things that are common to everyone Aspie or not and female or not. What made me really see that this applied to me was the extreme responses that I felt with most of these questions. The depth of the emotional intensity that these questions pulled out of me was overwhelming. A couple of the questions I thought, yeah, I do that sometimes or no, I don't do that. But the majority of them I was actually overwhelmed by the thought of how much or how deeply or how often I do those things to the point where they sometimes even affect my ability to function and to be with other people.
I think that something that comes up with being on the Spectrum is not that what we feel and go through is necessarily exclusive to being on the Spectrum, but the intensity, depth and frequency that we go through what we do is a huge factor in identifying where we fit in the Spectrum if we are on it.
_________________
"I'm bad and that's good. I'll never be good and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
Wreck It Ralph
11 Nov 2013, 1:03 pm
