“Female Protective Effect” theory

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This implies that autistic traits are all coded for on the X chromosome. Like hemophelia.

Females get two X chromosomes, while males get an X and a Y.

The Y is short and stubby, and therefore only has a fraction of the genes that its partner, the X chromosome has.

So if the X has a bad recessive gene there maybe nothing on the Y to overpower it. So a male child would get the effect of the recessive gene. In contrast every gene on a female's X is countered by another gene on the other, same length X, chromosome. The odds being that the corresponding partner gene would be the common version of the gene that would dominate and override the bad recessive gene. A female would have to be dealt two copies of the rare gene to get the condition - which would be far more unlikely than just getting one copy. Ergo the condition would be much rarer in females (much like in hemophelia).

I read this a couple times & I don't get it. If it's on the X chromosome & boys only get one whereas women get two, wouldn't autism occur much more in women than guys. My head hurts.

If I look at my own family, females and males with autistic traits is rather even.

It's not the same copy of X
You get XX and XY from your mom and dad.
Assume your dad has fxs, then lets say it's fXY and XX
You then get either fXY, or XY if you are male or
fXX or XX if female.
If fXY, you only have one copy of X and it happens to be an fX but if you are female you have two X and one of them is fX and the other X and the X can overpower the fX

Make sense?

Even if the prevalence of autistic minds is similar in males and females, there has to be some reason why the symptoms typically manifest more obviously in males.