Which have it harder? Male Aspies or female Aspies?

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From my experience I would say that the limits to what people "allow" is very narrow and strict? Only some kinds of being "a little unusual" is allowed, going beyond that line and things tend to become difficult very fast and often violently so.

Men are indeed allowed to be fat, obese even, without much pressure to do something about it.

All men are however expected to become alpha males, those who don't are tolerated as best but never really respected. And life is generally much better for the alpha males then for anyone lower down and boys with AS tend to end up all the way down at the bottom?

The expectations for women tend to be more gentle and less violent, and in general this still holds: "Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it's OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading." (from "The Cement Garden") Which is bad for both girls and boys.

If the argument is "non-conforming girls have it worse then slightly unusual, but mostly conforming, boys" then I agree; However, if the argument is "non-conforming girls have it worse then non-conforming boys" then I do not agree. In general "hard" girls have it much better then "soft" boys.

btw. boys get anorexia too.

define 'hard' girls, I've dressed more like a male than a female for quite some time yet I would not describe myself as hard, or having it easier then your typical non conformist male outcast at school. It depends entirely on the specific situation and individual. Oh and yes I got made fun of for not dressing like a girl or having my hair in some girlish fashion so it is not necessarily true that everyone is ok with it when female dresses more like a guy.

I think it depends on the person's attitude and the social situation.

So…

girls and boys with AS have it both hard, but in different, often quite individual ways?

or… (borrowed from Leo Tolstoy:)

NTs are all alike; every aspie is unique in their own individual way.

I threw in the gender towel a long time ago. I live my life as a male, because that's the gender that I wish I was born. I don't grow or do my hair, I don't wear make up and I don't go on diets. I've also never had anorexia. It works for me.

I think it depends. Some people have major asperger's and soome people are a bit more high functioning. So that's one factor right there. There seems to be more males with Asperger's Syndrome. Females tend to hide it better than males and usually don't get teased as much in school as the males that have it but they have the intense pressure of wanting to fit in with the other girls. There's a big pressure to fit in socially for girls and also sometime a girl who has Asperger's Syndrome make friends with the type of girl who kind of "mothers" them and gets them to fit in easier. Although, some males seem to not be able to disguise it as much as some girls can therefore they might get teased more.

Overall I think it depends on the person as an individual according to where they are on the spectrum and their personality.

I know boys can get annorexia too, but it is more common in girls. All girls worry about is how fat they look, and all they do is compete with other girls.

But maybe I don't understand how the male mind works because I am a female. Maybe males judge other males too, in ways females can't see, and I bloody know that females judge other females but maybe it's something males don't see.

There are always set standards that run right through: ''if a man does it it's OK, but if a woman does it, it's weird''. Obviously there are some ''if a woman does it it's OK but if a man does it it's weird'', but it seems to be more the former.

And when I say ''more'' or ''common'', it does not mean ''the other sex never does this''. I'm just saying I've met more women who have worried about losing weight than I have men, but there are men out there who also worry about their weight, but it seems to be more common in women.

I don't really know but I'm not sure if it matters, does it?

I just wanted to wish this thread happy birthday for Sunday

I might worry about being too underweight, but yeah I don't constantly physically compare myself to other females, seems like a useless thing to worry about to me.

I guess the more somebody identifies with their gender, the harder it is for them, because they're also looking at what's required of their gender as well.

The main difference might be self-confidence and the confidence other are willing to give you?

Boys tend to be told that they can do anything? Boys are expected to be successful? Boys get way more encouragement then girls do, so boys tend to be more self-confident, often thinking to much of themselves?

Boys are always under a spotlight to justify all the encouragement they get. And because they did not have to work for all this encouragement they learn that just showing up is enough. And anything that shows weakness causes this encouragement to turn to doubt: So everything should look like it's easy and effort less? Successful boys never show weakness. That is how boys learn to never ask for directions. Why "working hard" is uncool. That you should always deny any need for help. No matter how much it hurts, boys don't cry. Boys don't ask advice. Boys never ask help. Boys stand by their words, they never change their minds…

Finally boys are told that only successful men are real men, to fail is to be nothing, to be worthless. This is how society can justify sending boys in to harmful situations: The real men that are worth it always come back alive and those that didn't make it are used to encourage the next generation of boys to prove themselves. So boys learn that they constantly need to prove they are really men.

So while aspie boys generally get much more encouragement then aspie girls, this has also the effect that when aspie boys fail to live up to these often unreasonable expectation they will fall so much deeper. They are build up just to knock them down again. The encouragement of before turns to blame, guilt and doubt; Because the encouragement of before wasn't really based on actual performance, just promise and expectation but not actual merit.

Girls in general are expected to be quiet, silent, polite, and nice. Girls are seldom encouraged to do something and often even discouraged from even trying? It's easier for girls to hide, to stay out of the spot light. On the other hand, any succes that they do have is seen as something exceptional? Any praise girl do get is often actually more then deserved not just based on unfulfilled expectations.

Girls are discouraged from putting themselves in dangerous situations. Girls only rarely need to fear becoming expendable. Girls are not considered less female when they show weakness, when they ask for directions, or when they are seen to work hard to learn something difficult. Girls do tend to be seen as female first and individual person second. Some of the time the spotlight on girls shines much brighter than the spotlight on boys does, but this light is also much dimmer most of the time. Girls are allowed to reinvent themselves, to change their minds, but are also rarely taken serious and often ignored.

Our gender based culture is a double edged sword that is very sharp at both sides and cuts deep wounds in all of us.

Not really.

Society is more than happy to punish those of us who don't conform/don't care about their supposed "gender."

My biggest obstacle in getting employment is that my hair is "too short" and I don't wear make-up.

Craziness.

Perhaps there are two different components interacting with each other in complex ways?

Our AS makes it difficult to look and act in a way that fits with our assigned gender.
Society makes it difficult when we don't look and act fitting of their assigned gender.

Although, I agree with most of your commentary very much and appreciate this analysis, holding both sides-- the aggressive male and the socially erased female-- I would like to share a little bit of my life, which I am sure is the life of other autistic women too, that may further blur these gendered boundaries... Content warning for police violence survivors... I guess this is what it would be called... I am not sure though; however, I give a content warning nonetheless as I usually prefer them...

I am a female on the spectrum, a very unassuming female on the spectrum who is twenty three, but looks twelve and, yet, I have been seen as a threat by many people. As I was only diagnosed with ADHD for most of my life, my family members sometimes thought-- as they told me years later-- that even though they knew in their hearts that I would never hurt anyone intentionally, my odd behavior and intense emotional reactions and obsessiveness lead them to occassionally worry that I was going to kill everyone in the house while they were sleeping. I have been escorted by the police a three times to mental hospitals-- handcuffed while I was still a teenager-- due to my insane suicidal and violent behaviors (often related to school refusal or trauma). Then at 18, I was arrested as I was thought to be on drugs even though I had not even tried alcohol or weed or anything (correction, I dipped my tongue into a cup of wine that my fiance's mother offered me a few weeks before, but I gagged and it felt like my tongue was burning and I hated it, which is what I told the police officer when he first asked me if I was drunk). I had a total of five over the counter sleeping pills (which is nothing as I had been on benzos since I was sixteen and I had been taking several benadrylls before bed starting at fourteen, so I was relatively immune to the effects of sleeping pills) after what started out as a suicide attempt and then turned into me calming down and trying to drive home except I should have never got my license as I could not figure out how to keep the car from swerving even though I was always going incredibly slow (I was trying to turn on my lights when I was pulled over as I have a lot of difficulty with multitasking which is why I do not drive anymore)... It was really bad. Anyway, I got arrested by the police and spent the night in a THANKFULLY private jail cell-- as I was under suicide watch-- slamming my body against the wall and occassionally calming down to think of the book I was reading at the time-- which was, to my present disgrace, "Paper Towns" by John Green...

Since then, I have had a few encounters with the police-- one where I almost punched a cop for throwing one of my most precious stuffed animals, Perseus the Unicorn Purse-- until he tied my wrists back and handcuffed me to a gurney (as i had partially overdosed)... Thankfully, I was diagnosed by this point and someone explained to him that I was autistic...

I guess what I am trying to say is that autistic girls and women (even white autistic women like me, even though it is far far more likely to happen to autistic women of color) can have horrendous confrontations with the police due to being perceived as dangerous or intoxicated when you are simply just incredibly overwhelmed and seeking a gentle place to land or hide...

Both of us have it bad... Yes, autistic men, especially autistic black men, are more likely to be killed by police-- but looking back on how multiple officers sexually harrassed me and kept telling me they were going to do things to me when I got out, (even though I was not fully aware of what they were doing due to both being mostly a child-- as I had just turned eighteen less than a week before-- and being an undiagnosed autistic), a bout of harassment apparently so aggressive that the really sweet medical examiner lady who was taking my blood at the police station had to scream at the officers to get the f**k out, I am surprised that I was not raped by a police officer that day as I know this type of thing happens.

So yes, both autistic men and women, black and white, are vulnerable, just with distinct vulnerabilities related to the intersections that their bodies take up in political space...

Although everybody on the spectrum are different, gender still plays a big part, especially to autistic teenagers and young adults.

I think it's harder for Aspie girls to fit in and make friends at high school than it is for Aspie boys (for the Aspies who desire friends). Usually Aspie boys find themselves fitting in with other boys that are the geeky type (even if the Aspie boy isn't that geeky himself). Boy cliques are quite easy to spot.

Girls on the other hand are much more complex. In my experience there were a lot of socially awkward girls at school but they masked their awkwardness or insecurities by acting all bitchy. Also to fit in with your peers as a teenage girl, you have to be prepared to stand around gossiping and being into beauty and fashion. If you are slightly behind your peers socially, it makes it a lot harder. Being a girl meant you had to make an effort with your appearance, and if you were excluded like I was, you didn't have as much chance to learn how to apply makeup or which hairstyle to have or how important it is for girls to shave their legs and armpits, so you stood out like a sore thumb.

These types of topics are against the rules these days, or so the mods have said.