The Sex ratio
02 Sep 2009, 3:27 pm
About that girls with AS should be more noticeable:
I remembered something and I think it is connected to AS, because it is connected to all disorders and disabilities. If we get away from AS and classical autism for a moment, I noticed with children and teenagers that for reasons I am not quite sure about, fewer parents and teachers are ready to react adequately to misbehaviour of girls, if those girls are at least from typical, middle class families. (If the families are poor, girls and boys seem to draw significantly more negative attention to themselves.)
From working in a school, I noticed that there is a trend that lying and stealing is taken more serious in a boy with a disorder than in a girl with a disorder. I was shocked! Overall in the majority of cases, misbehaviour/atypical behaviour even if it came from the disorder was readily talked about if it occurred in boys, while the same behaviour in girls with invisible and visible disorders did not alert the teachers to the same degree in the same amount of
I found that very weird. I am the same to the boys as to the girls. I did notice that this makes me more popular with the boys. Girls tend to be wary of me at first, because I do not say things such as 'princess' or 'aren't you gorgeous' and because I treat them the same as the boys.
In the past 13 months, I also noticed as many behavioural problems and differences in the social ed girls as in the special ed boys. However, the school send more boys to diagnosis than girls. Seriously, that is wrong. I think a girl who hits children and adults is as much a reason to refer her to a professional as a boy who hits other children.
There are exceptions to this bias towards girls, but I was very surprised at the trend that the teachers were nicer to and talked nicer about the girls. I don't really understand why. I have tried to find a wonder how the gender ratio of elementary school teachers in countries is, because in Germany almost all are females. Are many females biased towards females? Is this just a curious incident that happened to be the same at the schools I was at (it could be, curious things do happen).
I am sure that there are quite a few undiagnosed girls, because if it happened to me, it must have happened to others. How statistically significant this undiagnosed crowd is, however, I am not sure? It could be small, because obvious classical autism/AS even with speech is usually noticed as concerning behaviour by most people a child comes in contact with.
Another thing concerning autism that just came to mind is that in this topic, people talked about AS and classical autism, but just deviating a couple of months from the criteria of these two disorders gets some children, including girls, the diagnosis of PDD-NOS. Do figures about the gender ratio of PDD-NOS exist to see how it relates to that of classical autism and AS?
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PlatedDrake
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02 Sep 2009, 7:10 pm
Actually, i heard from one of my state's Autism oriented organizations that AS, PDD-NOS and one or two other condition labels are the exact same thing and may as well be called Mild Autism. There are different labels because each one has a different setback or hindrance associated with it. One is a learning disability, one is social, one is physical, etc.
02 Sep 2009, 7:28 pm
when I was a kid I didn't hang out with other girls. I had a close friend who was a girl, but the group of misfits I hung with were both boys and girls, which included my close friend at the time. sometimes I didn't socialize at all, I hid and read books. I have no idea if people made fun of me at that point. I don't remember.
04 Sep 2009, 12:19 pm
I checked my local autism center , and even here there are more autistic boys than girls. So the difference is not related to culture.
The wiki entry about this matter reads:
The theory of 1:1 gender ratio and the 'there more hidden aspie girls" is very flawed for the following reasons:
1- There are are more boys with LFA than girls, parents might not notice AS in children, but it's impossible to not notice LFA/classic/severe autism in their children, so it is very unlikely to have 'hidden severe autistic girls". You people here claim that AS and Autism are on the same ASD spectrum , if so ,then why they won't have similar gender ratios?
2- Not sure about the west' society, but at least where I live, girls are more expected to be social , earlier expected to be mature, more expected how to converse and more expected to know "how to be behave correctly". Even if shyness is more expected from girls, shyness does not equate social ineptness at all. All those expectations should make aspie girls more noticeable than any other , yet the ratio is about the same.
3- AS diagnosis is all based on behaviors, AS and autism might be related to many genes, people who claim that autism is not related to sex chromosomes is talking all empty theories, there's no known genetic cause for autism yet.
4- Gender ratio on WP is not representative at all because .... well ... this is a different story....
Why did I come here? Why did MANY say they came here? Because they thought they may have it, or were diagnosed with it. so the WP community is more representative of those feeling they fit, then it is about those that actually have it.
1. Well, there IS the stereotype about dumb/emotional/sensitive females. Maybe some are LFA and don't know it.
2. Hey, learning a few things can even be done by those with LFA. That doesn't prove anything.
3. Males and Females are expected to act differently. There ARE different standards!
4. I already covered this.
04 Sep 2009, 12:30 pm
ACTUALLY, that is WRONG! The majority of conditions follow BOTH pairs of genes! The X and Y is just one chromosome. Since the Y is missing like 1/4 of the genes, males have no protection against a problem with that part of the X and are more likely to have a problem related to that.
__|_X_|_X_|
X | XX | XX |
Y | XY | XY |
Just use this basic display, marking the Autism trait to an X only (denote as Xr or Xa, etc.). What you will see is that a woman without the trait, and a father who has it: Sons will not inherit the trait, but daughters will become carriers. If a mother has the condition (say she's XaXa) and a father who isnt: Sons have a 100% chance of autism, but daughters become carriers. Now, i support this idea, but something came to me. There is an autistic woman (Liane Holliday Willey, also an Aspie and author of "Pretending to be Normal") who has a son and twin daughters. The son and the first twin daughter are fine, but the other twin has the condition. With this, and its quite possible, the recessive trait responsible for autism could be environmentally triggered, since the second twin had a difficult birth. With that in mind, i think that the autism spectrum is our evolutionary defense to prevent or decrease the chances of severe mental handicaps early in life/development. With that in mind, you could praise your "condition" for saving your life. Thoughts, or other observations?
You work on the assumption that the ratio is true, and then use a chart to try to explain it with one theory. Frankly, this doesn't prove it.
As I just said, there IS the stereotype of an almost autistic like girl.
04 Sep 2009, 12:46 pm
Female is the default, and females generally have a copy of every gene. So they have a greater chance of living. I never appreciated how complicated the male fetuses development was. It is kind of funny. Males hormonal needs are more complex as a fetus, and females are more complex at any time but. Some males are VERY adversly affected by problems there. I don't imagine it WAS too common, but things like propecia might make it more common. Anyway, there are a LOT of possible things.
BTW I recently looked up the ratio in the US. Supposedly, there are MORE males until about age 33yo. It then steadily continues to decrease. EVENTUALLY, nearly everyone is female.
PlatedDrake
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04 Sep 2009, 1:39 pm
To 2ukenkerl,
Not trying to sound like a knowitall, just taking what i learned in genetics class (Associate degree level, not the Bachelor's degree stuff). And i said the example was -VERY- rough . . . course, knowing my luck, they discussed the Y chromosome I phased out a bit (the classroom part of the course was very boring).
"Why did I come here? Why did MANY say they came here? Because they thought they may have it, or were diagnosed with it. so the WP community is more representative of those feeling they fit, then it is about those that actually have it."
I dont know where you get this, but quite frankly a lot of us here have it. I was diagnosed, as were numerous others, and the ones "feeling they fit in" are possibly the ones who are a bit compassionate to folks like us or have yet to be diagnosed for one reason or another. But this isnt a place to just come up and be insulting about it. Being open minded and accepting of folks with the condition, and/or parents and friends of said individuals is what this site is about; along with respective ideas and hypothesis.
04 Sep 2009, 2:02 pm
Female is the default, and females generally have a copy of every gene. So they have a greater chance of living. I never appreciated how complicated the male fetuses development was. It is kind of funny. Males hormonal needs are more complex as a fetus, and females are more complex at any time but. Some males are VERY adversly affected by problems there. I don't imagine it WAS too common, but things like propecia might make it more common. Anyway, there are a LOT of possible things.
BTW I recently looked up the ratio in the US. Supposedly, there are MORE males until about age 33yo. It then steadily continues to decrease. EVENTUALLY, nearly everyone is female.
producing healthy male offspring is a feat from the incubation point of view, but also consider that the XY and XX sperm are different in behavior. I don't remember the specifics, but perhaps some of the problems aren't actually sex-linked, but linked to the delicacy of the XY sperm. more male fetuses spontaneously abort, perhaps because the XY sperm is more susceptible to genetic damage.
04 Sep 2009, 10:10 pm
I agree with this (am female). I don't think that the ideas that Aspie girls are likely to be supported and 'mothered' by their peer group are true at all. That may happen with a girl who is simply shy, but, as you say, we are not talking about simple shyness here. If you do not understand how to behave, socially, you are being set up for near total rejection by other females from a fairly young age.
Exactly. I find this whole "AS females are not diagnosed and go under the radar because they just appear shy" thing almost offensive. AS is so much more than just "appearing shy" (there are so many more visible and verbal traits than that which psychologists use for diagnosis), and "appearing shy" isn't even a prerequisite for AS at any rate; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the disorder, unless it is being used as a coping mechanism (but you have to take into account that there are many varying coping mechanisms out there which AS people use). Out of all the aspie guys and girls I've met, I'd hesitate to say even 50% of them are "shy" people.
The whole "AS girls are the shy girls" thing is a load of b*llsh*t. Sure, some AS girls may be "shy", but that is due to their personality, not AS. Equally so, many AS girls are inappropriate loud mouths (like me).
Sure, an AS girl might have a good facade at first during an interview, but after a time that facade would begin to break down and any psychologist who knew their salt should be able to pick up on the AS characteristics showing through.
I personally don't believe there is a higher ratio of undiagnosed AS girls compared to undiagnosed AS boys out there, although I believe there is a fair proportion of both. I think there is a much higher proportion of undiagnosed PDD-NOS though, which is often mistaken for AS.
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04 Sep 2009, 11:17 pm
yes. then we get dx'd with anxiety disorder.
does anyone know what the mean is as far as age of dx? I'm curious if it coincides to the increase in testosterone in boys at puberty. just an idle thought, so don't jump my s**t if my curiosity is baseless.
04 Sep 2009, 11:26 pm
ok, here we go:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 161704.htm
based on this, it is perfectly reasonable to believe many girls go without a diagnosis, since the older you are the more time you have to learn to blend in.
05 Sep 2009, 11:42 am
__|_X_|_X_|
X | XX | XX |
Y | XY | XY |
Just use this basic display, marking the Autism trait to an X only (denote as Xr or Xa, etc.). What you will see is that a woman without the trait, and a father who has it: Sons will not inherit the trait, but daughters will become carriers. If a mother has the condition (say she's XaXa) and a father who isnt: Sons have a 100% chance of autism, but daughters become carriers. Now, i support this idea, but something came to me. There is an autistic woman (Liane Holliday Willey, also an Aspie and author of "Pretending to be Normal") who has a son and twin daughters. The son and the first twin daughter are fine, but the other twin has the condition. With this, and its quite possible, the recessive trait responsible for autism could be environmentally triggered, since the second twin had a difficult birth. With that in mind, i think that the autism spectrum is our evolutionary defense to prevent or decrease the chances of severe mental handicaps early in life/development. With that in mind, you could praise your "condition" for saving your life. Thoughts, or other observations?
^^ identical twins are genetically identical, if autism is a genetic condition then both twins must have it. I read about the twins and autism experiment, it doesn't support the genetic theory of autism. I strongly believe that it's more environmental-related, maybe the cause can be genetic but environmentally-triggered rather than inherited thing or maybe both.
Um, no. There are genetic differences that exist, and continue to develop over time to their basic structures. Even in other conditions, it is generally when a trait is shared by 50% of twins or more that it becomes statistically significant - no condition has 100% duplication in both members of a set of twins.
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05 Sep 2009, 12:15 pm
I saw that rdos found the ratio of M:F taking the Quiz to be very close to 1:1. Just a factoid.
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melissa17b
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08 Sep 2009, 6:57 am
Yet, amazingly, everything goes off without a hitch the overwhelming majority of the time.
It's hard to tell what the trend in prevalance of hormone-related developmental abnormalities (or conditions suspected to be at least in part endocrinological in origin) is - even alternative sexual orientations were dirty secrets until barely a generation ago, and more pervasive issues such as GID and other non-chromosomal intersex conditions, when treated at all, were handled by the equivalent of witness protection. As with autism, the number of reported cases has risen dramatically, probably too fast to be explained by historical underreporting, but our understanding of the underlying neurobiology is still to primitive to offer much more than hypotheses with small data samples that at best are not inconsistent with the conjectures.
18 Sep 2009, 1:06 pm
I suspect females are not only less likely to be born autistic, but to a certain extent, it can be less severe, hence the high proportion of females around here. Females would be 1) less severely affected 2) of a less antisocial nature, because after all, an aspie girl is a girl (oestrogen). Girls tend to be more interested in psychology than boys, and more verbal, like NT girls. Aspie boys are probably more likely to be found on specific boards than one of a more general nature.
There is also the X-chromosome hypothesis for brain disorders, boys get one copy from their mom, girls get a copy from both parents, it can be used to support the idea of girls as less likely to be autistic, and less severely when it occurs.
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/oct/sex
This must have been discussed before here, never mind.
