Fictional characters with AS

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Intelligence, aloofness, spatial reasoning capabilities, neediness of peppers help, etc

But as I remember (I've only seen the movie mind you) he was charming and likable. As in had a full understanding of what is socially acceptable.

You had a related thread about female presentation, I think. I posted on that female presentation thread that I think that female presentation of Asperger syndrome is really neglected area of research. IMO, the classic witch, the seer/oracle and the incubus/succubus demon, are all female Asperger archetypes, demonized. Here's a clip from that thread:

"In my humble opinion, the whole pathology of Asperger (sorry, guys) is mythicized for men. If you take the basic mechanism for Asperger syndrome (and HFA), and from there project it onto the space of female cognitive functioning, you will find that there are many female phenotypes and archetypes that are clearly Asperger but don't fit into the mold created for the male Asperger definition (yet). That includes:

(1) Classic Witch (the weird antisocial know-it-all who lives at the edge of the village and scares all the kids)
(2) The Oracle (the seemingly simple woman who erupts in painful truths and quite accurate predictions of the things that are going to happen if you don't stop what you are doing, King of Thebes)
(3) Incubus, Succubus, Devil's Whore (The hypersensual, intense woman who attracts men but is socially defenseless. She gets arrested for accusing the Village Elder for raping her and fathering her baby that looks like him, whereupon he accuses her of being an Incubus and stealing his sperm by magic, and she gets burned at the stake with no one to stick up for her)."

So Cassandra, out of classical Greek mythology, would be an Asperger female character. She was a student of Apollo, who rejected his advances. He punished her by giving her the gift of foresight but then cursed her with the condition that no one will ever believe her predictions. So Cassandra was a Seer with no credibility. She tells people what's going on and what's going to happen and no one listens. That and the fact that her mentorship relationship was a failure and curse, is very Asperger.

I think that everywhere in classical or mythological or fairy tale literature where you have intellectual female, like Cassandra, half the time she has Asperger traits.

But it doesn't seem to make sense to list them here, because there hasn't been much work done on female Asperger traits and so many people wouldn't recognize the Witch archetypes as Asperger models. If I said that I think that, say the Witch of Narnia is an Asperger character, because she has wild talents, but no friends and people fear/dislike her, that doesn't make sense because then you would have to explain that stories are always written so that women like that (wild talents but no friends) are hated for a reason: the stories are written so that all such talented, isolated women do things that make them deserve to be attacked and killed (burned at the stake). I.e. everywhere a woman of that type appears in stories, she's some kind of evil or demon, and deserves to be hated and feared. So I'd say all Witch characters, if the stories were rewritten so that the Witches weren't demonized.

Come to think of it, I have trouble finding fictional female characters with AS; I just can´t seem to think of any.

The point you make is interesting, because in trying to find female characters with AS (or at least AS traits), I noticed that most heroines who have these types of traits usually- by the end of the book or movie- "change", and either somehow enter the social scene after all, or find a way to relate to the people who didn´t like them originally, or they get the guy! It seems to be so ingrained in our culture that women have to be "social" and good with people and relationships, that this female-social archetype seems to prevail in the media; i.e., the Aspie traits are only a "phase" which the heroine eventually overcomes....unlike in fictional characters where the male has AS traits, and basically stays "AS"; in other words, his traits are accepted. The women who stay "AS-like" and don´t evolve are usually the witches and other "evil" characters. I think this is why I had so much trouble finding a female character who appeared to have AS, because there was always some way in which someone could argue that she does not have AS. Even the female character in the film "Mozart and the Whale" appeared- to me, at least- attractive, sexy, open, highly articulate, and loving. They didn´t show any of those "less desirable" AS traits.

As I recall, Pippi Longstocking was also pretty well liked...but then again, it´s been a long time since I read those books, so I can´t remember....

This is good subject matter for an original paper. Feel like writing one?

Wow, that is cool. You have a lot of depth of knowledge in this area.

A big conclusion can be that those female archetypes who cannot integrate socially are rejected by society. I.e. the paths to acceptance of female Asperger traits are virtually nonexistence in some presentations.

You are absolutely right about how the hero-outcome-stories about AS traits show that the male is vindicated when he is accepted by society despite his AS traits. I never thought about that.

This is good subject matter for an original paper. Feel like writing one?

Actually, I never researched this or anything, this is just what I´ve come to after years of observing the media, as well as thought and analysis about myself. Long before I ever knew about Asperger´s Syndrome, I felt irritated that I couldn´t find many- hardly any- female characters that I could relate to. (And most of my favorite female characters are VERY fictional, like witches, faeries in "Lord of the Rings" and whatnot). People-characters were much harder. Although there were a few whom I admired, there were almost none that were really like me.

So how does one go about writing a paper? Once it´s written, what do I do with it? (Post it on the internet?) Who would read it- Tony Attwood (ha ha!) Excuse my complete and utter ignorance; I am involved in the Theater Arts, so I never did anything like that...(although in school, I used to enjoy writing papers). Hey, I would be all for anything that might advance the cause of women and AS! Let me know if you know anything about it.

Actually, since I last posted, I thought of another possible female Aspie character. It was in a movie that I saw years ago called "Washington Square", I think...(I´ve seen it at the video place recently, but I´m not sure if it´s the same one, it might be a remake. I plan to take it out later this week, then I´ll see). In any case, the original that I saw takes place in the 1800s I think. The female heroine was socially awkward all her life, and her father never quite accepted her because of this. At some point, an attractive suitor asks for her hand, and she falls in love with him. The father is convinced that the man is just after her (actually, his)money, because he believes she is not particularly attractive, and not good socially. So he forces the daughter to go abroad for a time, to see if the lover really means to marry her. In the end, the father was right all along, the man was just using her. She never "wins" the love of her father or of any man (she remains a spinster), but she transcends these problems by opening a school for children. Although she finds a niche for herself, one could say that this is an "out of the box" situation for a woman of that time. In any case, when I saw that movie I related to the female character (although luckily for me, my father does accept me!)

There are probably other people AS type characters who are female, I just think they are few and far between. violet yoshi mentioned some, but I´m not familiar with those...(i think I´ve heard of some of them though...)