Traits in Aspie Women

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I am curious about what "traits" tend to be present in Aspie women. I want to form a better understanding of this.

I what to know:

1. What traits Aspie women have that differentiate them from NT women, and

2. What traits Aspie women have that differentiate them from Aspie men.

Female aspies are different from NT's in similar ways as male aspies, with some slight differences. Some of them can be found on the following lists (taken from http://help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58d4f6 ... d4f6a.html).

Here is a list of various traits that are commonly found in aspie women: http://help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58d4f6 ... 83e339.JPG

And here is a list of various male/female aspie differences: http://help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58d4f6 ... 1d2ab3.JPG

I'm a female aspie and a lot of the female traits listed in those match with me.

Much of those lists fit me.

Much of them fit me too except for the grooming thing. I'm such a girl with my hair. And my clothes must be clean and ironed.

... I once went 13 years without having my hair cut or styled. Just trimmed. That was 10 years ago, and I haven't had another since.

I get my hair trimmed, but that's about it. I remember I tried styling it this one time, and I think it looked really nice, but then the clouds dumped buckets of water on me when I was halfway to the bus stop, and I never did it again.

I'm known for my messed up rock star hair do. I get it cut every four months.
I think I am such a girl in ways. The shopping thing too. Though when I shop it's for something specific unlike the stereotype to just look around for hours for something. I end up buying 6 more extra things though.

I am pretty girly in many ways, just not my hair.

I like the look of dressing up, but it can make me itch a lot and feel binding/uncomfortable. When I went out more, the moment I got home I'd start tearing my clothes off and put on something comfortable. I'm not sure I'd do that again.

I'm okay with makeup, although I don't wear it unless I really feel moved to. When I've had work or gone to college or socialized more I wore it daily and spent a lot of time on it, but generally I just don't bother. I bought some a few years ago for possible job interviews but I only used some a few months ago for a party.

I hate wearing clothes with prominent logos on them. I can't really explain why.

I do like jeans, but not tight jeans.

With the exception of maybe three points on the list of female characteristics, each one applies emphatically to me.

Heh I liked the one about very physical displays of happiness.

I once caught mine on tape (as in I recorded it as it was happening naturally, which was lucky of me -- back then I was trying to make a video dictionary of some of my more obvious movements) and then made a video from it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfHxoUDBQ4w[/youtube]

It was a response to a video of my friend's particular way of showing happiness:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTpV4giH5Cw[/youtube]

(She's also autistic and internally the closest match to my brain I've ever met, despite external differences.)

I haven't read the rest yet, I just really liked that particular part of the list. I wish she hadn't done the lists in image files, that's not very accessible. :-/

Yeah, I liked that too. It's something I do, but I've never caught it on camera. It's one of those things I didn't fully realize I was doing until it was pointed out to me.

I don't know how true this is or not overall.

But one thing I've noticed that isn't on that list, is that autistic women (I'm not making any of this specific to AS because I don't tend to divide up autism that way and I'm not AS anyway) I've known seem to be somewhat more likely to have non-rigid autistic traits.

By which I mean... some autistic people seem to have abilities that are (with a little variance) more or less rigid and steady over time. That seems to be the "default" thing people think of when they think of autistic people.

On the other hand, someone like me seems to have... we may have some abilities that are basically similar over time. At least, tendencies, like I tend to have bad receptive language and good sensory-based thinking/awareness overall. But then there are a lot of these traits that come and go and mix around and don't ever stay the same. It's like a succession of partial shutdowns -- when I have one particular ability all the rest might disappear, then I'll have a different ability another time. It's much more shifting and liquid than the standard stereotype.

Of course I've been reading a book on autism written in 2001 (because I took the "are you textbook..." etc. thread literally and decided I had to read a book to find out). And one of the things it said that surprised me that they'd picked up on, was that autistic children's ability to do things seemed to vary day to day. At first it framed this in terms of "cooperation" but then it acknowledged there seem to be real differences in functioning.

This may be a bit more than that, though. It's hard to describe today for some reason. At any rate, I seem to see more women than men with this constantly shifting abilities thing rather than the thing where all abilities are more or less the same all the time. I don't know if it's true though because I've never counted.

That is hand flapping.