Cohen theories(strictly my opinion)

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crmDSDeCEp4[/youtube]

Ok I understand that Cohen's theories are very controversial. And many of you are ready to take him overly literally. He was simply talking about components about the brain that are typically associated more with males are seem in autistic people. He's not referring to the cultural constructs of masculinity and femininity. Many of the people here think if Cohen means having a extreme male brain means that we should all act super masculine and have masculine interests. That doesn't necessarily mean that. Having a male or female brain doesnt automatically mean you necessarily played with dolls or cars.

I am not saying he's right but I'm just saying that the threads I've read on here have often misinterpreted his claims. As autistics, you have to consider how we we grew up. We often grew up as social outcasts and we weren't always properly engendered into our roles in society. We don't know social cues so we did not always pick up gender norms.

So saying Cohen is wrong because I'm not super masculine is not (IMO) a terribly valid statement

Remember I am not saying he is right, like all scientists there could be flaws in his research.

Actually, I usually say his theory is wrong because it privileges stereotypically male traits as notable and ignores stereotypically female traits. So he picks and chooses evidence to mischaracterize autistic people as having "extreme male brains" when it would be more precise and accurate to his research to characterize autistic people as being more likely to be "extreme systemizers" in his empathy/systemizing scale.

"Extreme male brain" the way Baron-Cohen uses it has practically no useful meaning.

I would also add that the empathy quotient isn't really all that useful for measuring empathy. I will grant he came up with a quiz that autistics are more likely to score low than high on, however. I'm not sure any other conclusions can be drawn from that.