Male - Female Aspie Ratio

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This seems so obvious it must have been covered before, but one of the things that has whomped me over the head on this site is that there seems to be about equal numbers of males and females, while all the mental health industry expert professionals insist that Asperger's is pretty much limited to males. I remember seeing ratios like 4:1, 8:1, stuff like that, also the idea that it presents differently in females, but from reading the posts of the females here, I haven't gotten that impression.

It seems to me that the individual variation is far greater than the gender variation.

Not that I have unlimited faith in the mental health industry. My favorite was the article that insisted that aspies display amazing rote memorization on their topics of interest, but they can't understand the meaning of what they have memorized. Later in the same paragraph the author said that Einstein was an aspie.

I'm wondering if this is something like how they always say depression primarily affects females: "Of course it's true, everybody knows it's true."

An internet forum is not a random sample, but I can't see any obvious sources of bias that would over-represent females so strongly.

I'd like to hear other aspies impressions on this. It's personal, as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm concerned about one of my daughters. I don't want her to end up like me, alone, ingored, and unwanted, "treasuring her uniqueness" and what aspies contribute to the world.

Maybe I'll talk to a mental health professional, if I feel like being humiliated and having everything I say trivialized. I'll think about it when I get done at the phrenologist. There might be a phrenologist in the world with a conscience, or maybe even half a brain.

Not everyone here is DX....male or female,so its hard to know how well we represent over all AS population....I am getting DX at 42 after dealing with the nightmare of mental hell...oops..health inc.
There has been a debate on here several times about the ratio....usually devolves into some guys saying ..."you girls cant be in our club,your a bunch of hypocondriac/hysterical chicks....Tony Atwood says so"(he doesnt)....he did say that the current ratio is probably out of preportion to reality and his "theory" is that it would be similiar to autism ratio(4/1)...I think there maybe more male members but the females may post more because we have more need to connect "socially" and tend to be more verbal...this is true of the general population,I think it could be true inspite of AS...
There deffinately needs to be more research in this area...but as with most science...research is funded by companys who can see long term profit by selling medication....if that seems unlikely,there isnt going to be as much funding.....follow the bouncing dollar bill...given the popularity of ABA...females may be better off not being DXed younger...

Following up with what krex said, it is possible that some of the females visiting this site may have a social anxiety disorder but find Asperger's a less threatening label. Social anxiety is more common in females than males. The surface symptoms of Asperger's and social anxiety are similar enough that they can associate with Asperger's, a label that may make them feel more comfortable than the label of social anxiety.

It is also possible that there are truly as many Aspie females as males here, and that they are undiagnosed due to differences in the way they respond to Asperger's tests, compared to males. I have read that female Aspies can go undiagnosed because females in general are more acceptable if they are shy and withdrawn than males.

Males are more likely to seek treatment for social anxiety, even though more females have it. Perhaps that principle carries over into Asperger's.

At the moment the experts do say, however, that Asperger's is like an "extreme male brain," so the tendency for Aspie's to be male is what I believe to be the case until evidence proves otherwise. I do not say this to be sexist, but that is just what the evidence indicates at this time.

Social anxiety disorder is not similar to AS in really any way.

Social anxiety is a fear of socializing while AS is an imparement in the ability to physically do so.

The symptoms are too dissimilar to say one can be easily mistaken for the other.

As for the "extreme male brain" argument your assuming they mean male brain as in some gender-specific physical trait. I think they mean it more figuratively than that as a way of thinking rather than something only males can lay claim to.

Concrete thinking and taking things literally anyone can do your just buying into a stereotype that women cant or dont think the same way men do.

Your trying to put it on a scale with extreme femeninity on one end and extreme masculinity on the other and saying that women cant reach the "extreme male brain" end of the spectrum when in reality AS is a disorder that would be represented more tangentially than that. If the male/female scale is the Y axis of a grid then ASDs would be one extreme on the X axis with histrionic personality disorder perhaps being the other extreme.

I agree that it's oversimplifying to say a brain is really male or really female. I think the point is that an aspie brain can be very well functioning in general but be lacking in a few specific respects like the social centers. In another thread, someone polled how many members were gay and someone expressed surprise that there were several gay aspies based on the same reasoning. However, I know a lot of gay guys who are really masculine, perhaps even hypermasculine, but that doesn't seem odd to me. What's defines them as "gay" is not whether they lisp or do hair or dress nicely but that one little part of the mind that has to do with what they're physically attracted to.

What it comes down to is that there is a lot of variety in people, even just within the group that is aspies. We should keep in mind that no two aspies are alike. We don't all have the same symptoms or to the same degree. The science is trying to apply names to something that is not black and white; not completely objective. It's just semantics really. Whether someone is an aspie ultimately comes down to someone making a judgement call based on subjective criteria and a relatively new definition of what is really a spectrum of associated behavior patterns that may or may not even be a disorder. That too is a judgement call.

Well, actually, the surface symptoms are similar enough. People who have social anxiety and people who have Asperger's both have difficulty interacting with others, though the underlying causes may be different. I know that in my case, for a while, I couldn't decide whether I had either Asperger's or social anxiety. Now I think I have both. But, for a while, I couldn't decide which of the two, because the surface symptoms were similar.



Nowhere did I say or imply that only males can lay claim to the "extreme male brain." I did say that there is a tendency for Aspies to be male. I was aware that one in four females has diagnosed Asperger's.



I'm talking about scientific evidence, not stereotypes.



The only scale I am aware of is the one you have just pulled out of thin air and described. Males have a greater tendency to have Asperger's than females, according to the prevailing scientific evidence, although, as I said, there is possibly a difference in responding to the testing that causes the discrepancy between the two genders.

It seems that it would be more unusual and more of an issue when Females exhibit "male brains".
I mean what would stand out about a male showing a "male brain"....the very characteristics that make it a "male brain"(yes I hate using this word but bare with me)would seem to make it a non-issue for males and there for they wouldn't "stand out" ...male (stereotype)brain...needs less socializing,more visual then verbal,more aggressive when frustrated ie. temper tantrums...more logical then emotional(then what about temper tantrum,angers not an emotion?)...and why dont the other "male " stereotypes apply?More athletic,larger muscles?Seems like they are being a little selective in what is considered "male".

I also think there are as many women here who were or are tomboys....may have nothing to do with having "male" brains.... but the desire to be treated as a person and not a "doll" to dress up.The same quality that makes people with AS question "authority" can also make males and females question the stereotypes of gender put on them by their parents,teachers and peers.

According to the N.A.S. website “Attwood (2000), Ehlers and Gillberg (1993) and Wing (1981) have all speculated that many girls with Asperger syndrome are never referred for diagnosis, and so are simply missing from statistics”

So maybe the ratio is not 3:1. No one seems to be sure.

One thing I am sure of however, is that in general, women outnumber men on self-help discussion groups. I've been on sites for parents of ASD children (and ADHD children) and the vast majority of posters are women, and they're not all single mums.

So, I tend to agree with Krex in that there might be more male Aspies, but the female ones are over-represented here.

I think Krex kind of highlighted the problem.

The tests are geared toward looking for "extremely male brains" but in the testing not only do females start out because of biological differences with a negative score meaning they have to exhibit more severe symptoms to be noticed but they actually have to score HIGHER than males.

Say its a test where if you make over a 50 your AS.. a female would start with -10 and have to score 60 to be diagnosed.. meaning a total of 70 points.

Starting to see the problem?

If anything a female should have significantly lower requirements.

After all a male swigging beer and belching the national anthem is a lot less strange than a 90 pound girl doing it.

As Krex said girls being "tomboys" is considered quaint and quickly dismissed but that much deviation from the norm in a male is considered AS.

I think one reason (but not the whole reason) that there are more females here is that there are a lot of mothers here looking for help with their kids. Plenty of them are NT and are just here looking for info on their kids with AS. We don't get a whole lot of NT dads looking for help with their AS kids though.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea that Asperger's is the "extreme male brain," but I think they're dumb enough to get elected president.

Science? Ok let's talk science. The male-female distinction is not limited to humans and their fancy-ass brains. It applies to all sexually reproducing organisms. Details vary between species, but humans aren't all that unique. Males compete with each other for social dominance, territory, and resources. Females breed with the males who are most successful at this, so the next generation does the same thing. The male brain is what makes males act like this, whether you're talking about a wolf pack or the board of directors at microsoft. Humans aren't exactly the same as wolves, but wolves aren't exactly the same as zebras either. It's variation on a pattern.

So what the hell is "extreme male" about the aspie brain. I hate to say this, but I think it would be more accurate to call it "reduced male." Ouch, that hurt whatever's left of my ego.

Asperger's involves enormous individual variation, but it seems to me that the essential traits are the inability to perceive and transmit nonverbal signals and those weird specialized interests. These qualities are obviously gender neutral.

Where do people come up with this s--t, and who's dumb enough to believe it? Do they think that Einstein was macho?

Men and women do think differently.

There have been studies about this.

Awhile back, I read that when trying to solve problems, they use different sections of the brain (I'm not quite sure how it worked, but one gender was white matter dominated, and the other was grey matter dominated)

When I read that I thought it'd be interesting to see how the results would have looked like for people with Autism/Asperger's with men and women. Might help answer a few questions. (And alas, give the curebies more ammo)


Furthermore, an extreme male mind does not neccesarily mean someone is going to be macho, or want to bang lots of hot chicks (or dudes...), or generally be an ass.


Mind you, I'm not sure that calling something a 'male brain' or 'female brain' is very scientific. If the judgement is made based on real science, and not on the soft sciences (like psychology) there might be something to it. Otherwise it probably is just sexism.


I've heard it described that Autism is like having an extreme male brain. Not is.


So in otherwords what I'm saying is that it may or may not be sexist, though some people are being sexist about it.

I agree with this and it also extends to live/real life parent support groups that I attend locally. It seems that there are always just me and 50+ women there to learn, share and interact. I often wonder where all the other ASD dads are and why they aren't learning about their kids or themselves.

Maybe they are all suffering from a sexist, extreme male brain and they think that dealing with kid issues is the woman's job.

The "extreme male brain theory" of Simon Baron-Cohen's is also noted as the "testosterone theory" mainly because testosterone during foetal development (not talking about puberty here) can act as a growth hormone on the neurons, especially in specific areas. The area around the hypothalamus is different, possibly the admygdala which has a higher concentration of testosterone receptors, and there also tends to be a higher concentration of white matter.

And males and females DO have different brains, sizes aside. Physically different brains.

And I don't know about anyone else, but I've heard a lot of females Aspies coming out and saying they've either considered themselves as a tomboy or even downright butch.

The thing about the above theory is that it's looking at behaviors. However, in the brain, excess white matter can have a similar effect (the MALE effect) as smaller neurons and more minicolumns providing poorer long-distance communication (more white matter also = poorer long-distance communication). Autopsies on ASDs have shown this minicolumnar abnormality.

In the average male's brain, there's poorer interconnectivity, which is why it can resemble autism.

I think people are missing what is meant by the 'extreme male' brain. It has nothing to do whether you like opera or the football, or whether you like to don makeup or drink beer. Those have nothing to with the cognitive differences that distinguish the male and female brain. They're strictly superficial meanings of what it means to be a certain sex.

If you really think Baron-Cohen is trying to imply that AS is going to make a person 'macho', then you need to go and read what his research is all about. AS is not going to make you any more macho than it is going to make you grow lots of facial hair.