Autism is not hypermasculinity

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I've read that some people describe autism as extreme masculinity, and there are indeed some traits associated with both, but I find this viewpoint to be offensive and inaccurate for the following reasons:

Autistic traits that are not "masculine"
1. Narrow interests
2. Sensitivity to touch/other sensory issues (indeed, this is sometimes seen as unmanly)
3. Difficulty controlling emotional reactions

"Masculine" traits that are not autistic
1. Interest in physical activity - while this is not inconsistent with being autistic, if autism was hypermasculine you would see this more.
2. Violence
3. Assertiveness and self-confidence (not all autistic people are high in it)

Reasons why this is offensive:
1. It reduces autism to what NT's call "poor social skills", which is ableist. There is much more to what we are than the inability to read emotions.
2. It erases female and non-binary autistics/Aspies, and is insulting to Aspies like me who are on the male side of the gender spectrum yet are still slightly androgynous.
3. It is born out of the reactionary myth that there is a "war on boys." I have seen people say things as ridiculous as that autism does not exist but it's merely a way of pathologizing masculinity. I don't need to explain why that's wrong.

I do acknowledge that most feminists are NT's and as such may say and do ableist things against us because of their own neuronormative perspective. But that does not make autism equivalent to hypermasculinity.

What? There are people that really think this is the case? Ugh. Yet more irritating misconceptions.

I'm male. I'm androgynous in appearance. I have no aggression towards anyone. I *really* dislike sports and physical activities, the only one I'll do is hiking, but that just has to do with the fact that I enjoy nature/plants/animals and such. And even then, I absolutely wont do it if it's even a BIT cold out. And I'm certainly not exactly the most confident person out there, no sir.

So that kinda goes against their silly ideas, yep....

I mean, really. That they think that way is baffling.

Not only do people believe this bs, but its promoted by Toni Attwood - he calls it an "extreme male brain."

If you build your tests on male subject's experiences, that test is going to biased towards male experiences. And if you then use that test on both boys and girls, you are going to have a cohort of people "passing" the test that are skewed towards male traits. Duh.

It makes you wonder if these researchers have ever been in a room full of autistic men. Hypermasculine is not exactly the term that I would use for us. (Yes, I meant that snarkily, but not to be mean. Its just that US masculine thing is pretty narrow, and we match it maybe 1% of the time.)

And this is why gender representation in science is important. If a study is done only on males, then there is an assumption that the condition only affects males.

Attwood usually has good ideas.

It's erroneous, though, that autistic people have an "extreme male brain."

Exactly. It's confusing. Someone who is usually, excuse the generalization, on our side, come up with stuff like this. Human's are complicated.

The Extreme Male Brain theory of Autism first mentioned by Hans Asperger who wrote of "extreme variant of male intelligence" and popularized by Simon Baron Cohen has nothing to do with physical or athletic prowess but "systemizing".

THE "EXTREME MALE BRAIN": AN EXPLANATION FOR AUTISM?

I certainly don't fit that criteria either, I am definitely a dude in many regards but I also feel I have many effeminate rivers splashing through which I feel balances me out, sometimes it makes stuff harder but that's how I'm etched.

I'm quite feminine, and I'm a diagnosed aspie.