British newspaper article on autistic girls and women

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Very good article in The Guardian yesterday: It's not just boys who are autistic.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/wom ... 69,00.html

Yesterday's print edition of the newspaper states that the Women pages were guest-edited by Bridget Orr who has Asperger syndrome. She chose the subject for the main feature and writes about her own experiences under the heading An atypical girl writes... following the main article.

Yes, I thought it was good too. Ken G has posted it in News and Current Events but here might be more appropriate seeing as is specifically AS orientated media.

I also think that this article is very well written.

Thank goodness! I get so sick of people saying to me "But you can't have Asperger's Syndrome - you're a girl!"

Why yes I am. And your point is...?


We aspie girls are apparently a rare breed... personally I just feel we're under-diagnosed because girls tend to be more sociable than boys and so don't quite fit the stereotype as well.

For women such as this, having their "oddity" validated, acknowledged and, to some extent, explained, can be life-changing. Selina Postgate, 53, always knew she was different: but it was only last summer that she finally found out why. "Knowing I have Asperger's syndrome has changed everything in my world," she says. "It's made me realise who I really am, and why I think differently."

If the diagnosis had come earlier in her life, Postgate believes she would have been a lot more successful. "I've never managed to do the things I've wanted to do," she says. "I've done very little with my life professionally and I could have done a lot more if I'd understood myself."

Nor would it have mattered so much, Postgate argues, if she had been born male - even undiagnosed, men with autism can live a life that is high-performing, acceptable and rewarding, she believes. "At school I was bright, but eccentric. If I had been a boy, that would have been tolerated more. I'd have gone into science, I'm sure - I might have gone on to be a nuclear physicist. I'd have met some girl who would have become my supportive wife and she would have made up for my social shortcomings, in the eyes of the world, and I'd have been the rather odd but brilliant professor who couldn't really handle social occasions but who was always well looked-after by his lovely wife, and who did so many wonderful things at work that none of it mattered anyway.

"Instead of that, though, I have achieved practically nothing. Relationships, like jobs, have gone out of the window - I've not had the self-awareness to hold down either.

Being an autistic woman has been pivotal to everything that's happened to me. If I'd been an autistic man, my story could have been very different."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Exactly.

An interesting article. I also believe that the DX of females is much lower because of the way AS manifests in females in different ways then males. Hormones have to have some effect, as well as different socialization(how others treat us) based on gender. I hope once more accurate DXing is done and more awareness in general by professionals, that someone will do some research in this area. Just like the Freudian trend to see all psychological problems in females as "hysteria", (connected to having a uterus ), I think the current trend is to label them with depression/Bi-polar/BPD instead of looking at the whole picture of their experiences...no one ever asked me about my sensory issues. and all relationship problems were seen through the lense of (adoption causing trust issues/detachment disorder). They only saw what they were already looking for...proof to their theories and just ignored anything that didn't fit that model.

I thought one of the most "telling" parts of the article was when the "expert" said that girls tend to have more severe autism....logic says to me that those are not accurate numbers because the less sever cases are just being over looked....duh.
(Once again...lack of ToM of AS causes misinterpretation of the data.) I don't think you have to be a genius to apply a little logic to the situation but evidently breaking out of old ways of thinking is a bit challenging...even for the experts.

Post in my blog about it:

http://autismtranslator.blogspot.com/

Sure, that's exactly how life is for most male aspies.

But I don't have time to say more. My lovely supportive wife says I should go get a little more work done at the nuclear physics lab because a bunch of friends are coming over who think I'm brilliant and don't mind at all that I'm rather odd.

I don't care much about gas prices, since I get a professor's salary for studying nuclear physics.

I sure am lucky I'm not an aspie woman. They have it rough. I might even have to work as a farm laborer so I can eat, and spend all my time alone when I'm not working.

My family always bucked this trend. I'm diagnosed, all my sisters are odd, and now Alice is about to finally get diagnosed. My brother's the only normal one!

My own opinion of which sex gets a better deal of it (from aspergers and HFA anyway) is this: women, beyond school. I think it's harder for women to fit in when we're younger, but perhaps for some of us, we learn quicker at how to fit in. I learnt fairly well and fairly quickly, although that was through a really good group of friends.

I don't think that "which gender of aspies has it worse" is a constructive thing to argue about. It's like when people argue about whether Hitler was worse than Stalin.

Both male and female aspies have to deal with a lot of difficulties.

Talking about how gender makes things different could be valuable, as long as it has some connection to reality.

Well, my lovely supportive wife says I gotta go be with my friends at the physics lab so I can win my Nobel Prize; I mean I gotta get my shovel and my rubber boots and fix the irrigation ditch so I can pay my rent.

Hey, it's payday, so I get to talk to the boss for five minutes. First conversation this week.

But it is true, for a whole lot of people - I'd be willing to bet on that. I don't believe Ms. P said anything about "how it is for most male aspies" - she was speaking about herself and how her life in the UK could have been if her gender had been male. She was commenting on what her life as someone who was quite bright could have been and wasn't talking about yours and either your intellectual qualities or choice of work/profession/socioeconomic status.

I definitely remember my father and several of his colleagues, who fit this scenario quite well. Back in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, a man could be a totally socially inept bumbler, but if he was brilliant academically or had some other "in-demand" talent, he would have quite a good chance of solid employment at a very good wage in the USA. As such, he'd have been an attractive marriage partner. His wife could, and quite often did in those circles, manage their social manoeverings. My NT mother certainly did her best with my father's career. That was part of the role of "wife" in those eras, at least in the middle and upper-classes in America. (As divorce was frowned upon and women were expected to stay "in the home", I don't believe it would be too much of a conjecture to think that a lot of them stayed in these marriages because of social and financial pressures. Assuming that to be true, it was more incentive for them to further the career of their husbands, as they benefited from any upward mobility either socially or financially.) That particular creation exists today in many military-career couples still - the wife manages the social aspects of her husband's career, makes the necessary connections, and "plays her part".

Being an autistic woman HAS been pivotal to everything that's happened to me (lifting Ms. P's words). And, like Ms. P., had I been male and "brilliant but eccentric" I'd have gotten miles farther than I did as a female who was arguably "brilliant" and definitely "eccentric" in the era in which I was launching my career. As it was, I remember being told "we don't hire women, we hire men who have families to support: go get married and stay home where you belong." [Like I'm breeding stock? How nice.] "We don't hire women, you're just going to get pregnant and quit anyway." [That was pretty insulting on several levels.] "We prefer to hire people who are not emotional, and you know how women are." [Well, yeah, I'd have to just cry every day at 2pm for propriety's sake, I guess.] "Well, girls just can't handle math and science, so why don't we just sign you up for home ec?"[I'd just won the school science fair, but that wasn't good enough because I was obviously not competent enough to be on the "boys only" county academic competition team.] Literally, I was told these things to my face. And way, way more than that - but that happened to NT females as well as Aspie/Autie females, so it's a different path than this discussion is headed towards.

So, yes. I'll agree with her comments. EXACTLY. How different my life could have (and probably would have) been had I had someone smoothing over the social and political aspects of society and career for me. I needed a wife. Still do, when it comes down to it.

I don't believe there was any argument about "which gender of aspies has it worse", only a comment on how it was for Ms. P, me, and other aspie females who might feel like commenting.

It is rather interesting that you assumed there was an argument, however. So where did THAT come from?

For every Einstein there was thousands of other aspie males who were working in factories or manuel labor because they didn't have the social skills to "net-work" . Some of those were lucky enough to fall into their fathers business, where they didn't have to worry about making the right impressions to apply for a job but I imagine most ended up doing manuel labor inspite of their intelligence. I think it is harder for both males and females today, then it would have been in the past, as the importance of social net-working, job interviews and social skills are all more valued today....we live in a service economy.

There are women scientist and writers from 100 years ago, but I think the majority came from wealthy families that allowed them to be "excentric". Aspie females who cam from poverty were most likely going to end up doing drudge work or prostitution if they didn't have the "social graces" or dowery to attract a mate.

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Last edited by BPalmer on 31 Aug 2008, 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My shrink, a balding git, told me that I couldn't have AS because I was a girl. Three years on, a professor told me that was a load of crap and diagnosed me!