Are men with aspergers effeminate and women tomboys?

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NoName93
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20 Feb 2016, 1:40 pm

I didn't meet any aspie man or woman in my life. I don't know about the other aspie but I read that aspies act like the other gender and many have stereotypical interests of the other genre. I don't know aboout the other, but I don't consider myself effeminate I have masculine interests and all of my friends are men, but my behavior is not very masculine (but not effeminate) and I try to be more masculine. Is it true that aspies behave like the other gender? And if it true what is the cause?



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20 Feb 2016, 1:50 pm

Some behavior is innate, some is learned. Since we sometimes aren't so adept at picking up on social learning, we tend to not absorb that part unless we strive to do so intentionally. So, many of us appear somewhat more toward the center. Some people who see the world as a binary at that point have to throw us into the "other" bucket in some way to maintain the fiction of a binary.


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20 Feb 2016, 2:01 pm

When I was little I used to worry that I was really a boy, because I wasn't like the other girls. I had more energy (hyperactive), and liked to climb trees, ride my bike, make stupid jokes. I also had behavioral problems, and I didn't act like the other girls, or feel as if I thought in the same way. I didn't have quite as many "girly" interests. In fact, most girls were boring to me.

As I got older, I realized that I have many masculine traits, probably more than the average female. But I'm still feminine. And no one would ever guess that I have many masculine traits by looking at me or observing my behavior.

I'm a straight cisgender woman who happens to fall closer to the middle of the gender spectrum, and I'm ok with that. It probably does have something to do with ASD.



NoName93
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20 Feb 2016, 2:16 pm

Yigeren wrote:
When I was little I used to worry that I was really a boy, because I wasn't like the other girls. I had more energy (hyperactive), and liked to climb trees, ride my bike, make stupid jokes. I also had behavioral problems, and I didn't act like the other girls, or feel as if I thought in the same way. I didn't have quite as many "girly" interests. In fact, most girls were boring to me.

As I got older, I realized that I have many masculine traits, probably more than the average female. But I'm still feminine. And no one would ever guess that I have many masculine traits by looking at me or observing my behavior.

I'm a straight cisgender woman who happens to fall closer to the middle of the gender spectrum, and I'm ok with that. It probably does have something to do with ASD.


Do you have adhd? And I was not like the other boys but did never worry if I am girl and I wanted to make friendships with other boys.



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20 Feb 2016, 2:44 pm

This is often true, but it's a stereotype that does not apply to everyone. I am neither a tomboy nor a girly girl. I'm somewhere in between.



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20 Feb 2016, 3:07 pm

Ive seen folks argue for the "male brain theory": that aspie girls are boyish, and that us aspie guys have an extra dose of male thinking. Uber male I suppose.

Ive seen it argued that a higher percentage of ASD folks are LBGT. That would seem to support the first half of the above but would seemed to contradict the other half. So are we aspie guys macho men,or are we girly men? Or are we DEVO!?

Probably cant generalize.



NoName93
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20 Feb 2016, 3:19 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Ive seen folks argue for the "male brain theory": that aspie girls are boyish, and that us aspie guys have an extra dose of male thinking. Uber male I suppose.

Ive seen it argued that a higher percentage of ASD folks are LBGT. That would seem to support the first half of the above but would seemed to contradict the other half. So are we aspie guys macho men,or are we girly men? Or are we DEVO!?

Probably cant generalize.


Ok about the aspie girl but why are some men with aspergers effeminate. I am nor masxuline and none effeminate



NoName93
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20 Feb 2016, 3:20 pm

TheAP wrote:
This is often true, but it's a stereotype that does not apply to everyone. I am neither a tomboy nor a girly girl. I'm somewhere in between.


Me too



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20 Feb 2016, 3:23 pm

NoName93 wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Ive seen folks argue for the "male brain theory": that aspie girls are boyish, and that us aspie guys have an extra dose of male thinking. Uber male I suppose.

Ive seen it argued that a higher percentage of ASD folks are LBGT. That would seem to support the first half of the above but would seemed to contradict the other half. So are we aspie guys macho men,or are we girly men? Or are we DEVO!?

Probably cant generalize.


Ok about the aspie girl but why are some men with aspergers effeminate. I am nor masxuline and none effeminate

Because the male brain theory isn't true, at least not for everyone.



ProbablyOverthinkingThisUsername
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20 Feb 2016, 3:27 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Ive seen folks argue for the "male brain theory": that aspie girls are boyish, and that us aspie guys have an extra dose of male thinking. Uber male I suppose.

Ive seen it argued that a higher percentage of ASD folks are LBGT. That would seem to support the first half of the above but would seemed to contradict the other half. So are we aspie guys macho men,or are we girly men? Or are we DEVO!?

Probably cant generalize.

Just speculating here, but it could be because we already don't fit the generally accepted view of "normal" and thus have less of a reason to hide stuff like that. I'd like some input from someone in the LBGT community on this, as my curiosity has been piqued a little.



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20 Feb 2016, 3:31 pm

Aren't tomboys supposed to be really good at sports, especially the rough kind like football or hockey? About the only physical activity I don't completely suck at is swimming.

I was raised in a home where it was okay for me to like "boy" things, like video games and playing with action figures, while it was equally okay for my brother not to be into "manly" stuff like sports. My brother would rather hold a paintbrush than a football, and I would rather hold a video game controller than a real baby. There's nothing wrong with that, why can't the rest of the world see that?

My brother has been married to a woman for almost two decades now.



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20 Feb 2016, 3:52 pm

No, this is not true.

The only partial truth to it is that people on the spectrum tend to not give a flying f**k about societal norms and expectations, so if they have an interest that is stereotypically intended for the opposite gender, they won't care what other people think about them pursuing it. That's how you end up with more males on the spectrum with "feminine" interests and females with "masculine" interests.


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naturalplastic
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20 Feb 2016, 3:59 pm

NoName93 wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Ive seen folks argue for the "male brain theory": that aspie girls are boyish, and that us aspie guys have an extra dose of male thinking. Uber male I suppose.

Ive seen it argued that a higher percentage of ASD folks are LBGT. That would seem to support the first half of the above but would seemed to contradict the other half. So are we aspie guys macho men,or are we girly men? Or are we DEVO!?

Probably cant generalize.


Ok about the aspie girl but why are some men with aspergers effeminate. I am nor masxuline and none effeminate


Thats what I said. I dont really buy the "male brain theory", but it would explain tomboyish girls but not effeminate men. And I dont know for a fact that either tomboyishness, or male effeminacy is really more common among aspies then among the general population, or not anyway.



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20 Feb 2016, 4:21 pm

NoName93 wrote:
Yigeren wrote:
When I was little I used to worry that I was really a boy, because I wasn't like the other girls. I had more energy (hyperactive), and liked to climb trees, ride my bike, make stupid jokes. I also had behavioral problems, and I didn't act like the other girls, or feel as if I thought in the same way. I didn't have quite as many "girly" interests. In fact, most girls were boring to me.

As I got older, I realized that I have many masculine traits, probably more than the average female. But I'm still feminine. And no one would ever guess that I have many masculine traits by looking at me or observing my behavior.

I'm a straight cisgender woman who happens to fall closer to the middle of the gender spectrum, and I'm ok with that. It probably does have something to do with ASD.


Do you have adhd? And I was not like the other boys but did never worry if I am girl and I wanted to make friendships with other boys.


I don't have ADHD now, but it's possible that I did as a child. I really wasn't actually like a boy, and I did play with girls. But I did worry because I was much less feminine personality-wise than they were. I wasn't a tomboy, either. The one tomboy that I knew had more feminine personality traits than I did.



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20 Feb 2016, 4:34 pm

When I was growing up, girls used to climb trees and ride bikes. Not many of them acted girly-girly; some of them were even as rough as the guys. They used to wear dresses/skirts in the street, though.

Girls played with girls and guys played with guys.

If a guy would give a girl a hard time, the guy would usually get it right back.

Us guys used to pretend that girls were icky; however, if truth be known, we all liked the girls, though we would never caught dead admitting that!



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21 Feb 2016, 1:24 pm

There really are sex-dimorphic brain sites, and they do develop along a spectrum not a binary. Remember this study the one finding that ASD is gender defiant rather than "extreme male"? ( http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/201/2/116 ) ?
Image
However, in my opinion the important thing to note is that people on the spectrum are more likely to be toward the *middle*. Only in subcultures that try to enforce the false assumption of a strict biological & social binary would such findings place AS men as "effeminate" and women as "tomboys" simply because they don't adhere to social expectations. In times & (sub)cultures where such and assumption does not exist, social gender roles are much, much more relaxed and the middle ground appears far more populated because people don't actively avoid it.

So, yeah, *some* AS people chart out as being more neutral or a blend, but to label them effeminate and tomboys - which are considered somewhat derogatory in our larger culture - limits and therefore harms everyone. Also, there are many times more NT people that cross those lines in every day life and no one bats an eye b/c they are otherwise socially admired. Look at how professions such as "sewing" and "cooking" suddenly become "Master Tailor" and "Celebrity Chef" when men do them - that's a sign of cognitive dissonance at a cultural scale.


< / rant on >
Also, I didn't catch this the first time I posted that chart but WTF is "gender defiant disorder" & I have to ask why the researchers who coined it felt not falling into a binary should be labelled a "disorder" when everything is working just fine?
< / rant off >


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