Difference between male and female autism?

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It's not reasonable to ignore factors like this when discussing diagnostic trends:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101332.htm

If there are "differences" between male and female autistics, I imagine they're similar to the "differences" observed between men and women in the general population (whether these "differences are innate or cultural, or both, and to what extent, I will leave alone for now).

My current working hypothesis as to the primary reason why males are DXed more often than females is as follows:

Males are much more likely to express anger, confusion, and aggression physically, meaning their behavior problems are perceived as more threatening; therefore, they get diagnosed faster. That males are more prone to physical violence can be confirmed by a walk through any one of our nation's prison systems. This is true for all cultures throughout history.

Of course, there's a host of other cultural assumptions at play, such as that "female problems" are often attributed to "emotions" and brushed-off as unimportant, or that people have been shown to treat infants differently based on whether the infant was presented as male or female, so boys and girls have to learn to respond to different social cues (and that's bound to have an effect on a social communication disorder).

As for myself, I'm "gender neutral" in both physical appearance and cognitive ability. The "right-brained/left-brained" thing is a myth based on a misunderstanding of split-brain experiments conducted in the 1960s. I'm highly creative, but I'm suspected to have some rather profound visual-spatial deficits. I've given up trying to determining if my brain is "male" or "female" because I've found that classifying brains as such is ridiculous and not reflective of nature.

OK, I'm just generalizing from a personal experience here, but I think females with MILD cases of Autism are afraid of being different or ridiculed in public or by friends because they want to fit in. I think this stems from having typical female traits in them, but again I'm not sure if this is true or not. I'm no exception to this, all my life I've been wanting to fit in and have friends and not be different, no matter how much effort it took. Part of it is natural too, I do like to look presentable and behave reasonably, something in me doesn't want to flap my hands in public or do anything else like that to appear unusual, and I do worry about what other people think of me and so on.

But I don't know if the same goes to all female Aspies, I've never met another female Aspie in person before so I'm not trying to overrate it or anything.

Male Autism (nomatter how good or bad guy looks): Ewwww lol! Grow up and man up! I bet you're a virgin..never had the nice touch of a female huh? That'll change you. Hahaha, I look at aspies, make believe illness. You just need to get smacked around some and your parents probably didn't beat you enough. ILL SHOW YOU SOME DISCIPLINE LITTLE BABY. Don't wike this? TOO BAD, LIFE ISN'T FAIR. DEAL WITH.
YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FACE THE MUSIC, BE MORE CONFIDANT AND GET OVER YOUR PRETEND ILLNESS.

Female autms: awww, that's like so cool! I think its so neat than you have this eccentricity! You like this obscure thing! Whoa cool, tell me more about it. Did I ever tell you how much I really liked this one thing you like? You've really opened it up to me...hey..you wanna go hang out sometime? Awwww, I think your awkwardness is sweet.


COUNTERPOINT: Aspie girls probably have to worry about being taken advantage of and raped a lot more than us guys. I hope a smart aspie girl can see through the lies of most people.


I will say this though: most female aspies I know seem to be of the "cooler" hip variety versus the terrible obsessive kind.

Not quite.

One of the differences between male and female autism is that males generally don't have to put up with BS like this and having their difficulties dismissed constantly.

"Oh, you don't ever have to worry about homelessness, just find a man!"- yeah, prostitution is what every girl wants. And of course, the possibility of abuse that you can only escape through homelessness, that's nothing to worry about. After all, you could always go stay with a friend... oh, wait. Asperger's.

"But girls are more naturally social. "- Oh yes, which makes it so much easier when you're just as socially impaired as a boy but expected to be better at it. That doesn't increase the bullying and being treated as less than human at all.

"Just flutter your eyelashes and everyone will love you."- Just go stab yourself with a rusty screwdriver, ok? Maybe you could try wearing tight, provocative jeans and everyone will love you.

"Guys find social awkwardness cute though!"- No, generally they find it exploitable. They may find shyness, or what they think is shyness, cute at first, but when they realise that you really are clueless socially, they generally go looking for someone who is better at normality.

Your idealized scenario doesn't resemble reality. You seem to be jealous that women get certain kinds of attention that men do not. I will say that the attention you describe is attention I do not enjoy nor do I find it particularly positive.

Plus, "seeing through lies" isn't a matter of intelligence, but a form of social perception. This is impaired in all autistic people.

Mostly, I agree with Who_Am_I's response to your post.

Women don't get caned for being Aspie baited and biting

Men get caned for being Aspie baited and biting. (up to 3 times on each hand

And where not talking Saudi Arabia here folks Queensland schools up to the mid 90's 19 not 18's!

this thread had some major problems. while the OP was fine and many of the posts did not break rules, several posts were not acceptable and this was headed for a flame war.

sexism is against the rules, so watch yourself with the generalisations against one gender or another. contrary to popular belief, one gender DOESN'T have it easier than the other, and even stating such is frankly offensive because you are stating that half the population of WrongPlanet has a cakewalk - which is very insulting.

pay attention to these rules please: