Why do some autistics lack the ability too hide it?

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Fireblossom
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05 Jun 2019, 3:40 am

It could also be that women are "better at masking" because social norms expect different things from us to some extent... for examble, being very emotional is a stereotype associated with women. If a woman is shy and doesn't talk much it's often not seen as weird, either. However, women who aren't emotional in the "right way" are less likely to be accepted, so they need to mask more and are in serious trouble if they can't.
There's also the thing that society expects girls to be more socially skilled than boys, so if a girl clearly has trouble then it's noticed easier (assuming she's not the quiet and shy type), so the parents start drilling social skills in their heads earlier, making them have a head start on practicing social skills on purpose to many autistic men of same level.



naturalplastic
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05 Jun 2019, 4:35 am

Why do folks who have a condition that impairs their social instincts ...lack the social instincts... to mask the fact that they...have a condition that impairs their social instincts?

I dunno.
Maybe its because they ..have a condition that impairs their social instincts? :lol:

Seems to me that the question to ask is the opposite question: "why are SOME autistics able to mask their autism?"

Also you imply that you are one of the anointed who ARE able to "hide it".

But how do you know that you yourself are really hiding it? You don't know what folks say about you behind your back.



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05 Jun 2019, 6:46 am

cyberdad wrote:
Jamesy wrote:
Do men with aspergers such as myself and many others although highly intelligent.


I'm sorry but I couldn't help notice that you declare that you are "highly intelligent" which makes me wonder why you would therefore ask such a basic question? I would recommend you research this yourself by reading online journals

The full quote was, "Do men with aspergers such as myself and many others although highly intelligent lack certain skills that helps us mask our aspergers symptoms?"

The basic answer to this basic question is "Yes, of course.", but that would be a short thread. Maybe the question that should have been asked is, "What skills are lacking in men on the spectrum that would allow us to mask our symptoms?"

Basic questions can lead to not-so-basic answers. You've tacitly touched on lack of self-awareness, and others have given some good answers too. The online journal is materializing here.



cyberdad
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05 Jun 2019, 7:08 am

It's subjective as what a "good answer" constitutes....

Here's the facts...the ratio of of diagnosed ASD is 5:1 in terms males:females
There's a crappy myth perpetuated by Baron-Cohen and Attwood that women are better at masking which actually doesn't make sense when you look at the ratio?



naturalplastic
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05 Jun 2019, 7:48 am

cyberdad wrote:
It's subjective as what a "good answer" constitutes....

Here's the facts...the ratio of of diagnosed ASD is 5:1 in terms males:females
There's a crappy myth perpetuated by Baron-Cohen and Attwood that women are better at masking which actually doesn't make sense when you look at the ratio?


Huh?????

The reason for the lopsided sex ratio in diagnosis could be because ...women are better at masking than males. The parents of the girls don't take them in to be tested as often, and if tested they fly under the radar of the professional testers more often because they mask better, or they just don't present aspergers quite the same way as boys do. We don't know yet. I don't know if that's the case or not. Just saying it could be. And that your point is ass-backward because it argues the opposite of what you're saying.



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05 Jun 2019, 7:54 am

naturalplastic wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
It's subjective as what a "good answer" constitutes....

Here's the facts...the ratio of of diagnosed ASD is 5:1 in terms males:females
There's a crappy myth perpetuated by Baron-Cohen and Attwood that women are better at masking which actually doesn't make sense when you look at the ratio?


Huh?????

The reason for the lopsided sex ratio in diagnosis could be because ...women are better at masking than males. The parents of the girls don't take them in to be tested as often, and if tested they fly under the radar of the professional testers more often because they mask better, or they just don't present aspergers quite the same way as boys do. We don't know yet. I don't know if that's the case or not. Just saying it could be. And that your point is ass-backward because it argues the opposite of what you're saying.


A lot of girls do fly under the radar. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30 and sought out assessment myself.

I’m very good at masking. The average person wouldn’t be able to tell I’m on the spectrum. I just come across as rather shy.


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05 Jun 2019, 8:12 am

According to Maya Dusenbury, author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, there are two major issues in health care that harm women. First, health issues more common among women have been low-priority for researchers. "Even today, study results are still not usually analyzed by sex, despite the fact that we now know there are often important differences between men and women in everything from the symptoms of the same disease to how various drug treatment are metabolized,” she tells Bustle.


The second issue is the medical community's “lack of trust” in women’s self-reports of symptoms. "There's a tendency to minimize, normalize, or psychologize women's symptoms — especially subjective ones like pain or fatigue,” Dusenbury says. "Many women find that before they are diagnosed, their physical symptoms are attributed to psychological distress, like depression, anxiety, or ‘stress.' This is rooted in a very long-standing stereotype that women are particularly prone to ‘hysteria’ — physical symptoms that are rooted in the 'unconscious mind.’”

https://www.bustle.com/p/after-8-years- ... f-17940653



TwilightPrincess
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05 Jun 2019, 8:55 am

BTDT wrote:
According to Maya Dusenbury, author of Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, there are two major issues in health care that harm women. First, health issues more common among women have been low-priority for researchers. "Even today, study results are still not usually analyzed by sex, despite the fact that we now know there are often important differences between men and women in everything from the symptoms of the same disease to how various drug treatment are metabolized,” she tells Bustle.


The second issue is the medical community's “lack of trust” in women’s self-reports of symptoms. "There's a tendency to minimize, normalize, or psychologize women's symptoms — especially subjective ones like pain or fatigue,” Dusenbury says. "Many women find that before they are diagnosed, their physical symptoms are attributed to psychological distress, like depression, anxiety, or ‘stress.' This is rooted in a very long-standing stereotype that women are particularly prone to ‘hysteria’ — physical symptoms that are rooted in the 'unconscious mind.’”

https://www.bustle.com/p/after-8-years- ... f-17940653


This is very interesting!

I’ve finally learned, in recent years, that I can’t just tell a doctor a symptom and expect to be heard or taken seriously, especially when it comes to female health. I have to talk and talk about it (erring on the side of exaggeration) until they do something. This can be quite problematic for females on the spectrum.

They expect all women to complain during pregnancy or when talking about other areas concerning female health, so sometimes women who have something going on don’t get heard. I wasn’t listened to during pregnancy and ended up having some serious complications.


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05 Jun 2019, 9:31 am

My autism has become a lot more obvious too my friends now I am 29 compared too when I was 19.

I dunno maybe teenagers don’t understand as much about autism compared too adults?



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05 Jun 2019, 12:41 pm

How do you mask what you have difficulty doing? If you lack social skills or social instincts how would you mask that? The only way I know how to "mask" something I'm bad at is to avoid it all together.

To me masking implies that you can fake having good social skills. I would think like anything else, you either bad at it or you're not.


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05 Jun 2019, 1:04 pm

Jamesy wrote:
My autism has become a lot more obvious too my friends now I am 29 compared too when I was 19.

I dunno maybe teenagers don’t understand as much about autism compared too adults?


I think it's more about the fact that society expects far more from 29 year olds than 19 year olds (which is logical since at the age of 19 one is fresh adult, but at the age of 29 one has already a lot of adult life behind them.) There are things that a person can mess up at the age of 19 and people will brush it off with "he/she's young, he/she will learn" but 29 is no longer that young. There are things that people can accept a 19 year old doesn't know or can't do, but that no longer applies to someone who's ten years older. People will notice the autism, notice that something is wrong/different, but usually don't really know what that something is.



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05 Jun 2019, 1:09 pm

When you are 19 people judge you on potential, what you could be. No normal person had a college degree at 19.
At 29 people are more likely to judge you on whether you have a job and have moved out and living on your own.



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05 Jun 2019, 1:18 pm

Fireblossom wrote:
Jamesy wrote:
My autism has become a lot more obvious too my friends now I am 29 compared too when I was 19.

I dunno maybe teenagers don’t understand as much about autism compared too adults?


I think it's more about the fact that society expects far more from 29 year olds than 19 year olds (which is logical since at the age of 19 one is fresh adult, but at the age of 29 one has already a lot of adult life behind them.) There are things that a person can mess up at the age of 19 and people will brush it off with "he/she's young, he/she will learn" but 29 is no longer that young. There are things that people can accept a 19 year old doesn't know or can't do, but that no longer applies to someone who's ten years older. People will notice the autism, notice that something is wrong/different, but usually don't really know what that something is.


Yeah, I think my autism has become more obvious as I've gotten older just because of changes in what's expected of me. Once I finished school, the expectations completely changed, and I think that's when a lot of my difficulties became more obvious to others. I could get by all right in school, although I just kept to myself and had exactly zero friends or social life for the vast majority of it, but once I was shoved out into the "real world," I was completely clueless (and really, still am).


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05 Jun 2019, 2:11 pm

cyberdad wrote:
Jamesy wrote:
Do men with aspergers such as myself and many others although highly intelligent.


I'm sorry but I couldn't help notice that you declare that you are "highly intelligent" which makes me wonder why you would therefore ask such a basic question? I would recommend you research this yourself by reading online journals

The question of precisely how and why some autistic adults "mask" better than others is not a "basic" question. (If you think it is, I would be curious to hear what you think the "basic" answer is.)

Nor, as far as I am aware, is it a question that gets high priority in research funding. It's also a question whose answer probably varies widely from one autistic person to another.

So we can probably gain more insight into this question by discussing it with each other than by reading research journals, although if anyone wants to introduce any relevant research journal articles into this discussion, that might be helpful too.


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05 Jun 2019, 2:47 pm

Exuvian wrote:
Men and women both mask. Dr. Attwood has said women have a greater knack for it.

* Level, as kraftiekortie & EzraS said has a huge bearing on the possibility/effectiveness and awareness of occasion for masking.
* How rested, amount of previous & current stress, life demands you're dealing with affects masking effectiveness too.

Also, the qualitative nature of the particular neurological quirks that underlie your social impairments in the first place. Someone could be Level 1, well-rested, and have a fulfilling intimate relationship, and yet, for example, could be incapable of imitating NT eye contact rhythms due to difficulties with multi-tasking and sensory integration.


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05 Jun 2019, 3:29 pm

cyberdad wrote:
It's subjective as what a "good answer" constitutes....

Here's the facts...the ratio of of diagnosed ASD is 5:1 in terms males:females
There's a crappy myth perpetuated by Baron-Cohen and Attwood that women are better at masking which actually doesn't make sense when you look at the ratio?

And what is your basis for claiming that this is just a "crappy myth"?

According to what I've read (can't find specific references right now, maybe later), the male-to-female sex ratio is higher among the "high-functioning" than among the "low functioning," suggesting that more "high-functioning" girls and women are undiagnosed.


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