Female AS traits--i found this list

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Of all the differences listed there, none can be attributed to AS being different in women, but to normal gender roles, natural gender differences and the fact of being an Aspie (male or female).

I've yet to see any differences between the AS of women and men - except for some of the aspects of outward appearance, which make idiot/lazy specialists rule out AS in us from the moment we enter the door of the clinic.

The difference between female Aspie and male Aspie is the same as the difference between Jewish Aspie and non-Jewish Aspie, rich Aspie and poor Aspie, beautiful Aspie and ugly Aspie, artistic Aspie and scientific Aspie - namely, the differences are not connected to the AS at all but to other factors that influence a person's life as well.

Ones that apply to me in bold

* Dresses comfortably
* Eccentric personality
* Doesn't go out much. (Will prefer to go out with partner only or children if she has them)
* Will not have many girlfriends and will not do 'girly' things like shopping with them or having get-togethers to watch chick-flicks
* Is youthful for her age, in looks, dress, behavior and tastes. Some may call it emotionally immature
* Is often misunderstood and thought to be cold-natured and self-centered; unfriendly
* Anxiety and fear are prevalent emotions
* Strong sensory issues--sounds, smells, etc and is prone to overload. Sometimes has meltdowns in public, sometimes over seemingly small things (sensory issues usually)
* Is very outspoken at times, mute at others
* May have a savant or skill or strong talent(s)
* More open to talking about feelings and emotional issues than males with AS
* May or may not want to have a relationship. If she is in a relationship, she probably takes it very seriously but she may choose to remain celibate or alone
* Often musical, artistic
* Usually loves animals but not always due to sensory issues
* May have many androgynous traits despite an outwardly feminine appearance
* Moody and prone to bouts of depression. May have been misdiagnosed as bi-polar or manic depressive. Probably given scads of different medications by doctors. (Sometimes those doctors are dismissive of her protests when she takes issue with these diagnoses)
* May be highly educated but will have had to struggle with social aspects of college. May have one or many partial degrees
* Can be very passionate about a course of study or job, and then change direction or go completely cold on it very quickly
* Usually smart as a whip, yet sometimes can be thick as porridge. Again, due to sensory overload and cognitive processing issues
* May not have a strong sense of self, and can be very chameleon-like, especially until older (forties, fifties) or until diagnosed
* May have a strong interest in computers, games, graphic design, inventing, things of a technological and visual nature
* Most of the time, she will be a self-taught reader, been hyperlexic as a child, and will possess other self-taught skills as well. Many of those skills will be traditionally thought of as male
* She may like rules, discipline, regulation, despite unconventionality. Because of this, she may seem old-fashioned in some ways--very Jane Austen or Emily Bronte in thinking and manners, which will seem contradictory to her progressive nature
* Very rigid in certain habits, again which will contradict her seeming spontaneity
* Needs control over her world
* She sometimes seems like one of the guys, but if she likes a male, she can be extremely, noticeably awkward, and even, when younger, stalker-ish. This is because she fixates and doesn't understand societal gender roles.
* Will usually be very proud and protective of the gifts that autism has bestowed, but would like to be more at ease in the world and suffer less.

Oh dear............... LOL

NEW - Asperger Womens association - Autistic Women
http://asplanet.info/index.php?option=c ... Itemid=172

Would so love any thoughts, insights to add to this new section on my web site, we may not be new and some even old.. but our insights I feel may so help those young women still searching....

A lot of them, if not most, apply to me.

The only thing I've found that's of note are emotional differences:

The males may become aggressive (though females with AS certainly can do), whereas females may cry at a whim due to emotional disturbances; these being a response to the usual symptoms.

Gillberg and Attwood will tell you that the impairments in social reciprocation are similar, but females may hide their obsessions more, rather than bringing them up all of the time in conversation.

I agree with Greentea but sex-difference, like other kind of difference (poor/rich for example) can lead to different behavior and lead to a misdiagnosis. I can make an example. I'm "obsessed" with science and computer, this kind of "obsessivness" is typically Aspie but... if I was born in Mid-Africa instead in a medium-rich european family? Probably my brain shouldn't be focused on anything, because there wasn't nothing interesting for me.

DX are usually made looking at your interaction with the behaviour instead of your "interiority" and girls interact differently from boys (a 4 to 1 proportion of male vs female with AS should mean something I think..)

Wasn't it the gender distribution were something like 4:1 autism, 25:1 Asperger's? It's been five years or so since I read that and the conclusion that if Autism Spectrum Disorders were mainly genetic, there had to be a large number of undiagnosed Asperger girls and women somewhere; but the distribution for autistic people seems to be due to physiological reasons and not socio-cultural ones. I also read somewhere that due to hormonal influences, female brains tend to rely more on connectivity in order to process information than male brains do. If the main expression of autism spectrum discorders actually is the one of too little functional connectivity (and this causes the typical traits), females might have a wider margin to retain a lot of the functions that are needed to survive in our environment..s and therefor test as 'neurotypical'.

Many of the things listed apply to me.
Some of the things listed reminded me of a poem.
I like its acerbic tone and viewpoint.

That’s my life in a nutshell.


I don’t really know if being quiet so as not to offend people or being quiet when you can’t think of anything to say is being like a ‘chameleon’ or not.

It just means you don’t get to say as much, I guess.

If you don't know what to say, you don't know what to say.

OMG! It fits me so much WOW! YA! That's an awesome list!! !! !! !!

Great list. Almost all of them apply to me.

Last edited by serenity on 09 Oct 2009, 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I love that list! Thanks for posting it! Just about everything listed describes me to a T. That's pretty much who I am and how I live my life.

Holy hell, this is spooky... Now I feel "vindicated" more than anything, I guess.

Wow, I'm a girl...

Most/all of that list has nothing to do with gender, and present quite often in males. I notice the person who wrote the list didn't bother to interview any males to ensure that they knew which traits were gender specific.

For what it's worth i bought the book "girls with asperger's" and i vividly remember a section in which it talked about how AS females tend to have a voice that sounds like that of a prepubescent boy (or something like that). this I can relate to all too well, my voice sounds nothing like a female, I hate it.

Once, when I was working at mcdonald's as a manager (one of the more painful times of my life) some woman called to complain (as I was in a town full of whining yuppies, that was wont to happen quite often) and she asked how old I was (WTF?) I said I was 19 or 20 or however old I was at the time and she said "You sound like a fifteen year old boy" I wish like hell I had a time machine, so now knowing what I know I could go back to that moment in time and tell her "My voice sounds like this because I am autistic. How does it feel to make fun of an autistic person?"

Another time (which was way more enjoyable) was at work. we have this guy at work with a really high voice. I call him sugar ray. once I called the supervisor on the radio and he answered me "Hello Ray."

Last edited by loko on 09 Oct 2009, 11:33 am, edited 2 times in total.

I felt vindicated when I read Atlas Shrugged. (Rand was almost certainly one of us.) Her characters were so much like me! Reading the book I felt flabbergasted, puzzled, amused, happy, curious... This was about a year before I found out about AS. That's when everything finally clicked together. Most important of all, I got the sense that there were other people just like me in the world.

I think the bit about massive misdiagnosis and a parade of ineffective and harmful psychiatric medications and treatments kinda eliminates that possibility.. It's the we-know-there's-something-wrong-with-her-but-we-can't-figure-out-what.