AS more prevalent in males?

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Is AS really more prevalent in males, or is it just that women tend to be underdiagnosed because of gender conditioning and cultural biases in observation? The following theory certainly applies to my life; what's your point of view?

In her collection of essays, "Women From Another Planet", Jean Kearns Miller says "AS is often diagnosed in response to a series of events originating in a schoolteacher's observation of aberrant behavior. A child who is aggressive, noisy, exhibiting lack of motor inhibition (wild, acting out) is attended to, and this behavior is characteristic of boys. A child who is well behaved, quiet, and apparently compliant will often be overlooked, sometimes despite underachievement. Such a child is quite likely to be a girl." I went to enough differnt schools to be able to confirm this tendency of teachers to avoid paying individual attention to kids unless they're forced to by disruptive behavior.

Kearns goes on to give an example of this issue, in which a teacher encourages students to ask for help: "A boy with AS has his hand raised from the outset and won't put it down. The subject matter is, after all, new and he has taken the teacher's words literally. A girl may have taken the teacher literally as well, but she resolutely keeps her hand down. She has known too many occasions when people's words did not represent their intention. She has been ridiculed or criticized for missing the point. So she keeps her questions to herself and, in this isolation, misunderstands a good many things, therefore failing the lesson."

I think it's just diagnosed less often in women, for all the reasons you specified.

I agree with you there, Yupa!

Tim

I agree with you, it sounds like my life.
You should check out ADHD as well, there was a thing talking about how it was severely underdiagnosed in girls as the syptoms are slightly different.

I have dismissed any ratios (1:4, 1:10) because of this fact (about the underdiagnosis issue).

Tim

AS is basically a social disability, and males have way more social problems then AS females. The reason AS is diagnosed more in males is because they have a much higher rate of serious issues. They do not adapt as well as AS females.

Females do a large majority of the choosing in mate selection, they just have to wait for NT males to hit on them. By simply beign female they get socialized more then an AS male would who has no interest in socialization. This leaves AS males with huge problems, since they usually are more timid, asocial and clueless then their NT male counterparts.

AS males and females most likely draw teasing from classmates and bullying, but I'd venture to say that males get picked on viciously more often then the female. I rarely if ever in my highschool career ever saw a female get publically picked on in class in front of the teacher.

I wonder if there is any other mental conditions which have such an uneven distribution amoung the sexes?

When it comes to mental health issues its usually men who are underdiagnosis
(maybe allways in the US anyway). Is there any common non-mental medical conditions that occurs in both sexes that has a 4:1 distribution of males to females?


Researcher have allready said that a different set of genes may control male and female autism. Partly because women tend to have low functioning autism at a higher rate than males.

So the 4:1 ratio of males to females with HFA/AS seems reasonable.

Womens "body language" is heavily publicised, and the men are supposed to make the first move, at least in the US and similar areas. That means it is less of a concern for women, and less obvious.

But yeah, AS is underdiagnosed in both sexes. I wasn't boistrous. I'm sure teachers loved me. I tended to be a "teachers pet". I can tell you for a fact that isn't very common.

Steve

In some ways I agree with you in this but in other ways I do not. ASDs are not "social disorders" because solely having a social problem does not meet the full criteria for diagnosis, despite that social problems can be one of the most obvious categories of symptoms.

However, there are diagnosticians who continue to see it as a social disorder and so they miss the general theme of an ASD.

I do agree to some point that male Aspies, from what I've noticed, do tend to be more seriously affected in the social realm than female Aspies. And this is probably one additional reason why "autism" becomes the obvious diagnosis; whereas females may be harder to place because the social issues might not be quite as "classic".

I'm not sure about prevalence, but I've read that females are able to cover it better because of the natural social and expressive nature of female peers, which they have more opportunity to witness and imitate.

There is a book, which I can't remember the title of right now, that suggests autism is an "extreme male mind."

Which would also explain why there have been more male geniuses in history than female.

Don't believe that feminist "society is holding women down" lie: our biologies are our destinies.

I read it to. Simon something was the name of guy I believe. He also said disorders that make social geniuses are more common in females because that's more in the active parts of the female brain.

I made a topic similar to this. In my experience before WP, it was unheard of (for me) that there was such a thing as lots of girls having AS. I was in for a big suprise when I joined! As a result, the Aspie character in my story is going to be a girl, thank you very much!

=Random Statistics of Autism/Aspieness in Girls=
1:2
1:10
1:25
1:50
1:65
1:100
1:400 (dunno where I got that one!)

=The Actual Statistic of Autism/Aspieness in Girls=
?:?

Because nobody really knows...

Yeah. I think you may be right there. Female aspies are -- on the surface at least -- different to males, perhaps because they are more able to mimic "socially acceptable" behaviour. (Although this does not reflect what goes on inside.)

There is also an argument that female aspies are more likely to be overly emotional, especially as children.

Make that 1:1!

Evidence:
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref2.htm (ASD females score 14 points higher on Aspie, 10 points lower on NT)
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref3.htm (ASD females score 8 points higher on Aspie, 6 points lower on NT)
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref4.htm (ASD females score 6 points higher on Aspie, 3 points lower on NT)
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref5.htm (ASD females score 11 points higher on Aspie, 3 points lower on NT)
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref6.htm (ASD females score 4 points higher on Aspie, 3 points lower on NT)
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref7.htm (ASD females score 9 points higher on Aspie, 3 points lower on NT)
http://www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval/ref8.htm (ASD females score 12 points higher on Aspie, 4 points lower on NT)

As can be seen, in every version of Aspie-quiz, and with different questions, female Aspies need higher
score (especially Aspie-score) than males to receive a diagnosis.

As for a whole population tests. Here are results from SQLs into Aspie-quiz

Aspie-quiz 7:
Males: 1580, 896 with higher Aspie-score, 57%
Females: 1362, 835 with higher Aspie-score, 61%
Ratio: 0.93:1

Aspie-quiz 6:
Males: 2344, 1022 with higher Aspie-score, 44%
Females: 2351, 982 with higher Aspie-score, 42%
Ratio: 1.04:1

Aspie-quiz 5:
Males: 1389, 694 with higher Aspie-score, 50%
Females: 877, 525 with higher Aspie-score, 60%
Ratio: 0.83:1

Aspie-quiz ND:
Males: 1363, 859 with higher Aspie-score, 63%
Females: 877, 781 with higher Aspie-score, 89%
Ratio: 0.71:1

Aspie-quiz III:
Males: 3595, 1702 with score > 100, 47%
Females: 2462 , 1216 with higher Aspie-score, 49%
Ratio: 0.96:1

Aspie-quiz II:
Males: 769, 374 with score > 100, 49%
Females: 754 , 402 with score > 100, 53%
Ration: 0.92:1

If we use the versions where female and male participation is similar,
we end up with these:
0.93, 1.04, 0.92.

So, the conclusion is that there is an 1:1 relation. At least nearly 25,000 answers
on Aspie-quiz cannot refute the 1:1 relation!

I completely disagree. It's more socially acceptable for men to be solitary, women cannot. Women are conditioned to do everything in packs and consider women who do things alone to be; weird, slu*ty, or super courageous.
I don't think gender has any role in socializing (one over the other). If you're autistic, you will have equal trouble. Autistic women get picked on just as much for being not feminine enough, being alone, not liking boys, liking boys too much, not wearing the right thing. Boys can wear boy clothes and be okay.
Autistic boys and girls can be timid or can be clueless of boundaries, which make them look agressive, extroverted, too comfortable with people they don't know.
Men who don't make eye contact are considered untrustworthy, women who don't make eye contact are considered sad, depressive, have low self-esteem, antisocial. Women are groomed for body language and when they can't comply, they are taken to task for it, more than men. We have been expected to control bodily functions more than men. We are expected to modulate voices, walking, smiling. you name it.

The symptoms may manifest differently, but I believe they are essentially the same and are equally damaging.

I do agree that in the public school system and therapies the outward, "aggressive" behaviors are more the focus. Deficiencies, quiet misunderstandings are overlooked.