Proposed DSMV Changes May Negatively Affect Females

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"Mimicking" is just utilizing a script from someone else, it still doesn't change how one's social reciprocity actually is.

You learn to say this in response to that, you learn to make this face in response to that event, but it's going to break at the slightest bit of unexpected change, and you'll then fumble. This doesn't change that you'll most likely talk on and on about your interest to those you do interact with in a one sided and verbose manner.

Yes, that's what I'm worried about--clinicians being tricked. I learned to speak from my mom. I learned how to say, "Really? That's terrible!" and "Tell me more!" with feeling, etc. Later, I took a counseling methods class and learned to fake listening with a caring look on my face. As I've grown older, I do care more and more, but there are still times when I use my rote method of faking it. That's what I'm talking about.

I've worn out my copy of that book, as I use it constantly for videos and workshops. I loaned it to a friend though. The person you want to read is Catherine Faherty though. There's another one who talks about how to help girls (esp teens) adapt to social environments (basically through learning scripts, etc.) but I can't remember her name, sadly.

Actually, I think the changes may be benificial. Largely because of this line:

Thanks for posting this. I still see ways that the criteria can be used against girls and women though. I like that they put this in. I've known for a long time that under extreme stress, I act more and more autistic. But, let's say we're interviewing a female who isn't stressed in order to see if she is autistic. Well, we would interview the family, which would be able to point out at least a few situations in which she had what appeared to be reciprocal communication. Depending on the clinician, she is "screwed."

Attwood needs be careful not to create new sterotypes with these gender observations. In a radio interview he talked as if mimicking, and being overwhelmed "empathically" (he called it "6th sense," but whatever) were exclusively female phenomena. Not all autistic women are great mimicks, with the "super-sensitive antenna" thing, and not all autistic males are tuned-out robots.

It's important to note these differences, especially if they preferentially lead to more missed female diagnoses -- but if the end result is two stereotypes which don't help the autistic women and men who don't fit them, then that will be an incomplete resolution, missing the big picture (that autistic presentations are over-stereotyped and incompletly understood, in general, in too many professional minds).

It's not as though he hasn't already shown himself to be fairly ignorant of gender issues, with his implicit support of the Cassandra loonies. I wouldn't trust Tony Attwood to know anything about the issues involving the differences and similarities between women and men--whether or not there was autism in the picture.

Yeah good point. I've also heard him make comments about gender identity that show that he hasn't done his homework on that subject before theorizing about it.

I must have been one of the few girls that had autism traits present in early childhood. And I don't mimic, I'm really horrible at speaking unless I'm quoting a full scene from The Simpsons or Monty Pyhton's Flying Circus.

I think it's more like, autistic girls have symptoms in early childhood; they're just not as apparent as they are with boys because of the smaller contrast between autistic traits and socially accepted female characteristics.

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. An odd girl is much less likely to cause concern than an odd boy. Even just plain eccentricity, without impairment, is likely to merely label the girl a ditz or a bit flighty, whereas the eccentric boy will have people wondering whether he's insane or antisocial. When there's actual impairment, it is less likely to show up as obviously in a girl because a girl who is a loner, forms relationships with no one outside her family, and doesn't speak much (the usual presentation of mild-to-moderate autism in an introvert) will be considered "shy", whereas a boy with the same behavior will generally be targeted much earlier and much more vigorously by peers who see "weakness" and teachers who see the "dangerous loner" stereotype.