Aspergers sex ratio

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To other peoples comments, there are defiently double standards all over the place. Girls can get away better with certain types of behaviors while guys can get away better with other types of behaviors. For me, some of the things that Ive done in the past(if I was a guy) would have gotten somewhere ranging from a restraining order to jail time. But since I was a girl, my behavior was dismissed as a girl with severe emotional problems. No one ever called me creepy or a stalker, I was very lucky. There are other things Ive seen my guy friends get away with that I didnt get away with as easily. Like I have a guy friend that has a very blunt, semi-offensive sense of humor. I kinda do to, but I gotta keep it more quiet and express it only to people who know me well enough. If I just did it to acquintances, people would think I was very weird.

Yeah thats true, once she reaches middle school, girls are expected to have higher standards of behavior. When u get older it really ranges, some people will try to help and care for you, a lot will think your weird and keep their distance. Thats what I found from personal experiance.

Ok my original post was to not discuss different gender perceptions in autism. Im just noting that diagnosis rates and hypothesizing that if lower functioning sex ratio is not 1:1 then the higher functioning sex ratio probably isnt either. Im strictly looking at numbers here. Does anyone know what the higher functioning sex diagnosis ratio is. I read somewhere that it was 10:1? All these numbers get super confusing due to the levels of the undiagnosed population and theres actual numbers vs what is hypothesised. Lots of experts up the estimated numbers.

A point - having an ASD is not only having the symptoms, it is also required that these symptoms create significant impairment.

But, if we admit that, for many reasons, life is more difficult for autistic men than for autistic women (a simple example - a man needs to have more social skills to find a girlfriend than a women to find a boyfriend), these mean that, somewhere in the autistic-neurotypical continuum, should be some point where men are "significantly impaired" and women not. Then, perhaps make sense that the frontier between "autistic" and "simply eccentric" should be at a different point for men and for women .

I think your statements easily contestible. True it is harder for aspie men to find a gf then aspie women to find a bf. But life doesnt simply amount to finding a significant other. Its hard to say which sex has more difficulties. I think it breaks down to the individual, whats societies standards for that individual and how the individual deals with it. Yes I do agree that certain symptoms need to create a significant impairment. Ive known some NTs with some aspie symptoms but they dont have everything put together to create a significant impairment.

What I've read is that diagnosed autistic girls tend to have more neurological issues than autistic boys.

This suggests to me that it takes a lot of additional neurological issues for an autistic girl to be easily spotted. Autistic girls with fewer additional neurological issues are possibly more likely to pass or something.

Also remember that being undiagnosed with autism doesn't mean being undiagnosed with anything. What if lots of autistic girls considered "severely autistic" are more likely to be diagnosed with mental retardation or something? People forget about that.

Totally agreed.

I get weirded out by the "Autistic (straight) guys must have it harder because we can't find a girlfriend" thing frequently. Not that I necessarily have an opinion about "who has it worse", but I have so many autism-related issues that the idea that finding a significant other is what makes things really difficult.. to be almost laughable or something. I mean when you struggle to even get food for yourself even when you have food in your apartment, a significant other isn't necessarily high on your priorities.

I get it. Girls are perceived to be higher on the spectrum. Is there published evidence for this.? If you take the total population of people diagnosed with ASD in the USA where such data is collected the ratio is significantly skewed toward boys. This then assumes there are significant numbers of girls who are on the spectrum who pass for NTs or another diagnosis such as ADHD etc...

This is completely false. You only get such an impression because you can only fully realize and relate to the hardships which apply to you as a man because you have been in a position of having to face them. You have not lived life as a woman, or a woman on the spectrum and you have never had to consider or deal with the hardships that face them, so you cannot appreciate them for what they are.

It is just another instance of "the grass is always greener" syndrome. It's no different from a parent who works thinking the parent who stays at home with the kids has it easier, or a healthy person with a good job who thinks people on government assistance have it easier. They fail to fully consider the hardships of the other group.



As a woman with AS I can say that certainly isn't true, especially for teenagers. The guy just needs to ask her out.

We will place requirement on a boyfriend or girlfriend as a person who one has a sufficient degree of attraction to and compatibility with. Otherwise the relationship would be incredibly short lived. We will also assume that the term relationship does not necessarily imply sex, because for women, it usually doesn't imply sex at all.

A man just needs to ask a woman he likes/thinks he might be compatible with out. A woman needs to get asked out by a man she likes and thinks she might be compatible with.

Most men actually have pretty high standards for women as far as dating goes, physically and socially, and most women on the spectrum just don't meet these standards.

It's ok if a man is a bit socially or emotionally oblivious, distant or cold in a relationship, but women have to be warm and out going in the context of the relationship.

The undesirable woman is usually characterized by a drab, emotionally lacking librarian, which epitomizes a lot of women on the spectrum.

I don't think it's so much that girls are considered to be higher on the spectrum, as it is that women, in general, fly under the radar or have been marginalized to an afterthought with respect to many aspects in the societies in which they live (by women as well).

For example:
Historically cardiac studies were done exclusively on men and it was assumed these results applied to women as well, but this has been discovered not to be the case.

Women presenting with symptoms of a heart attack were historically far more frequently misdiagnosed than men presenting with symptoms of a heart attack.

Airlines used to not list the names of women flying with men that were presumed to be their husbands on flights. If your name was Jane Smith and your husband was John Smith, you would be listed as Mrs. John Smith. Or Mr. John Smith and wife.

Anthropologists used to frequently overlook the role of women in the cultures they were studying, assuming their roles were generally of a domestic nature, and homogeneous across cultures, but of course that isn't actually the case.

I could go on but I think I've illustrated my point.

Women are just more likely to be invisible and fall through the cracks, and in terms of quality if life, that's not a good thing.

We need to establish a few fundamentals here...

If girls with low functioning autism are not being diagnosed then what are they being classified as

Secondly if girls are not necessarily higher on the spectrum but boys are reported at higher rates then why are parents neglecting their low functioning daughters?

I don't buy neglect of girls in a western country.

What there is evidence for is that diagnosed girls have more neurological issues than diagnosed boys The rest is guesswork.

Oh and remember: Kanner autism/autistic disorder doesn't mean low functioning.

We are not talking about low functioning autism. We are talking about Asperger's Syndrome.

Off topic remark, well I mean it would have been on topic, but:

When I read the title of this thread. I was thinking gender sex, I was thinking the actual act of sex.

AS is mostly a guy thing.

ruveyn

Doubtful, and a fairly ignorant remark in my opinion.

I think the heart attack example was pretty to the point, given that women who were having heart attacks were routinely misdiagnosed. I've read threads on here where AS women described being misdiagnosed with any number of other conditions before being diagnosed with AS (if diagnosed at all).

I wonder how many AS women are misdiagnosed before being diagnosed with AS (if at all). I seem to recall in The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome that Tony Attwood said that adult diagnoses of men and women are much closer to parity than childhood diagnoses, which seems to suggest to me that something more is going on than a simple 4:1 ratio.