Is there info on female AS please

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Depends. Is it a cute bus?
(And what does "cute" mean, anyway?)

There are differences between the male and female brains. Females are more verbal and better with emotions, on average. Then of course there are the sex chromosomes which make us male and female and also include other information that changes what we're like. And then there are the different social expectations of males and females...

Naturally those things change how AS affects males and females. If a male has AS, his female counterpart (everything the same except for gender) could be NT (or NT with sensory processing problems, or a shy NT) because a female brain, DNA, and society helps her understand emotions and communication just enough to edge into the "normal" part of the spectrum. But if a female has AS, her male counterpart might have severe AS or, with added language difficulty, autism.

I avoid crowds, like to be on my own, have strong special interests, am very distractable, and am bothered by some sensory input... but, on the whole, I'm going to be able to do what I want in life despite having AS. I think I've been, on the whole, helped by being a female, both because of my brain (which, incidentally, scores as "AS male" on the EQ/SQ test) compensating, and because society's stereotype of the "geek" is usually male... so I escape that stigma much more often than a guy would, giving me opportunities to evade rejection and be social at my own speed.

An unrelated factor is that I am a Christian, and thus a lot of my friends are Christian (because I used to go to a Christian college); and these tend to be more accepting than most.

It's a Routemaster.

I really don't think men and women with AS are all that diferent socally. I've got AS and I've only ever had one friend that wasent related to me, and hes not even my friend anymore i don't think.

Mullion, thanks for that link. I've managed to track a very useful article by Dr Attwood through it:

http://www.faaas.org/doc.php?25,142

..which talks about female versus male characteristics for this and suggests that a lot more research needs to be done. It was written in 2000 so goodness knows if any has actually happened since then.

A quote from the article:

"It appears that many girls with Asperger's Syndrome have the same profile of abilities as boys but a subtler or less severe expression of the characteristics. Parents may be reluctant to seek a diagnostic assessment if the child appears to be coping reasonably well and clinicians may be hesitant to commit themselves to a diagnosis unless the signs are conspicuously different to the normal range of behaviour and abilities....We know that children with Asperger's Syndrome elicit from others, either strong maternal or 'predatory' behaviour. If the person's natural peer group is girls, they are more likely to be supported and included by a greater majority of their peers. Thus girls with Asperger's Syndrome are often 'mothered' by other girls. They may prompt the child when they are unsure what to do or say in social situations and comfort them when they are distressed. In contrast, boys are notorious for their intolerance of children who are different and are more prone to be 'predatory'. This can have an unfortunate effect on the behaviour of a boy with Asperger's Syndrome and many complain of being teased, ignored and bullied by other boys."

That's true for me - I was "adopted" in school by a very cheerful and social girl and I learned a lot about social behaviour from watching her and copying her type of behaviour (probably badly, but it was a start...). The rest of the time I had no clue how to make friends, what to say, what not to say. I would never talk to people, and most people in the school thought I was just really odd. I was only really interested in maps and statistics, in fact I did a three year study of weather patterns and statistics at age 10-13 when most girls were playing with dolls or makeup or getting interested in boys. I do know of several other women whose behaviour has always been equally "out of synch" with society, but who don't have a diagnosis, and manage, somehow, to live a superficially normal life. They do have relationships (very odd ones), they do have friends (again, people who sort of adopt them and treat them as a surrogate child, it seems), and they do have highly specialised and unusual interests that they get really distressed about if they can't do them. I do wonder how many undiagnosed women with asperger syndrome there are out there. From what Dr Attwood writes, about 60% of them are never found?

I don't think there is any difference in prevalence between males and females in AS. Sure, there are differences in autism and several other genetic disorders. Males more commonly ends up with these genetic disorders for some reason.

However, AS is not really a genetic disorder, and thus there should not be any differences in prevalence. In Aspie-quiz, it is quite obvious that females need far higher scores to be diagnosed (usually 10 points higher). The gender difference between suspected AS is not very large. In version 6, there are 715 males and 581 females and females have six points higher score on average. That's a long spell from the 4:1 ratio proposed by Cohen et al. In fact, it supports the view that there is no difference.

I think there are many factors going on here... society is more forgiving of women if they are "weird" (not that they aren't still judged). A "weird" woman is viewed as eccentric while a "weird" man is viewed as dangerous.

In terms of romantic pursuits, men will forgive almost anything if they are sexually attracted to a woman, whereas a woman is more likely to select a mate on his personality rather than his sexual appeal or attractiveness.

Thirdly, society conditions women to be more chatty, nurturing and caring than it does men. So even if a woman comes into the game with a deficit, women will be forced/ conditioned/ coaxed into socializing more than a male. Another way to put this is that perhaps the conscious adaptation of "socializing skills" that are part of the "therapy" for AS is performed naturally by society to AS females.

So given these factors, women with AS might appear to be more socially able, yet it may be that society is less judgemental of their eccentricities and that they are "trained" to be more socially fluent (even if they continue to fail to varying miserable degrees).

Well, I can point out one thing that differentiates them from autistic males: they have vaginas.

And they get periods. Olos pms!

I think there is probably the same ratio of males and female with AS. But females are not dx'ed as much as males are for various reasons.
Maybe we can compensate more socially i'm not sure.

How can you disagree with leading experts in the field like Dr. Tony Attwood? See page 150 in his book, Asperger's Syndrome. There is definitely a difference in in prevalence between males and females. AS is officially classified as a Pervasive Developmental Disorder related to autism. AS is indeed genetic. Twin studies have supported the genetic basis. I am shocked that you think this is debatable.

What education do you have and what research have you done that qualifies you to challenge the research done by experts?

Intuition for the win

I also think that with the low rate of diagnosis and differences in criteria for diagnosis the ratio is much closer to even than the "experts" believe.

Theyre as prone to bias due to personal experience as anyone and since they deal with males with AS more often than females its not hard to come to the conclusion its more common in males.

Unless you can provide hard physical evidence proving its impossible for the mutation to not be more common in the male genome all these studies are doing is proving men are more commonly diagnosed.

Considering its a genetic abnormality and doesnt occur due to gender-deciding events during gestation nor does it effect the gender-specific chromosomes to say its gender-preferential is rather counterintuitive.

wrong

If your going to argue you might want to include.. you know.. an *argument* in your post.

Telling someone they are wrong just because apparently you think they are wrong is not debating its pointless.

Im not getting into anymore fights in this forum with people who don't know there elbow from there nose, As is almost an exculsively male disorder and if you don't believe me you can ask any lisenced psychologist.

And when they answer they are going to do so from personal experience.

Read my post above and give an intelligent answer to why a mutation that isnt directly related to gender would be gender-specific and Ill listen.

The epidemiological evidence for the 4:1 ratio of males to females comes from the 4:1 ratio of males with autism to females with autism. Since AS is so closely related to autism, and in fact is often considered a form of autism, it follows that the gender ratio in AS is the same as the gender ratio in autism. Although it may be easy to overlook females with AS, it is much more difficult to overlook females with severe autism because severe autism is extremely obvious and debilitating. I highly doubt there is a large number of females with undiagosed autism out there. Therefore I think the 4:1 ratio of males to females with autism, and by extrapolation AS, is accurate.

It is quite possible that males have genes that make them more susceptible to any environmental factors that trigger autism/AS (the cause is likely a combination of genes and environment). The male and female genome are different. There are many sex-linked diseases, and although autism/AS does not follow the ratio that would be expected in a sex-linked disease, it may very well have a gene on the X chromosome as one of the many genes that contributed to autism/AS.