How come there are so many books about Asperger's and Girls?

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I wonder why you chose the name you did if you think the majority of autistic people are narcissistic or naive? Or are you saying that narcissistic and naive people are the best kind of people? Or does it mean that just you in particular are an autistic person that is better than everyone else? Seems like a mixed message. Also seems arrogant, even by Austrian standards.

Last edited by wilburforce on 14 Aug 2016, 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Because all the original books were about males. At one time they thought it didn't even exist in females. Even now many more males are diagnosed than females. They have also called it the extreme male brain. Even now many women aren't diagnosed until later life.

If you look at the diagnosis now they say more males have the condition because more are diagnosed, but maybe it's more likely that an equal amount of women have it but aren't diagnosed?

I never thought about sexism until I started reading comments online, but every single comment section now has men going on something about how it isn't fair about women this women that. At one time men were thought of as strong and brave, where if a woman had a book devoted to them they wouldn't care, but now they seem scared if women have anything useful for them as an individual.

I do not know how easy it is to get diagnosed in Austria the country that produced Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner but in America while beginning to change it is hard both to find a clinician knowledgable in adult female autism and it is often costly for adults. Or do you think the hundreds and hundreds of women who have posted here since
I joined site three years ago who claim to have been belittled, misdiagnosed by multiple conditions are mostly lying narcissists?

Here that would have gotten you a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis, not Autism. Especially since you said you can't relate to women.

The average psychiatrists where I live, have these default diagnosis for an adult who had no school SPED/IEP/504 help, and is fishing around for an ASD diagnosis.

PTSD (not relating to people)
Schizoid Personality Disorder (if you seem "weird", and don't relate to people).
GAD
SocAD
Depression
Anxiety

If you throw in meltdowns with self harm, any previous suicide attempts, and a general, I can't related to people, especially my own gender, it's the borderline diagnosis.

Autism is so far down the list of things to get diagnosis as an adult, it's not even funny. My husband at 50, got a Schizoid Personality disorder, GAD, OCD and major depression for his first time looking for help.

In reality, he has depression and autism.

I'm glad the doctor you had was more on the ball, but it sure isn't the case for most of the US. Unless you live on the East Coast or near a very large university medical school hospital that does tons of research.

PTSD also requires a trauma and outbursts usually in form of panic attacks, when a certain trigger is present. Schizoid personality disorder requires severe introversion (not just spending most of your time alone, but being homestuck).

The documentary answers that. It is the only state-funded boarding school for girls with autism in the country.

You don't seem to be listening. Many psychological clinicians in North America are under- or just uninformed about autism and will give just about any diagnosis in women before they will consider autism because they don't understand about the presentation of autism in girls (and especially grown women), they think autism is something only males can have (specifically only male children). This makes it extremely difficult for many adults, especially adult women. I think most of the adult women here received at least one other (usually inaccurate) psychiatric diagnosis before autism because it took our doctors so long to even consider autism as a possibility.

It's nice that it was such a simple process for you, but not everywhere is like Austria and most of us here have not shared your experience with ease of diagnosis. Can you understand that there are other places in the world where things are different from the way they are in Austria? That there are other cultures and ways of thinking and that can effect the way people (even supposed "experts") see autism? Can you understand that not everyone is just like you and has had different experiences from yours?

ETA: I personally was given diagnoses of bipolar disorder, avoidant personality disorder, PTSD, GAD and social anxiety disorder before autism was considered (I had to be referred to a specialist to eventually get my diagnosis of Asperger`s.) It`s no joke either because the medications for many of these inaccurate diagnoses can do a lot of damage.

Sorry, wilburforce, I can't hear text as I don't use text to speech.

But anyways it baffles me that US psychiatrists would be so uninformed in a country that boasts about its own "autism awareness".

And I don't like your "tone". It feels like you are talking down to me than talking to me.

I obviously meant "listening" in the sense of considering the words of others. I suspect you are a troll/sock-puppet, that's why I talk down to you. Prove me wrong and my tone will change.

There are two different types of awareness, awareness to learn and accept and awareness to fear as in be aware of cancer. In America awareness of autism to fear has been dominent. The other answer is that as of 2012 only one to two percent of Autism funding was going to research and supports for adults.

I mentioned Austria as a central point of Autism discovery you kept Hans Asperger who thought of autism as a continum that affected a significant number of people. We got Leo Kanner and Bruno Bettelheim who fled here because they were Jewish during the holocaust. Kanner proposed the refrigerator mother theory and Bettelheim publicized it to the point it became the dominent view of Autism. Kanner thought autism was a rare childhood condition. In the refrigerator mother era when I grew up only the most severe cases were diagnosed and even in these cases misdiagnosis was common. If a child was diagnosed with autism the child was institutionalized and the parents told to get rid of any reminders of the child in thier house and to undergo years of psychotherapy to find out why they wanted to do what was viewed as such a terrible thing, giving him autism. In the institutions residents were given experimental drug treatments and electro shock "therapy" (there is still one institution where residents are still shocked) for the purpose of "recovering" them or as Louise Bendor head of the psychiatric department at a prestigious New York City institution put it, to stop them from "thinking autistic". The refrigerator mother era is long gone and while progress has been made some of its legacy remains.

The most powerful Autism Awareness organization in America has often used fear awareness. Their appeal has been to portray the mothers who were the villains back in the refrigerator mother era as heroic warrior mothers in the effort to "recover" their autistic child. In recent years the "extreme male brain"
theory of Autism has been popularized by Simon Baron Cohen . He did not invent this theory, Hans Asperger proposed this theory decades earlier. This theory is not the type of thing that promotes knowledge about autism in women.

Narcissism has many traits in common with ASD's so it it easy and common to mistake autism for narcissism. Narcissism is defined by grandiosity, according to a recent study 60 percent of adults diagnosed with Aspergers have suicide ideation, very different. Hopefully now you understand why people are saying things you have found unbelievable or signs of narcissism and why they might be fragile. To learn more about the history of autism that I barely summarized above read "Neurotribes" by Steve Silberman and "In a Different Key" by John Donvan and Carol Zucker.

I think other folks here have already nailed this one - there are lots of books exclusively about Aspie males but they tend to have titles that don't make that clear, so you might think they cover both genders equally, until you read them. Interesting the thread title says "girls" though. It reminds me how whenever I try to research ASD, most of what I find is about children, though they don't often bother to make that clear from the start either.

I don't see it as a problem that there are "so many" books about female Aspies, I see it as a solution to the problem that there never used to be any. I hope they carry on writing them, and I hope they also write some about adults. I mean you can't have too many books, can you?

He's using a tone because you're coming off as really mean. I've this thought a couple of times around here. You were mean to me on another thread just recently. I've been swallowing my come backs, figuring that you are newly diagnosed and probably going through some s**t. I'm trying to be forgiving like I want others to be forgiving when I get in that place. When I'm emotionally distressed, I tend to sound very confident. What's really going on is that I'm clinging to facts because it feels like everything else is shattering around me.

Is it possible that the ease of your diagnosis comes from the significantly different way you communicate? If you went to the doctor with this same kind of attitude that you've brought here - essentially, you repeated several time that "Everything about X is simple. You must be an idiot if you don't see it." - it might have been a really easy diagnosis. If you always approach strangers in this way, it would be a good indicator that you have at least one of the criteria for autism.

So it might not be that autism is an easy diagnosis in Austria. It might be that your impairments are such that you were easy to identify quickly, unlike others who hide their symptoms more.

You sound like my sister. I don't like my sister. She's a very angry, aggressive, tense and argumentative person.

Actually, Autie doesn't seem mean to me. It seems like the typical you are just too sensitive issue to me. And honestly, I myself have been called a troll when I was being genuine on this site before. Not everyone who is literal and brash is a troll. So I can actually say I can relate to AUA in this instance.

How is speaking from my own experience and pointing out that there are many people with a low self esteem and are stuck in viewing themselves constantly as victims being mean? You just seem to dislike honesty or expect everything to be sugar coated to the point it becomes irrecognizable. And I was diagnosed with high functioning autism seven years ago. A diagnosis doesnt mean I have to agree with you and solidarity has its limits as a group needs to also be critical of itself to bloom. And Aniihya, while it is lovely you can relate to me, you dont need to shield me. I can speak for myself.

Now I had to be mean to bring a point across. If you cant deal with the way people speak with you, then how will you survive society itself? Not all constructive criticism will be withheld or decorated with pleasantries you know.

OK. You really want to know?

-saying strangers have low self esteem based on their online posts is mean
-saying strangers are stuck in their victim mentality based on an online post is mean
-saying I dislike honesty is mean
-saying I like everything to be sugar coated is mean
-implying that I insist you conform because I pointed out that you are being mean is mean
-telling Aniihya that you don't want her words of support is mean
-implying that I won't survive society is both mean and really funny, as I am WAY older than you and doing very well.
-suggesting that not being mean is the same thing as decrorating things with plesantries is mean.

That's 8 mean things you said in just two tiny little paragraphs. Most people don't speak this way because it "burns bridges." That means that you are breaking relationships instead of building them. There's nothing wrong with burning bridges in itself. But when you do so exclusively, it can make it really hard to function in life. There is a certain amount of getting along with other humans that everyone has to do. We all need each other. No one human can survive alone entirely. Even if you stay inside all the time and never socialize, you will still need a doctor or a cable repair person eventually. Taking this approach to life, where you say mean things first and pay no attention to kindness can become a disability because at its worst, it can leave you utterly unable to hold a job, make friends, or interact with your community.

If you go to a therapist or an evaluater with this kind of pragmatic speech pattern, they are going to look for ways to help you grow beyond it because they know how disabling it can be. Autism is one of the things that can make people take this "burn the bridges first" pattern when meeting strangers.

The power behind having an autism diagnosis is that you can start to see your own blind spots. You can start to see the ways in which you are causing people to turn away from you. To a certain degree, we need to learn to accept and forgive ourselves. And there is also a factor where other people need to learn to be more accepting of us. But there is also an aspect of learning to compensate for that blind spot. There is a lot of goodness to be found in actually working on those weak spots. We don't just "have to be" this way because we have a developmental disorder. We can always learn and grow. I'll stop short before I say that its our responsibility to do so. You aren't a teenager. The Dad talks can stop. But I will say that life is pretty damn nice when you do figure out how to keep working on those weak spots WITHOUT putting yourself down, or getting angry because you have them. That's the promise of an autism dx - not that we now have an excuse, but that we have an explanation. We have a starting point from which to work on ourselves.

Edited to add, and then I'm going to let this thread go unless you say you're finding it useful, I was literally diagnosed before you born. It was 1982. Seven years is pretty new, from my point of view.