Variations in the Presentation of AS Women

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I think shrinks need to be genderblind when they try to diagnose. I'm not girly. At all. I hate talking on the phone (this isn't an especially AS issue since I also hate texting/IMing people). I'd rather shoot myself in the face than go shopping. I was more into climbing trees/bike riding/sword fighting than f*****g around with barbies. I've heard that this is the case for a lot of ASD women and girls.

My experience is that gender identity has little to do with AS. I've known a lot of aspie women and some are more masculine and some are more feminine (like me.)

As opposed to men, Attwood states that aspie women are more social, imaginative, have more normalized hobbies and interests and may tend to pick up inflections and speak less in monotone.

He says nothing about gender issues, like whether we come across more masculine or feminine.

No, but we're not quite male either. Just as there is a cellular basis for the difference in info reception and processing in NT males and females, I think it will be found that there is a cellular/structural difference in AS males and females. Even if our female AS brains are masculinized, the male AS brain may be extreme masculine... I've seen that posited.

And not all AS women are/were tomboys... in fact, the first place I read about this topic was a blog by a woman who had been a little princess and was wondering if she was the only one... no, there were a few others who responded, so they felt the whole masculinized brain thing was a bunch of hog-wash.

However, that being said... I played with trucks, loved Star Trek, and thought dresses were sick and twisted torture devices.

But that's just me

I dunno about us being more social...I'm not sure where he stands on that specifically. I agree with the other things he lists, just not the part about being more social. Does that mean we have better success socially? Are more NT like? There are plenty of women with AS on WP (including me) who struggle socially in much the same way men do which is why I think it's an important part of the diagnostic criteria.

As for gender identity, I did not say gender identity is connected to AS, I said difficulties living up to gender stereotypes and expectations is something women (and girls) with AS encounter. We are a bit less estrogenized than NT women. Many ASD women and girls share this phenomena. It is quite common. I prefer to think of it as "gender neutral" psychologically which means we are more analytical and interested in things that are traditionally thought of as masculine (even though they really aren't, which is why I prefer "gender neutral" over "masculine"). At one time learned men were the ones that pontificated, studied and philosophized while women were expected to stay home, do needlework, cook, clean house and have a lot of kids. Women were the caretakers, men were the ones who went out and worked or studied.

AS women tend to prefer to work or study, which are considered masculine pursuits by traditional standards. We are more intellectual than what is considered to be stereotypical for the female gender.

Another thing to consider are other neurological syndromes. Do they have different diagnostic criteria for men and women? Or are the criteria the same? Are women with other neurological syndromes more social than men?

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 17 May 2009, 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think it is easier for AS girls to learn "masking" but not all girls are capable.

I didnt have a mother who taught me social skills, my mother is very blunt and abrupt herself. I did try and imitate the other girls but I just couldnt do it, I had difficulty making the things I said make sense, and I had a lot of difficulties with appropriateness.

I think that there are some different presentations. It is silly when textbooks write "AS females are... XYZ" because we are all different from each other.. different abilities, parents, backgrounds.

I don't think either our brains or the ones of men are masculinized. They just appear to be because of the way we think. It's not really a masculine brain and has nothing to do with testosterone. We have the same sort of brain which explains our core traits. It explains why we have trouble socializing and why we are so intensely focused on certain things, why some of us in our childhood constantly moved (stimmed) hated being hugged or cuddled (I was this way) had sensitivity to certain odors, and were much more sensitive than "NTs" Does all this have anything to do with being masculine? These are all traits of a brain that is wired differently not a masculine one.


I never said anything about tomboys. I said we are less estrogenized and it's true! You can still wear an Easter Dress and a tiara everyday if you like but it's not going to change how you think and what you are neurologically.


I had this thing for race tracks that I could put together myself.

I presented closer to the female version in that I just kept to myself and hung around the fringes, doing my best to not draw attention to myself; keeping my feelings to myself rather than blowing up and becoming aggressive which is common for males with such.

My interests have always been of a male origin in regards to factual data and mechanical things that males with an ASD seem to focus on, however. Though, females do too in many cases.

I'm not sure whether what I have is mild or severe, but the only thing that I can say is that I don't appear autistic to people that don't know me as well. It took my psychotherapist a few years to diagnose me with Asperger's.
I think my mom is also an Aspie, and she is very distant. I think the reason that I'm more social is that I took years of psychotherapy at the end of High school and practiced ice breakers for rehearsing conversational skills and meeting people.
When I was a kid, it was more readily obvious upon 1st appearance, though. So another reason I have the more feminine version could be that I was tormented so much as a kid that I was forced to grow out of some of it, or at least appear normal.

For most of my life I have asked myself the question " why do i want to scream when people try to talk to me and engage with me? why do i want them to shut up? Why do i feel as if I want to scream with rage to make them stop?" I haveI have an excellent capcoity for self-analysis and alwyas have. I ham able to systematically study myself in this way> i spoke about my life on national radio in my country recently and the interviewer said I speak like a surgeon about my own life. MY ASD psych has also remarked on this capacity.
So, I asked myself this question my whole life. I Have in fact analysed myself my whole life - like a secondary special interest. I have always known i was eccentric, quirky and off centre and i have 7 siblings and a mother who told me this my whole life. BUt it was only last year when a nephew was dx'es with HFA, that i discovered women could have ASD's and AS, and that my questions were answered purely and with clarity and detail.

Not necessarily. There are a number of popular stereotypes about AS and if teachers subscribed to the one about quiet, "well-behaved" rigid followers of rules, then they would not have suspected AS in my case.

Indeed, but I suspect not everyone with AS will be bullied, and failure to have any friends (appropriate to age level) is much more easily overlooked than active bullying. Even bullying can be overlooked in that most children aim to not get caught doing it most of the time, and teachers expect some bullying to occur. In fact many of the bullies are smart enough that people with AS can come off looking like the bully to the adults.

Observed rejection by peers is an important indicator but not conclusive either by its apparent absence or presence.

Teachers and many health professionals. Note that none of what Attwood is stating is actually inconsistent with the diagnostic criteria, just with the stereotypes many associate with AS.

What you are describing is an ideal, but it does not work like that. They are supposed to be trained and able to detect problems with vision and hearing, dyslexias, and any number of problems, yet routinely fail to do so. One reason is because people too easily stereotype. Heard that someone with AS has trouble forming age-appropriate peer relationships, suddenly everyone who can rub together an acquaintance at lunch break cannot have AS, even though the criteria does not say "cannot rub together an acquaintance at lunch break".


I think you might be misinterpreting what is being stated.

Attwood has not actually suggested any change to the criteria, but rather is asking that the criteria be employed instead of superficial derivative stereotypes, and in particular that education about the presentation of AS follow from the criteria rather than stereotypes. Nowhere in the criteria does it state one must be universally rejected by peers for instance.


I mimic others enough over the years that I hardly ever come across as "monotone" anymore, although I do not come across as "normal" to most people most of the time either. The significant "upshot" is that while it is apparent something is "off" in how I use voice intonation (for instance), even though I am impaired in the use of non-verbal expression (for instance prosody/intonation) I do not fit the stereotypical notion of talking in monotone; this "odd" rather than "missing" intonation is being posited as more common among females with the condition by Attwood (than males).

"Masked" does not to me mean "looks normal" in this context, but rather "fails to match the most common stereotypes about AS".


Diagnostic criteria are not made consistent by demanding the same circumstantial factors. AS is not "being bullied and rejected" but a particular configuration of symptoms entailing a core triad of impairments and I think that is a much more consistent way of doing things than "diagnosis by peer reaction". Peer reaction is an important indicator but is not a conclusive diagnostic tool in either direction.


The "challenges" are already represented by the core triad of impairment. Ignoring the features of the person to concentrate on their peers is not more revelatory about the challenges being shared than looking for those challenging features and diagnosing on that basis.

It's complicated for me because I didn't have what you might call a 'normal' upbringing. For the record, I was born in the late 60s, but to older parents, and my mother was stuck in a kind of 1940s timewarp. So her ideas of what a girl was were very dated, and I grew up with this kind of very stilted 'little lady' persona. (At least when I was around her. When I wasn't, I was a smart-ass and a tomboy, but I already had some kind of subconscious inkling that my mother's motto in life was 'look nice and shut your mouth' and that I couldn't show smarts or do anything messy or unfeminine round her without getting an earful.)

It wasn't until I got to an all-girls school at age 12 that I realized how far behind the times I'd been raised and started to catch up. (To give a socially important example, many parents would nag an AS teen to bathe more than once a week and use deodorant - I actually didn't know either of those things were normal until a classmate told me!) But I still wasn't going to end up hanging with the popular girls, because I'd already rejected the 'girls = how they look' paradigm, which to me, observing it from the fringes, went with a kind of casually cruel attitude to people as people that I couldn't sign up to because I'd so often been on the receiving end of it. So if I imitated anyone's social skills, it was the geeky ones who hung out in the chess club and the library and weren't very 'girly' anyway. I was still known by most, even the friends I eventually had, as 'the weird one'.

I did get bullied, and I found that the attitude back then was that as well as the bullies getting punished (let's be fair, they did at least deal with that), I would also get dragged into the office and get a 'this wouldn't happen if you tried harder to be more sociable' talking to. There was never any attempt to find out why I couldn't be 'more sociable'. OK, maybe in the 80s many teachers weren't au fait with AS, but I wonder how things are at my old school today, now it's better known, and whether it being a girls' school (although it's now co-ed in the upper years) actually makes a difference.

I have features of both the described male (i.e., classic presentation) and female presentation. The main female trait I have is the passivity. Lack of conduct problems seems to attract the attention and intervention of few adults, and this is not limited to AS. However, I would have been recognised earlier if 1) AS had been diagnosable in the '80s and 2) if someone familiar with it had seen how I behaved at school. From the age of 3, teachers were reporting my differences. I think the main issue is still ignorance of ASD in general.

Concerning the so-called male and female presentations, I was never brought up or socialised to be feminine. My parents acknowledged my innate interests in childhood and bought me trainsets and cars as well as female toys. I had much personal freedom and was always climbing and bike riding. I was very analytical--a "little philosopher" in the extreme--and my mother noticed this from age 3. I developed both the more female interest in classic fiction and the more typical male interest in science and facts. By my teens, I was the full "little professor", obsessed with science and sci fi. However, I was still playing with toys other girls had outgrown several years before.

I did adopt camouflage mechanisms at times--for example, the "smiling mask"--but this was only when approaching adulthood. I've never tried imitation. In adulthood, with particular people, I try to adjust my body language so it's less odd and aloof. I also analyse relationships. However, possessing these traits does not compensate for my social deficits or even fool anyone. After diagnosis, someone in whose presence I used to try to adjust my body language went through a list of ASD traits with me and noted:

poor eye-contact
ignoring when called
lack of curiosity about the environment
aloof
facial expressions not fitting the situation
(plus the obsessions, sensory issues, and anxiety)

so, apparently, I don't pass even when trying.

I fit all of that apart from the "lack of curiosity about the environment".

This isn't me.
I've always had an intense curiosity about detail in the physical environment, so much so that it distracts me from the social environment.

The only time I ever show lack of curiosity about the physical environment is when I mentally have to restrain myself in social situations. Even then, an onlooker could still see my eyes wandering all over the place, focussing on different objects.

This could be interpreted as "poor eye contact", but no-one really told me explicitly to behave otherwise!

If I had my way, I'd be talking about and investigating every object within reach.

Actually, I do this a lot if I'm on my own and no-one's watching: I just can't seem to stop myself.

Actually, I think overgeneralising about anyone's behaviour, male or female, is dangerous.
There are individual differences.

I was more a "little professor" as a child...As an adult, I am not very analytical or intellectual because I am too overwhelmed most of the time.. I was also very "gender neutral" as a child, and this trait was practically nurtured by my mom when I was a small child..as I had a boys haircut, got to regularly wear boy's clothes and ride a big wheel....but I had some girly things as well...some dolls that I would torture..a dress with a circly skirt that was great for spinning...and that was the only reason I wore it..
I was quite socially gregarious, but I didn't fit in with anyone. I was generally rejected by NT girls or their parents because I was weird...and I was on a different page than the boys as well..I would try to play with them because they at least seemed to accept me...but this made me vulnerable because I was NOT a boy...This caused bad stuff to happen to me...sick twisted boy bullying stuff....

um..Here is a pic of me with my parents...pardon the glare..it is a photo of a photo...I must have been around 4..

I made a really negative transformation after I entered elementary school where I became a complete wreck. My sensory issues became a lot worse when I was a little bit older. I was ill with stress a great deal of the time. I would just melt every day after school...had raging headaches..had to leave the room every time they sprayed Lysol...got bullied a lot...AND was socially oblivious...This is a pic of me and my NT sister. I am about 7




It is Easter....hence the dresses...
There are very few pics of me where I am smiling or don't look somehow awkward as a child...

I did have friends over the years though. I grew up kinda poor and in mixed race communities...and that might have made people a little more accepting.

Again I am petering out on my response...there is something that is too dense for me to articulate...

I'm very similar to you. This trait refers mostly to the social environment and/or what others are directing their attention towards. People assume this is the environment. Odd, I know.

Same here on that one.