Aspies and gender

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I don't see anywhere in my quote where I made a sweeping claim about how much of masculinity and femininity has a neurological basis. It is a well known fact that nurturing behavior is generally associated with levels of androgens, but that is not necessarily an issue specific to males or females. The other points were based on structural differences in the brain, as documented in research, and physical masculine and feminine traits, associated with the research I linked on "high functioning" autism and androgynous physical features.

I mentioned an anecdotal observation on the emotional content of language and schizotypal thinking in the informal polls done here, by those that strongly identify as a masculine male, but made made sure I indicated how limited that observation was, with only a handful of people, to make that observation with, and posed a question, not a claim, on whether or not it might play a role in social communication on the internet.

Can you quote where I made a sweeping claim about how much of masculinity and femininity has a neurological basis? Because I need that clarification to understand what you are referring to in my communication, that brought you to the inference that I was making a sweeping claim about how much of masculinity and femininity has a neurological basis.

However, now that you bring it up that point, all behavior masculine or feminine eventually gains a neurological basis, whether it might be considered innate or learned from the cultural environment. But in looking at just the example of Tim Tebow, it is obviously not an issue strictly correlated with physical masculine or feminine features of sexual dimorphism, whether his culturally determined feminine style of communication has a neurological or culturally learned basis, which always is going to be two factors contributing in some proportion through nurture and nature.

It is significant that he is a left handed individual, which can be more strongly correlated among individuals, both male and female, in expressing more emotion in their communication both verbal and non-verbal, which is culturally defined as communication more generally associated as feminine communication. I have no idea how much that factor contributes to his culturally defined attributes of feminine communication, but it may have some influence.

There are some cultures/geographies that are comprised of less physically sexually dimorphic individuals on average than other cultures/geographies, which likely plays some role, in how all of these factors associated with what may be considered as "masculine" and "feminine" end up as culturally defined within those different cultures. But, it is also a well known association that levels of prenatal hormones impact the development of the brain, and language, differently among males and females, as well as contributing to many other aspects of physical development, of what may be culturally defined as masculine and feminine type traits. There is no doubt that nature and nurture both play a role, with almost an unlimited number of potential impacts in any two individuals depending on their biology and environment.

Your first paragraph.

Really, check out the book.

Unfortunately its people I talk to who are really into the topic. Or more, read what they're saying while they're discussing it in chatrooms. People who are trans get really into it.

Mostly I'm just meaning there are gender roles and then there is something else that makes up gender and masculinity or femininity according to people.

Gender roles do have a huge effect on how people are treated. People are treated poorly for not fitting in with gender roles.

The other has more of an affect on how people feel about themselves, whether they feel masculine; whether they feel feminine. Whether they identify with specific genders or not, as well as whether they identify as the words that are associated with those genders or not.

Does that make more sense?

Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I was referring specifically to gender roles, especially as many people seem to think that gender = gender role, and thus doing the latter badly (in their eyes) means doing the former wrong. Liking computers and games is "doing womanhood wrong" for some. I do not really think that liking computers or games is inherently masculine, but it is often treated as such by more regressive thinkers.

I am familiar with the book. Ms. Fine disputes earlier findings that prenatal testosterone influences the differences in hemispheric size and the corpus callosum as making a hardwired difference in the differences in thinking among the genders. It's an interesting theory at this point in time, as the previous theories still are.

My first paragraph you referenced, quoted below, is specific to morphological sexual dimorphic traits of masculinity and femininity. I did not mention anything about thinking or behavior in that paragraph that Ms. Fine is identifying in her book on Neurosexism. Cohen, in the research I referenced, linked below, does not provide any suggestion of what the gender neutral findings mean, as far as actual behavioral differences specific to males and females with Aspergers Syndrome, he only identifies the difference between the sexually dimorphic structural traits in the brain in the control groups of males and females studied, as opposed to attenuated morphological features in the brain, among the female and males with Aspergers Syndrome.

And in the other research I referenced, it is specific to sexual dimorphic physical traits, not associated with either behavior or thinking. So in short, I am referring to sexually dimorphic physical traits as opposed to androgynous physical traits, that is neither a description of behavior or thinking. Ms. Fine does not dispute the findings of the research from the two references I sourced from the Summer of 2012, as that research was completed well after her book was published, in August of 2010.

And since her book was published additional research has been completed in Australia, published in early 2012, that provides an association of prenatal exposure to high levels of testosterone, language development problems in males, as opposed to the protection of language development in females. While it is clear that not all gender differences in cognitive abilities are hardwired, it is becoming more evident that they are not all soft-wired either, as Ms. Fine claimed in her Neurosexism book.

http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/pa ... rences.pdf

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 195530.htm

Hey!!

Why is there option for "female with both male/female traits"??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_glass_self

why does it have to be any more complicated than this?

i identify as a queer. i really had no idea why. i find that i have behavioral traits of both genders. dress mostly "male" these days, but this is more of a recent development. ive got a secret: everyone is a queer. its just not okay to be one.

for us there is no mirror, or if there is one, its foggy at best. so we are free to be what we become.

The fun thing is there are forums and sites which are nearly all female, even some chan forums and sometimes it takes you a bit to notice that

my mother and her boyfriend once said "a man organizes his money in his wallet". And I mean literally 'don't crumple dollars or other paper currency in your wallet" not some figurative thing about not being financially insolvent (how is that 'being a man')., and said mother mentioned about one of her work friends bitching about her boyfriend having crumpled money in his wallet. How the hell does that deal with "being a man". If I have to put up with stupid BS like that, or respond to being called out to "man up" or whatnot - I'll say 'f**k that' and discard that.

The trouble with making statements about men or women in general is that both groups are too diverse to make any general statements about everybody in the group. Sure, some statements are true more often than not (for example: "Men have shorter haircuts than women")... but how silly to think that because it's true more than half the time, it'll be true all of the time!

I never heard of that.

In my wallet my money must all be right side up and not upside down with larger bills in the back going to smaller bills in the front or it bothers me.

I am female and mainly masculine

girl that loves t-shirts with superheroes and jeans and beanies!

Thank you for clarifying. I thought you were referring to the thread's main topic.

I replied to the first paragraph for context, but your entire post cleared things up for me.

You're welcome, I'm glad I was able to clarify my communication for you.

There's an article on io9 that talks about what I was trying to say:

http://io9.com/5960885/the-myth-of-the-fake-geek-girl

Yeah, I'm not voting, because this is the option I need to choose. And it's missing.

I'm pretty androgynous. It feels natural to me that I'm female, but I have always had stereotypically "male" interests. I am not feminine nor masculine. I'm a mix. I always felt this way, and I wasn't surprised when I got this exact result on that BBC "what gender is your brain?" quiz.