Revisiting autism and the extreme male brain

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Paxfilosoof, you cray cray, stop it. While there is certainly some truth to less girls being diagnosed because less girls demonstrate clinical autistic behavior, your rant is full of misogyny, lack of understanding of statistics, poor logic, and is in general not scientific.

Dear Ganondox,

1. Don't use straw man arguments, by attacking a person, instead of correcting mistakes...
2. It was not my intention to say anything misogyny.
I'm not saying anything mosogyny, I'm only stating that the most likely explanation for a higher incidence in males is not because of misdiagnosis. But because females in general are less autistic.

Second, one explanation for this fact is because the average female has less autistic traits. I know 2 females with asperger syndrome, and 5 males with asperger syndrome.
One of the female was once very socially awkward and today she has a boyfriend and lots of friends.
The other is social awkward, but she is still much more "liked" by most people of school and she is more social then all the males with asperger syndrome.

The reason why I said that females/males issues also effects the diagnosis of autism/asperger, is because much more males are sceptic of psychology and social sciences, and this "social" sciences only flourished some decades ago. 50 years ago most people were very sceptical about psychology and all this other associated sciences, because it was generally accepted that this was creating discrimination. My grandfather who is probably more 'autistic' then me, was a civil engineer, highly respected because he was good in science and logical thinking/mathematics. Nowadays he is not, time changes, and the view of autism is also changing.

But nevermind, I onyl wanted to give you my opinion. You can believe what you want about the sex ratio in autism and my "misogyny" behavior, but i'm actually stating that females were abused in earlier times, and that at this moment males are more likely abused. I can say you are misandry, because you don't take the abuse of males at this time in history serious. But I won't, because I know most people don't see it at this moment in time, but rest assured, in a couple of decades the males will create their own groups where they are fighting against male discrimination. Actually, such groups already exist today, but are much less influential then feminism.

In general people are very skeptical of this statement: "males who are abused", but it's entirely possible that males are/ and can be abbused.

But I will stop posting, because it doesn't help anyone. Go help some more females with autism because they have more "problems", and ignore the hundreds of males (also on this forum in the dating section) who are angry and sad because they still didn't find a girlfriend, and maybe you can wonder why more males are diagnosed with autism or asperger syndrome.

Actually, there are females on this forum complaining why they attract "social stupid males" and "introverts" opposed of the neurotypical males who are "outgoing", and autistic males are "not caring enough" according to this female aspies, the funny thing about that is because these females complain why they don't get a caring "neurotypical husband", while they are themselves "socially uncaring" [btw, I don't agree, I think males/females aspies are also caring, but in different ways, I don't believe in the theory of mind and other empathie theories from Baron-Cohen and his fellow researchers]. The males on this forum at the date section complains about: "how can I have a grilfriend?". Many males here actually didn't have a girlfriend in their life when they're 30 or higher. Most females have at a much younger age, also somethign which has been changed since the sexual revolution. But you don't have to believe me

Do you see the irony of this posts in the dating section?
I suggest you to read posts like this: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt240734.html

btw, my English is not perfect because I only learned a little bit of English during my school time.

p.s. I had a lot of respect of someone who read many articles about autism/asperger and trying to do honest research, but I lost a lot of this respect because you call me mygonist because i have stated many times that males with asperger syndrome/autism are 1) more diagnosed 2) most of the time less interested in social contact/and alcohol drinking parties.

I suggest you to read more articles on male/female mating behavior and why female aspies in general have less problems in finding a sexual relationship.


Yours sincerely,
Paxfilosoof

If you've read some of my older posts, you might now that I very much do not buy the extreme male brain theory. I'm going to make it clear now that I'm still throughly convinced autism is NOT an extreme male brain by any means, and it's my belief that the typical autistic brain is more androgynous than either is typical for either gender, though on the male side of perfect androgyny. I have many many criticisms for the theory, even if the male-female part is cut out, but I'm not going to go into them here. I'll just leave it that some males with autism have been shown to have brains that are in some regard more feminine than some control males, and IMO that stands as a single contrary fact that refutes the hypothesis that autism is the extreme male brain. Rather, I want to talk about how an extreme male brain DOES relate to autism. The most credence I'll give to it is something like this:

If autism were an extreme male brain, this graph would hold:

Which I find to be complete and other BS.

Rather, the most credence I'd give is to a graph more along these lines:

Where someone is in the green area, they are considered autistic. The "Borat" factor (so named because it overshadows Borat's cousin's factor, and because I don't feel like thinking up an actual name) isn't anything specific, it's just whatever makes someone autistic that is independent from masculization of the brain, and is considered the key factor here. However, if you control for the Borat factor, locally autism would appear as an extreme-male brain.

It is my humble opinion that an actual extreme male brain exists, and it apparently displays autistic traits, but IS NOT ACTUALLY AUTISTIC, at least not unless the person happens to have both an extreme male brain AND autism. Studies have shown that "autistic traits" are correlated with higher prenatal testosterone levels, but no evidence has been found for autism itself. Maybe in some cases extreme male brain can manifest as autism to a degree where it's semantics where it's autism or not in the same way Fragile X is sometimes and sometimes not considered a form of autism due to it's well established pathology. Anyway, as implied with "apparently I also believe some of the so-called autistic traits are not actually autistic at all. For example, let's look at a model of an extreme-male mindset and focus on a specific trait.

Whether based on cultural norms or biology, I think that John Wayne's character in The Searchers, Ethan Edwards, stands as model for the extreme male mindset. His character does superficially Aspergers....if you know absolutely nothing about Aspergers and just read that men with it are insensitive. Rather, I'd saying being insensitive isn't actually even a trait of autism, going with the intense world theory, I think a more accurate description is "disconnected", but once the connection is made, there is hypersensitivity, as with everything else. Meanwhile, someone who is merely insensitive will register at a lower threshold, they just won't heed it until it's at higher threshold. See the graph below.



One is just an adjustment of weights, the other suggests a substantial difference in cognition.

Now, assuming the borat factor exists, it's a manner of semantics whether autism is the borat factor and displaying more "male" traits just increases the chance of diagnosis, or the extreme-male traits are traits of autism, but regardless, the fact remains that for two people with the same borat factor, the one with more masculine traits is more likely to diagnosed with autism. This was previously stated, but the new significance here is where it comes with diagnosing girls. Naturally, it could be assumed that women would tend to have male traits then men would, so even if the borat factor is the same across both genders, autism would be diagnosed more in boys. Now, here is where I think things get interesting: in the various studies investigating masculinization in autism by looking at various biological factors of masculinization, they fairly consisting find girls with autism have more masculine traits than controls, but the same does not hold for boys. Sure, at least the aforementioned mentioned with prenatal testosterone linked it to "autistic traits", but many others found the opposite result. For, one study looking brain scans in the very least didn't find more masculinization in the brains of autistic males, while another study looking at faces found that males with Aspergers actually had more feminine faces. Using pseudomath, we one part girls more "masculine" than controls, one part boys more "feminine" than controls, one part boys as masculine as controls, and one part boys more masculine than controls. This leaves us with a 3:1 ratio, which is just a bit less than the actual diagnosis ratio, but as this is pseudomath and in reality the centers of each cluster ought to be denser, the estimate is naturally low.

Just as the fact that on average girls with autistic disorder have more cognitive deficits than males with the same diagnosis suggests that high functioning autism is under diagnosed in girls, I believe this suggests that autism isn't actually a masculinization of the brain of any sort, but rather than just people don't get diagnosed with autism unless they display a certain level of "male traits", while many others still have the same fundamental difference (the borat factor) and just get overlooked because their more feminine traits mask the disorder. People often talked about autism being under-diagnosed in girls because it manifests differently in girls and experts aren't trained to recognize it in girls, but I never really understood how this worked until I considered the borat factor. It should be noted that just because autism is underdiagnosed in girls and it's not an extreme male brain doesn't mean it's not more prevalent in boys, there are countless other explanations for that that can also contribute, like genes found in certain sex chromosomes or a gender being more sensitive to other factors. It's also possible that feminine neurological traits may transform the same aspect so it no longer manifests as a disorder, for example more oxytocin and less vasopressin (as mentioned in this article)may reduce social/behavioral problems in an otherwise autistic neurology, causing it to be considered subclinical.

So, in summary, autism is not an extreme male brain, it's just male traits make a diagnosis of autism more probable as they are a confounding factor.

1. The correct term is ad hominem, and no, I didn't use that, I specifically attacked your argument ("your rant is full of"), and the "cray cray" comment was in jest, not part of the argument.
2. Yes, you did say misogynic things, not that, but your claim that autism is only a problem because society is female dominated, and females with aspergers are all social and whatnot, it's a load of BS that shows you have delusional ideas about women as a whole. Whether or not it was intentional is irrelevant as a bigot doesn't think he is a bigot, he thinks he is right. Let's set this straight, society is definitely NOT female dominated, I don't know where you live, but western culture is very strongly masculine, and I've actually lived in more feminine societies. I think some one autistic would actually fair better in the latter because they are less likely to be hated for being less assertive and whatnot. Only self-pitying MRAs believe that western society is female dominated despite all the evidence to the contrary. I have no respect for MRAs who marginalize the problems girls have ("Go help some more females with autism because they have more "problems"") in order to advance their personal gains, so get your self-pity out of here.

Your personal anecdote, which is probably extremely skewed by your misogynic perception anyway, does not work as statistical evidence. While it is true that girls with high functioning autism tend to be more social, there is absolutely no evidence that they are more interested in "alcohol drinking parties" and they tend to be more impaired in other aspects related to autism, such as various learning disabilities.

"The reason why I said that females/males issues also effects the diagnosis of autism/asperger, is because much more males are sceptic of psychology and social sciences, and this "social" sciences only flourished some decades ago. 50 years ago most people were very sceptical about psychology and all this other associated sciences, because it was generally accepted that this was creating discrimination. My grandfather who is probably more 'autistic' then me, was a civil engineer, highly respected because he was good in science and logical thinking/mathematics. Nowadays he is not, time changes, and the view of autism is also changing." This is a load of bull. Despite recent trends of more women than men getting psychology degrees, it's still a male-dominated field with more men publishing papers and holding positions of authority, and it was even more male-dominated when autism was identified. Autism is not simply being good in science (psychology is, by the way, actually very scientific in methodology, if less so in it's conclusions) and logical thinking/mathematics, in fact most people with autism, even aspergers, are actually worse at math than neurotypicals, the math savants are a minority. There are plenty of other, more reasonable explanations for increasing identification of autism than feminism hating autistic traits, which is simply not true in itself.

"I can say you are misandry, because you don't take the abuse of males at this time in history serious." Actually I do, just MRAs don't focus on real problems men have. There are real problems with sexual abuse not being taken seriously in men, lack of support for parental custody, ect. Not being able to get a girlfriend is not one of those problems, it's not-so-thinly veiled misogyny, blaming women as whole for not dating you. Women actually often get the short stick of the dating game because they expected to be passive, so if they aren't attractive or whatnot, they are out of luck. The fact is rigid courtship expectations hurt both genders.

"I lost a lot of this respect because you call me mygonist" And I never had any respect for you because you are a slimy, using poor reasoning to attempt to absolutely shut out other people's input in order to justify your misogynic views.

"I suggest you to read more articles on male/female mating behavior and why female aspies in general have less problems in finding a sexual relationship." Dafuq does sexual relationships have to with anything? I was never talking about dating or the like, but it seems to be the only thing you can focus on. This shows your bias, you're likely misogynic as the result of virgin rage. In fact, that's extremely obvious by how you focus on dating above all other social problems. There is more to life than dating. Regardless, the explanation is simple: the courtship rituals are different men and women in our society, so social impairments have different effects in courtship. There is no reason to assume that means autistic girls have less impairments because the other hypothesis holds, your reasoning is not logical. Please get the f**k out of my thread because you are derailing it from intelligent conversation, you made your own thread if people are interested in listening to your nonsense so stick to that.