Do aspie males have a harder time than aspie females ?

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XD Welp, that shows me for digging out the soap box too fast.. *gets a fork and eats my innane rant above for dinner*

Hard to read sarcasm I must say. Anywho...

/me raises hand for being female, for stuttering badly, for talking in either a monotone or completely comical tone (no in between), for talking too much, and for not realizing I have talked too much until it is too late.

Lotsa "ums," and "uhs." It's horrible. Like pulling teeth.

And I would like to reiterate that I think some of the differences in symptomology noted (though often disputed of course) in AS men and women might lie in the fundamental differences between a male and female brain. Structures are different. NT women (and I do not know whether this has been studied in AS women) are able to "be" in both hemispheres of their brain at once, while NT men are restricted to one area at a time. I cannot help but think a reflection of this fundamental difference might rear its head in Asperger symptomology as well, even if one finds it is only slightly.

But it also has much to do with WHICH AS women and men one is contrasting. Because studying a LF-AS male to a HF-AS female will produce inaccurate results. The levels of functioning must be taken into account as well as the expected ratio of occurance within the general population (not just talking about those people diagnosed), since Aspergers is dx about 10:1 males to females. However, the occurance rate is suspected to not be quite so high. Which I suspect is one of the main points of this discussion.

Generally, males (all males, not just AS) will be more aggressive and act out more, while females (a pure generalization mind you) become more wallflowers. This can be perhaps due, as noted earlier, to simply the DIFFERENCE between males and females in general. Hence, more AS males are sent in for assessment/testing.

Whatcha think?

I agree with you. Males are the aggressive ones and females are more for language and communication.

It might be part of it, but it's not that simple.

I was a female who was considered highly aggressive. This along with other unfeminine traits got me considered to be doing things that were worse than boys who did the same things, and I got more extreme punishment. This is not at all to say women have it worse or men have it worse (which I consider somewhat pointless), just that it's not that simple that boy autistics are more aggressive and girl autistics are more wallflowery. I have seen for the same reason, boys who are wallflowery because of autism get picked on for being unmanly or something. I think autistic people tend to defy social expectations of our genders and that causes problems.

I do think there are likely to be differences between male and female brains. Also there are genetic factors which could make some autistic traits more expressed in males even if the gene was the same in the male and female (would take a female having it on both X chromosomes for it to be as blatant, or something like that). I'm the only autistic woman in my family that I know of despite a huge extended family full of autistic people.

But I also think there are autistic women who fit the male-oriented autism stereotype pretty well. We might be the women that are more likely to be diagnosed. But I am definitely an autistic woman who fits most of the fairly male-oriented stereotype of autism.

Well, I must say that my last post was a generalization, seeing as how it is hard to make anything else. I do agree and have heard of some of the parents' stories in the parents' posting forum of aggressive females. But I suspect there are also aggressive NT females. It is simply hard to tell, and all one can do currently is to speculate.

A part of Aspergers/Autism which is sex-related (as in chromosomes) is a possibility.

And currently, I, myself, probably fit more of the male stereotype of male ASers. However, I was not aggressive at all when I was a child and found it easier to be wallflowerish. And plus it seems that even if the diagnositic rates were more true to the occurance rates of females with AS, it genuinely seems that there are simply more male ASers out there, as it is with Autistic Disorder of about 4:1.

I guess we can truly speculate till the cows come home, but until one of us gets into the actual research of it, studying as large a population as one can, there's probably little else point in guessing.

One cannot know what one does not know.

What about in school situations? How do your experiences compare?
I'm curious to know how my school experiences compare with other members, then maybe I'll consider talking about mine if I can organize my thoughts about it properly.

Are you refering to violent autistic tantrums at school?
(Feel free not to comment if this is a sensitive matter)

Of course not. Society naturally looks down on indipendent free thinking women. If you happen to be good looking the people who would ask you out wouldn't be able to look past your madness, and for those who are not as atractive, they are just seen as dregs.

I was told by one of my doctors that it is either a family thing that comes from the fathers side, otherwise it is just a spontaneous or unexplained development of AS.

Personally I wasn't so sure about that, as there is not really anyone (to my knowledge) on my dads side who seems to have AS type qualities, yet my uncle (my mothers brother) is probably AS.

But I guess that could be a coincidence- thats what my doctor assured me at least.

School situations, I was bullied by both boys and girls. I fought back and always got in trouble, whereas the bullies didn't. In fact I got in trouble even when I didn't fight back. Girl bullies in particular could pull off this thing where they cried very sweetly and cutely at the idea that they could have possibly been accused of doing anything to me, and they got let off the hook for it. I don't know quite how the boy bullies stayed out of trouble, but they did. So I was considered an aggressive troublemaker.

In later years I was not in school (although technically should have been) and it was a similar situation: In this case the bullies were institutional staff and the price of fighting back was being thrown on the ground and tied down. (Of course that was also often the price of not fighting back, so...) So I got this label of severely aggressive and the staff, despite at least one attempt to kill me (stopped by a staff person who didn't work there), got no such labels. And I spent much of my time tied down and/or so heavily drugged I couldn't think or move (or stay awake) very well (basically physically or chemically restrained at all times -- I had to wait till I was unmedicated to think clear enough to get away from some of the people who were doing this to me).

I was "passive" in the social sense -- I didn't make social approaches, and I was and am very passive in that regard. But I was not "passive" in most other senses of the word.

/me knows an AS mother married to an NT father with an AS child

Interesting...

That happened to me in the 6th grade. A girl that was bigger and older than me started a fight with me and I had to forcibly defend myself. She cried and made a scene, we both got suspended but the school allowed her family to press charges. I was barely too young to prosecute, so it just sat on my record for 7 years until the Statute of Limitations ran out.

Anbuend, you seem to have lived out an aspect of life with Autism that few are familiar with. In fact, the only time hear about people in the institutions is when someone dies of abuse. From what you stated in your last post, you probably would have been able to improve your legal protections if you had been able to go out and commit a violent crime, which I think says alot about how screwed up the laws are. I've wondered about what goes on in those places and if you were to write about it (if it's not too painful), maybe even a autobiography, I'd read it. That way, something constructive would come from this thread.

ok.



lol, high horses. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa hahahah.



I've found the opposite to be true for many.

Yes, some girls can be aggressive, which goes against usual people's views.

Often not even then, because often such deaths are passed off as a previously-undetected heart defect or seizure.



I probably won't write one, but I can direct you at a few books and articles. I'll start another thread though to avoid clogging this one with a long bibilography.

Society should not be so damn harsh to Aspies.