Variations in the Presentation of AS Women

Post Reply New Topic

I haven't experienced anorexia or bulimia. However, I have always had issues with food: tastes, textures. It is mostly sensory.

Psychology was an intense interest. I think it was part of my innate need to systemise, not due to other influences. I had a deep desire to understand and make sense of the human world and how my own mind related to it. This was in addition to my deep interest in physics etc.

I haven't experienced "motherly" women making me some kind of project. I very rarely encounter women. This is probably because they are a minority in the physical sciences.

I was never a truant at school. I enjoyed the structure of lessons. The unstructured time was a major problem. I was not often bullied, but almost completely ignored throughout my school life, waiting out unstructured time in some corner alone. I didn't interact with the others and lacked the innate ability to do so. I was a mouse and barely got noticed. I was labelled as the extremely quiet one, and people were comfortable because that placed almost the entirety of my personhood into a box they could understand and therefore not dwell upon.

I would switch "motherly" for "controlling". They do try to control us but we tend to rebel against them and there you see the origins of conflict. I never liked the idea that someone was controlling me. This made me a bit contrary, when I realized this was happening. At the same time I felt a sense of panic and fear because I believed there was nothing I could do and I was in the hands of some terrible tyrant and would suffer an equally terrible fate. I didn't have a clue about how to get other kids to treat me the same way they treated others.

So, this is why, IRL I am very wary of meeting new people. I think what will the end result be? Anything like all the other end results? because it seems like it always ends up the same and it never seems like a good experience.

Because I am aware when you meet someone for the first time, someone you will inevitably meet again, they get a first impression of you, go home, mull you over with friends and family. Then their personal collective will decide how they will treat you. Will they advise whomever to treat you like an idiot, or ignore you? Ignoring isn't a big deal to me but nearly everything else is. I want to be treated in a straight forward way with respect and not viewed as a doormat and I would do the same in return and everything else is petty games to me that I don't have the patience for.

The problem is some people do not realize how sensitive we really are. They do things that we cannot handle and then we want to distance ourselves and get away then they say we are not validating them. I would validate someone who was nice to me and straightforward. But if someone is going to treat me like a doormat I am not going to validate them. I will become remote instead.

I don't know why but one thing that used to irritate me was when my mother demanded I put my clothes in the dryer. It's not like I dislike doing laundry. It's not that bad of a chore. Better than dishwashing or floor mopping. For some reason that one demand I would get upset over and I would say "I'll do it later" and my mom would get mad and start scooping my damp clothes out of the washer and onto the dusty floor which I would get more distressed about because then my clothing got dirty again when they were just washed.
I have no idea why it was so difficult for me to jump up and put my clothing in the washer right when she demanded I do it but never wanted to.

I don't really forget. I like to do laundry. I just don't like to be expected to immediately jump up and put my clothes in the dryer just because my mom wanted to put hers in the washer. The strange thing is, my mother decided she was going to pretty much stop taking care of me when I was still at a relatively young age. This is why I don't get it when people say that Aspies are bad for NTs. My mother is totally neurotypical, with a pretty bad temper and she was very difficult to get along with.
So, my mom had her clothes and my clothes seperated and I was in charge of all my clothes and she was in charge of her clothes and if I wanted clean clothes I had to wash them myself. See what I mean about mothering? Since when do NTs want to mother me? Never. lol. My mother weaseled out of her mothering responsibilities when I was around eight, I guess. She started me cooking my own meals and doing my own laundry, then. I had to change my own sheets, clean my own room (which I didn't do that often). She tried to get me to clean the entire house for her on a regular basis but I flatly refused. Most of the time I didn't do much of what she wanted and she would get angry over it. She had a part time job after her full time job, got home after five every evening and had an extensive list of things for me to do after school. She would call and nag me to do them from work.

She went to see a counselor who told her she was expecting too much from me so she came to the conclusion I should get a choice what to clean, the living room or kitchen and she would clean the other, which she hardly ever did, and I would get to go horseback riding on the weekend if I cleaned the kitchen.
She was kinda like Joan Crawford only she wasn't a famous star.

I never got that with my family, beign a family of 7 people... My parents always did everything themselves and preferred us to not interfere with laundry, as this made it less time and money effective when 6 other people need clothes washed. For cooking, so much more cost effective for one person to make one meal for everyone, and my dad loves cooking, so we wouldn't be allowed to learn to cook, because that was how he destressed. Cleaning is where we got screwed, thankfully there were 3 other kids old enough to clean, so it got evenly distrobuted, and I got first choice because I was way too "picky" with what I did, for example, I can't wash dishes due to sensory issues, and they never let me dry, because I would make it hell for whoever washed as noone in the house did a job that met my standards... Vaccuum was too loud, but it was the easiest thing to do and I could bare it long enough to do that chore. So vaccumming became my duty. I never did really clean my room until I had to find something... I think that is executive dysfunction there though. my room has always been a mess, and I intend to clean it, I just never get around to doing it... As for chores I like, I like cleaning grills (like McDonald's style grills) and flat top stoves, and counters, and anything of the nature, as the motion is just so calming and it feels good.

I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and she is a very social person, very eager to be socially involved, present well, be friendly towards people, to not the do anything inappropriate.

I knew that she always told me to swing my arms, look ahead which I adopted out of necessity to stop being told this and be scolded for not doing it. It took years.

She also told me to look others in the eye, shake hands on my own, shake them a certain way, greet others on my own, wave, ask questions, answer to questions, but despite being told this every single day several times, I never picked up on it. I didn't actively resist this, I couldn't do this or didn't believe I had to do this because I didn't understand.

I was just as ignoring of others, later then totally clueless why others were acting stupid about my autistic behaviour and that they had expectations.

All realisations such as that people thought on their own or bullied me also originated in myself, based on my conclusions.

It's strange that while I grew up for many years under the influence of a very socially orientated person, I just didn't adopt much of it.

Maybe I present differently because people with AS are supposedly active even as kids, seeing out social interaction, talking to people even as kids. I didn't. People didn't know me.

I do know how others perceived me though as they often told so.

At first they perceived me as shy as I did not talk to others and seemed to be involved in their social stuff because I didn't care about being liked or disliked and others silly relationships issues. I was perceived as very insecure too, because I would start crying or get angry for 'no reason' when routines where changed.

So far I went unnoticed. Apparently none of this concerned teachers. There was a kid with an official PDD too and I was even sometimes told to not 'act like him'. Huge ignorance.

Some later I was still perceived shy and insecure for the above reasons. I was also perceived as emotionally disturbed, because I would now talk to people, usually to tell them off, I would get excessively angry at everybody trying to tease me and I talked back at teachers a lot and basically broke lots of social rules that I either thought was stupid or that I didn't yet know of. Because of that they also thought that I was learning-disabled despite that before my grades had allowed me to get to this most difficult German school form.

I was totally obviously not your average 10yo and all teachers were very aware of it.

Yet, while there was a boy who was presenting similar to me with the difference that he was cared for due to the diagnosis also at my school, taught by the same teachers that taught me, but nobody noticed AS in me.

No idea why?

Seriously, could it have been any more obvious?

I hung out with very sociable friends at primary school but none of their social skills rubbed off on me! My brother is also NT and socially very successful but growing up with him taught me nothing, expect how to be a smartass of course .

Skimming though the whole topic I feel a bit of out of place. Sometimes I think it's the same with WP as a whole too.

Most of you females are older than me. Where's the girls and young women with autism?

Or is it that usually, females are just discovered or discover themselves really late?

Or are they not interested in the Internet much? All my female non-autistic friends who're are also about my age go on the Internet a lot though.

It's interesting.

Sora: your story about your AS not being noticed was interesting to me. I wonder if it was because you were shy and didn´t talk much? And people have these gender expectations, girls are "expected" to be shy and quiet. My guess is that´s one of the reasons AS in girls is not picked up on.

Then there are the other AS girls and women who are very direct and tend to dominate conversations. I can tell you from personal experience that people HATE it when females are like this! But rather than suspecting anything, people just act horrified if you are like this.

I, actually, did both: I was shy as a child, then decided not to be shy anymore when I was a teenager; then I became loud. And now I can be either one, depending on how I feel in the moment.