fight for truth: fight simon baron-cohen

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/apr/17/research.highereducation

the first few intro paragraphs explain me (males read computer books, hifi stuff, etc)

but the rest of the article doesnt describe me at all.

One one hand, I am irritated by the polarization of the sexes inherent in this theory.
On the other, I am a female aspie, and genderqueer as hell.

Maybe there are different types of ASDs with slightly different causes/symptoms? Kinda like neurosis category of the past. I personally find "the Intense World Hypothesis" best fits me and the drugs I used/abused (sedatives) also helped me because they brought my system down. The problem I have with this perspective/view is I can see how many individuals with just anxiety disorders (I do suffer from anxiety) might also feel that this describes them, I think?

"The Intense World Syndrome suggests that the autistic person is an individual with remarkable and far above average capabilities due to greatly enhanced perception, attention and memory. In fact it is this hyper-functionality, which could render the individual debilitated. This perspective of hyper-functionality offers new hope for pharmacological as well as behavioral treatments. For example, while most the commonly prescribed medication try to increase neuronal and cognitive functioning, we conclude that the autistic brain needs to be calmed down, learning needs to be slowed, and cognitive functions need to be diminished in order to re-instate proper functionality."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 01-077.pdf

I've been told I have an extreme male brain and I am female.

I'm more logical, don't show a lot of emotion and have spatial difficulties. I even have straight and sharp facial features, broad shoulders and a deep voice.

Just because one description of autism doesn't fit you doesn't mean it won't fit someone else.

I think Kon is onto something there. Oh yeah Intense World syndrome. That explains the old me. I've become less empathetic lately.

Anyway I think the extreme male brain in autism is more common in autistics than it is male NT's.

I know where you're coming from, and my feeling also is that Baron-Cohen has some things right (or close to right) and some things wrong. For example, I think there's a very big difference between a Theory of Mind impairment and a lack of empathy. For example I've always been the one who gets most upset when an animal gets hurt or dies (that's called empathy), whereas I can talk incessantly about a subject of interest without paying much attention to whether others are interested or want to contribute or change topic (that's called Theory of Mind impairment). The two shouldn't be bundled together and that's where a lot of autism research goes wrong.

The nice thing is that Baron-Cohen does come across as somewhat open minded about alternative theories. For example, when the Intense World Theory was publicized, Baron-Cohen was interviewed by various news agencies and his opinions on the work (some of which suggest the exact opposite of his own work) were quite gracious, e.g.

"There is a lot of evidence for sensory hypersensitivity," says Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. "

"Baron-Cohen too sees many positives. While he disagrees with some aspects of the idea, overall, he says: "The attraction of the research is to find basic differences between the autistic and typical brain, out of which higher cognitive differences such as in systemising may develop. In this view, the higher cognitive differences are secondary to these more basic sensory differences. This is a view I have a lot of sympathy with."

I could totally understand any female feeling irritated at the suggestion that they have an extreme male brain! If these researchers could just be autistic for a day I'm certain they would stop coming up with such bizarre statements.

One thing needs to be understood here: Baron-Cohen has no credibility amongst many researchers, because he is mostly ignorant of a large body of gender research that shows (very clearly) that discrimination and societal expectations are the main reason for women's underrepresentation in 'male' fields.

I just finished reading his book on that. I thought it was incredibly interesting, precise, honestly conducted, and that I related to to it in almost all ways.

Reduced Empathy doesn't mean reduced Emotion. And reduced Empathy is, indirectly, part of the diagnostic criteria for Autism/Aspergers.

I'm wondering if the Original Poster read his book? He clearly states a number of times that he is NOT saying precisely what you are angry in thinking he said.

It is important to understand the language of psychologists when reading their stuff. Their words have very precise meanings. And sometimes they invent new meanings in specific contexts. These meanings can differ from normal English. This holds very true here.

Empathy: When I have asked others about empathy they answer as though I asked about compassion. Psychologists do not mean "compassion" when they say "empathy." A compassionate person can lack a psychologist's definition of empathy. Their claims about empathy and aspies seem true in my experience, but to the average Joe who doesn't know what psychologists mean by the word "empathy," they get the wrong message.

Extreme male brain theory: This poorly theory makes sense to me. He identified a true gender difference between males and females. Yes, brain gender differences do exist in the overall gender populations even though there are individual exceptions. It's a generality, not an absolute. Getting past the religious faith in modern unscientific egalitarianism is a barrier for many to understand this.

He then found that aspies of both genders generally are equal in this one single measure, showing no gender differences and landing on the extreme male end. That does not mean that aspies always score extremely male in all other areas of the mind that have gender differences, just that one measure. Hence why it is poorly named, and unfortunately it does give the average Joe the wrong message. A better name would have been the "Extreme Systemizing Brain Theory."

I am skeptical of if this is the cause of autism, but it seems like a theory that explains a valid correlation. My guess is that the intense world theory is closer to the mark of finding a cause, but not the cause. I say that because I suspect that there are multiple causes that have the same or similar results. Heck, maybe the Extreme Male Brain Theory is indeed one of many valid causes. If so then it's not fair to dismiss it, but it also is a valid criticism to say, "That doesn't apply to me!" because maybe you have a different cause.

Yeah, especially since male and female brains don't differ drastically enough that we could call one way of thinking "typically male" or "typically female".

Yes, it's true that males tend to be "systemizers", etc., but this is partially due to culture, and the part that isn't due to culture is actually only a mild tendency, not a drastic difference--something like the way males average out in the 49th percentile and females in the 51st percentile in language; a very slight difference that really doesn't characterize males and females nearly as much as we think it does.

So if the "extreme male brain" theory is true (I doubt it because of all the autistics who are extremely empathic), then "extreme male brain" is a bad name for it. It would be better called "extreme systemizer" or something of that sort.

The issue I have with calling it "extreme male", on first hearing, is that autistics naturally don't pick up the culture around us, and so female autistics (and male autistics) don't pick up the cultural ideas that we are supposed to be gender-typed one way or another. (Well, we pick them up to some degree; but not to the degree that NTs do.) This means that suddenly all that cultural difference between males and females decreases drastically and the people who are comparing us are comparing not just the effects of autism but the difference between the culture around us and what happens when you grow up affected to a much smaller degree by that culture.

If you want to characterize the autistic brain, you're just making it much more complicated for yourself by putting gender into the picture. Gender issues are complicated enough as-is without adding autism; and autism's complicated enough without adding gender too. We simply don't know enough about the differences between men and women to apply that idea to any other field yet. And he's using "extreme male brain" as though everybody knows what a male brain is and how it works?