Females with aspergers/autism

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I found this: http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... 1d2ab3.JPG

and this: http://www.help4aspergers.com/pb/wp_a58 ... 83e339.JPG

Do you agree that there are differences between how autism or aspergers presents in females and males?

I am interested in seeing more data on any male and female differences as other than a few sources here and there most of what I have read have been based on how it presents in males.

Yes, I do believe there are differences.

For one, I believe males are much more likely to "act out" in an aggressive manner towards others in response to stress, while females tend to internalize stress and direct it towards themselves.

My shrink told me my ability to internalize so much stress was nothing short of astounding.

I suspect it's one of the primary reasons females don't get DXed at the same rate as males: squeaky wheels get the grease.

Yep. I think there are differences.

My psychologist and psychaitrist are both astounded at my ability to hold everything together outwardly considering the hurricane of dysfunction that occurs internally.

I would like to see more research into this area, actually. Maybe it's time to go get myself a PhD in abnormal psych!

first of all, both those website describe me very well. it's like they're talking about me, and i find that very nice yet somehow a bit spooky.
second, a female will hide her syndrome better than a male. girls don't like drawing attention to themselves. and there's this feeling, before diagnosis anyway. you feel you're not what a woman is supposed to be. you're cold, not motherly, don't like children, unfriendly. girls can feel there's something wrong with them because they don't fill the expectation of society and family. and there's shame. i always thought if anyone ever found out about my pacing and flipping my fingers i'll die from shame. the diagnosis helps a lot. and there's this horrible feeling, too, of being dependent and unable to do what others are doing, due to slow processing and poor motor skills. males may be more confident about it, less sensitive. also, you can get bullied and i think aspie girls are more likely to be hurt, attacked, maybe even murdered. we don't know when someone is our friend and when someone is out to get us. we don't understand the games people play and don't know how to play our own back. don't know how to put people in their places using words, because we have poor self expression and lose our temper. every aspie girl should learn self defense.

I hardly see how ALL of those things are female traits, as I identify with quite a few of them.
Though, I could understand some of them.
Then again, I am a rare case, and identify with female traits in a lot of other ways too.

I agree with all of the "female AS" traits except for Tony Atwood's belief that females have less obscure special interests. While some of my special interests have always been "normal" interests just at an extreme intensity and focus, I've always had special interests that aren't common in the general public. I've always been a science geek, for instance. What I think is the biggest difference between females and males with AS is the part about males acting out more and being more "obvious." I slipped through the cracks for many years, because people always do think I'm able to function based off of years of learning how to hide my problems. Honestly, I think males with AS have more difficulty in childhood and adolescence, but females have more difficulty in adulthood. None of my limitations ever really held me back until I was an adult and expected to be able to do things like drive and handle job stresses.

I would say 95% of those traits sound like they are describing me. From what I have seen, most males with AS are typically more agressive, less emotional, and often very quiet. Of course this doesn't apply to all males, just speaking from experience.

I don't know any autistic people in real life, so it's hard for me to judge whether males and females manifest the traits differently. For me, a big difference between myself and most people, autistic or not, is that I have a blunt affect during casual social interactions and a cartoon character affect when I get hyperfocused talking about one topic in a one-to-one, e.g. conversation, or one-to-many interaction, e.g. lecture. Compared to me during these times, NTs behaving socially appropriately all have blunt affect. Either way, my non-verbal cues don't adhere to the standard set and don't convey the standard social information. Most of my gestures are visual aids to my words, so they are meant for communication, but about the topic instead of social information.

For the rest of the criteria, I don't see much of a difference between myself, an autistic female, and autistic males.

Yes.

That said I would say that I have lady parts and lean toward the male portrait of AS.

LEAN. Not quite as extreme.

That describes me, almost perfectly. It's scary and relieving at the same time.

I don't know any diagnosed males, but I suspect my brother may also have some traits, except he has never acted out violently as far as I know. He tends to be socially awkward too. Neither of us was ever told or tested that we may have any degree of autism.

There are differences between NT males and NT females, so I don't see why there shouldn't be differences between Aspie males and Aspie females.

I have most of these traits with the exception that I love dressing up and doing girly things such as cooking

i agree. of course this will not apply to ALL females with asperger's, but i think it rings true for most. i dated a guy with AS in high school. he had more trouble telling when other people were upset than i did. on the other hand, he was better at telling when i was upset than i was. he was more likely to act on triggers than i was. he would get really pissed off and act on it. i would get pissed off and sort of shut down. i saw a psychologist for a while not to long ago (has been discontinued due to lack of transportation) an she commented that i make myself appear less severely affected by asperger's than i actually am. she felt that that played into my high levels of anxiety and depression. i am very VERY accommodating for others. once someone tells me that something i have done or said is weird or has made them uncomfortable or anything, i immediately make a lot of conscious effort to never do those things in public again. i appear, more or less, perfectly normal to people. they see the anxiety and that is it. it's when i slip up and the facade disappears for a moment that people (who arent familiar with AS) begin to suspect that something is amiss. on the other hand, people that are familiar with it spot it right off. one of my college professors figured it out upon our first meeting. same with the psychologist. that was why she made the comment about me coming off as much less affected than i am.

basically i think that females are better at faking it and blending into the background than our male counterparts.