Variations in the Presentation of AS Women

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Another thread I read recently inspired me to start this one. It appears that many AS women and girls seem to present differently from AS men and boys; however, it seems that some AS women/girls present in quite the same way as the traditional, male version. What are the reasons for these differences? Is it personality? Neurological brain differences between the sexes- (sometimes, not always)? Or social conditioning?

I guess one of the differences is that many girls learn coping strategies to hide their social deficits. In my case, I got a lot of social training, mostly by my neurotypical mother. In addition to that, I was raised to "be a girl"; in other words, it was assumed that I would think and act in certain ways. I noticed that my upbringing was different from my brothers. So, my question is the following: do some of these differences in female presentation have to do with social conditioning? How many of you who present in a milder, "female" way have neurotypical parents who raised you a certain way? Did they give you social training, or empathy training? How many of you who present more like the way boys do have AS-ish parents? Or parents who, for one reason or another, left you to yourself- (i.e., didn´t condition you or try to cultivate your behavior in a certain direction?)

This may have nothing to do with it, or may be just a small factor. Who knows...I´m just curious to find out.

Men may also give opinions, if you want.

my mother is very ASD-ish and in her late 70's readily admits this now. She will not say she has AS. She is very analytical in her thinking.
I thought i had a different presentation - but the more i look into it and the more i receive feedback from others, the more i am told I am very ASDish.
My special interest is arts related and not teckie-based or maths/science inclined.
I have poor eye contact and when i do look at facew which i can do when i know people, i look at their teeth. I monologue> i do not have a flat affect but have an almost rubber and over-expressive face with expressions that do not match my internal state of being or feeling or lack thereof.

I got social skills training in a rehab at age 36. I can fudge it. BUt it is exhausting and most people do not interest me.
In some ways as a child I was feral. I looked and acted like a boy and dressed like one. Most of teh cues for behaviour were taken from other children and i would try to mimic. I never felt connected at all, even with people who felt close or really emotionally linked with me. Out of sight and out of mind, for me, largely.

My ASD psych said he knew within half a session I was on the spectrum - that it was very obvious to him. But he is trained.

I have highly advanced verbal skills - true big word round about ways monologuing with fairly poor reciprocity.
as a child, the whole feeling of people talking to me sociall y was unbearable and still is. But back then it was like knives going through me - or like the Tin Drum Boy in the Gunther Grass novel ---- just wanting to SCREAM to make them stop engaging with me. My whole adolescence and twenties felt like that too. One big internal SCREAM of pain re engaging with other people.

I did however learn some social skills from coming from a big family wtih 8 kids - forced into it. hectic and hideous. I am told i was the invisible brainiac who was a tomboy who had hysterical outbursts and meltdowns.

THe fact it is a spectrum means some are more mild and some are more severe.
I need nearly every day alone to survive in the world. Others work in the world and engage albeit with difficulty.

I just know I have an ASD and have been dx'ed. that's good enough for me

I think I'm more along the masculine side of the spectrum than feminine. Both of my parents are probably aspies, or at least exhibit a lot of aspie characteristics. I also have two older brothers and no sisters. There really wasn't much hope for me, as far as becoming an example of femininity and social prowess .

The opinion of a man that don't know if he has AS:

Perhaps there are two (or more) different (perhaps unrelated?) medical conditions that are both being diagnosed as "Asperger's Syndrome"? One type that is much more usual in men than in women; other type that is more balanced

If I have AS, I will be probably a-man-with-"feminine"-AS: I am much more interested in issues like politics and psychology than technical issues; I like imaginary fiction (movies style Harry Potter or Narnia); and I am more of the daydreaming-type than of the repetitive-obsessive type.

My NT mom was my personal trainer for proper behavior and etiquette, and I became very good at pretending even when it didn't feel natural to me. My mom and I were at odds my entire childhood because I never fit in with her "domestic goddess" sensibilities and her girly social interests. I did have some girly interests - especially dolls and dance - and horses, if you count that as a typical girl interest.

But I was an outdoorsy tomboy and hated girls' club type stuff (same as I am now!) My closest friend in high school was a boy... and my only friends for the past 30 years consist of my two husbands (not at the same time ). I've always related better to males than females.

In addition to Mom-conditioning, I also was a human tape recorder (what I now know is echolalia) from the time I began talking... and also became obsessed with certain TV shows and movies, which I acted out over and over. I took this further as a teenager and studied acting, joining the high school thespian club. I now realize how much I must've learned simply through pretending to be other people my whole childhood.

My father was AS/HFA and was a distant, cold mystery.

Neither parent was a fan of free expression and they both taught me how to be quiet. That, along with the girly social conditioning, helped me keep a lot to myself and very effectively hide/disguise a LOT over the years.

Millie, I understand that feeling; and often feel that way myself. I'm not sure if I have felt it to the same degree as you seem to, although who can say? When I was younger, before I had any understanding of ASDs, I knew that I preferred to be alone. Looking back, I often felt that it was tremendously draining when people tried to engage me socially, and sometimes quite irritating, but it generally wasn't to the point of an internal SCREAM. Sometimes, but not generally. I was often told that I was "cranky", which may well have been because I wanted people to just leave me alone and stop talking to me. I'm not sure, though. And I'm not sure if I would have been able to say to myself, "It makes me feel drained and irritated when people try to socialize with me". I don't think I had that good of an understanding of myself. I was just vaguely aware that a lot of other people seemed to not require the alone-time that I required, and I thought they were strange because of it.

I want to ask you, though---now that you are older and you understand AS, you are able to put that thought (which I quoted above) into words, and tell it to yourself. But at what point in your life where you able to understand that having people talk to you socially makes you want to scream--the connection between what is happening and how you are feeling? Did you feel that way, and then, at some point come to understand the cause of the feeling? Or did you always know that the "wanting to scream" was caused by "people talking socially" to you?

Not sure if this would really answer the question.....

I was not given very much social training...I really was very much allowed by my parents to be how I was ..even though all the older relatives..and my younger sister..and some of my parents friends (and the school teachers and councellors) were quite insistant that there was something very wrong with me. Growing up my immediate family was very artsy and open-minded and liberal, but also very depressed...because we were poor and there was lots of fighting...My mom is VERY ASish..and also had pretty severe depression...My dad is not exactly NT...but does not fit the Aspie mold the way my mom does.

I grew out of a lot of my more severe awkwardness as I entered adolescence...and learned to compensate on my own through trial and error....

I never ever really "fit in"...but I got to where I could function with other people to a degree...by Jr. High..

rawwrrr...I am blanking out on the rest of this post....sorry...

I remain unconvinced. I still think you have to meet the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV to get the Asperger's diagnosis regardless of your gender. In other words, if you have the social skills and you have friends your own age and are not having a hard time socially, you do not have AS.
I'm not sure I understand this 'masking' thing. In a way it's not fair because it's like saying us girls can make friends and be accepted if we wanted to...if we just mimmick those skills and it is definitely NOT that easy. If it were that easy we wouldn't be having the problems we have.
That is just how I see it. You cannot learn a few social skills and mask AS, regardless of gender. It's not possible. You have to be impaired socially or it's not AS.

There is PDD-NOS which is like AS in a way, but you have less trouble socializing maybe? Which makes me wonder, maybe there are two different diagnosis, PDD-NOS and AS. There's also a Sensory Processing Disorder that doesn't interfer as much with your social life.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 17 May 2009, 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I had six brothers, and since I interacted more with them in my formative years growing up, I had a lot of their traits. My mother wasn't a good role model; the most she cared about was that I didn't behave inappropriately when wearing a dress. I later had good role models in other women that I met, such as my manager at one job that I held, or movie stars, etc. By imitating them, I learned to come across more feminine, if it suited my purpose.

Last edited by hartzofspace on 17 May 2009, 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I should think that if someone does not have deficits in social competencies, they cannot have AS.


I am wondering the same as a result of your following comments.

No it is not.
I can "mask" but I do not make friends easily and am very often not accepted at all. More significantly during childhood I was very often excluded by all my peers at any one time, and teased and bullied persistently.

It is possible to mask the fact that one is illiterate, this does not mean that illiterate people could be literate if they merely wanted to be.

People are not going about the place with a comprehensive idea of what AS is and comparing other folk to this. At least two psychiatrists rejected the possibility that I even could have AS (and between them they had met two children with this condition a few times), but a specialist immediately spotted it. As did someone whose sister has AS.

Most people are not familiar with AS; among those who think they are, many are simply familiar with a caricature-like stereotype. So it actually does not take a great deal to "mask" AS to the extent that it is not recognizable as AS to the overwhelming majority of people. That does not mean an AS specialist would fail to recognize the condition in such people, but rather that such people are significantly less likely to ever see such a specialist.

It also does not necessarily entail having so much as a single friend.

Whoa, I think darby54 and I grew up in the same household. Social butterfly mom, AS/HFA dad, and lots and lots of training on how to be quiet.

Now that I have a son who has an ASD diagnosis (PDD for now) I can absolutely see huge differences in how it manifests. He is loud, sensory-seeking, and his stims are very obvious to those around him. His tantrums are much stronger than mine ever were. I am sure because I would have never heard the end of it from my mother, who laments about how hard it was to raise me, given that she never understood why I was so withdrawn.

That's because they lack the expertise and cannot accurately diagnose it. When we were kids we both experienced the typical situation with AS for both girls and boys and if teachers were aware they would have suspected you had AS because of your inability to make friends. Kids that are bullied and not accepted are the ones I wonder about. Could that be a strong indication they have AS, regardless of gender? A lot of the times non biological excuses are made.

I don't think girls "mask" their AS, I think teachers do not know what to look for so girls remained undiagnosed. It's teachers who can identify possible AS and other conditions because they see how kids interact with their peers and can tell if there's problems. They are supposed to be trained to detect such conditions, usually in pre school, kindergarten or 1st grade. If they know what to look for, they can catch it early.

From what I've read it sounds like Attwood is trying to vanilla up the criteria for girls, making us semi popular (because we can successfully mimmick our mothers and other women) and talented with other girls mothering us which is sooooo different from what I went thru.

I did not experience niceness and mothering from other girls, they didn't like me and were often antagonistic. I didn't mimmick my mother's good social skills. Instead I mimmicked all the behaviours I learned from other kids and sometimes used them indiscriminately because I didn't know any better which did nothing to endear me to other kids most the time.

I think it's common with AS and kids considered for this diagnosis should all share these types of occurances in their lives so there's consistency in the diagnostic criteria. In other words, we all pretty much share the same set of challenges because we all share the same diagnosis.

I think the more succesful masking is a partly result of a larger 'script' file which girls acquire in the process of growing up.

I think that--in general--girls get a whole lot more social conditioning while boys are allowed far more latitude in behavior... after all, boys will be boys.

It's been noted in several places that girls will often stand and observe a situation before entering, thereby 'filming' appropriate behavior and thus have a larger 'script' file to draw from. The techie/trekkie expression limits social interaction, preventing boys from building up an extensive file.

It's also more acceptable for girls to be shy and sensitive, people are kinder and more willing to go along with that. Boys may be ostracized and teased for being queer, a pansy, a wuss... again reducing any socializing.

Also, the NT female brain is different from the NT male brain in how it receives and processes info... so it only make sense that there would also be gender differences in ASD expression.

I can fake well for a while, I'm considered outgoing and funny--initially. But I have 1 friend other than my partner... folks keep writing me off, blowing up at me, forgetting to invite me to parties after knowing me for a while.

I've recently been Dx as moderate AS... today we just recognized another trait... perseveration. I have a profoundly autistic brother (rock, rock, rock... uh, uh, uh) and I'll bet good money my mother was AS... rude, hostile, distant, didn't like bright lights, meltdowns, and had one really weird friend. It's hard to know if my dad was ASD, just alcoholic, or profoundly depressed from living with my mother.

Neat topic. My dad in my mid teens tried to stear me into stop playing action figures and get into teen magazines,clothes etc. instead of going down the toy aisle and buying action figures. I was a teenage girl and yet played with action figures like an 8 year old boy would LOL! After sadly throwing them away I got really into games and while I admit I've saved about 5 figures when I do get them down to play with them that passion is gone. (Now they wish I'd get out of my room and stop playing games so much LOL!)

I soooo coveted the neighbor boys GI Joe...
I was forced to play Barbies with my sister... til I showed her how Barbie and Ken had sex...
But I still didn't get a GI Joe.

It's not quite that simple. Girls with AS might not follow "gender stereotypes" we act more like the boys with AS. We do not have the gender typical responses one associates with females.
Girls are expected to respond in a specific way and if we don't we are often ostracized just for that. Our brains aren't as feminized as the NT female's.

It doesn't mean we can't wear pretty dresses or hairstyles and like ponies and kittens. But there is something about us that's a little less...estrogenized.