Changing gender norms as cause of the IDEA of "autism"?

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As he explains there:

Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to say that sex/gender is not a "natural" categorization. However, it is a much fuzzier categorization than traditionalists like to think, e.g. gender roles do vary from one culture to another, and, even on a biological level, there is such a thing as intersex.


Yes, it would be nice if his article had references. However, his remarks about the state of autism science are pretty much consistent with the reference you yourself gave, the Wendy Chung video.


A category whose definition and conceptualization are largely, if not entirely, a result of social/cultural/historical factors.

Personally, I have another hypothesis about why the concept of "autism" arose when it did. I think a big factor is the development of mass education.

Before mass education, I would imagine that most children learned their social skills explicitly from their parents and other relatives. After the advent of mass education, children were expected to learn more and more of their social skills on their own and with each other, on the playground. After a generation or two of this, an inability to pick up social skills in the latter way began to stick out more and more as a disability, whereas previously it had been a non-issue.

That might one of the reasons why the concept of "autism" began to emerge in the 1940's.

Then, in the late 1970's and early 1980's, a lot of middle-class women moved into the workforce, resulting in the rise of pre-school. Thus, middle-class kids were now expected to pick up social skills on their own at an even younger age, and, if they didn't, parents heard about it from their kids' pre-school teachers. Hence the great expansion in the number of kids deemed to be "autistic."

But I think there's some merit to Robert Chapman's hypothesis also. Before the 1990's or so, it was more-or-less accepted that certain professions (engineering, computer programming, accounting, library work, museum work, proofreading, etc.) were havens for "nerds" or "geeks" -- terms which then meant "socially awkward" as well as "intellectually-oriented." There was then a sharp rise in social expectations in the workforce, for everyone, including programmers and engineers.

Usually, when a claim like this is made in a study, they reference another study that shows this. In this case, he just said it without any reference.

What exactly is a historically situated social construction? Just because he uses complex words in some kind of order doesn't make them fact. The "mammal" category can also be said to be "partly rooted in a constellation of physical elements, and partly in historically situated social construction". "Mammal" did not exist as a category until someone decided on its distinguishing features and society agreed; isn't that a "historically situated social construction"?

So why is "gold" and "mammal" natural while "black" and "female" social? His entire hypothesis hinges upon there being a difference between the two, but he never defines what they are.

This is just shoddy work for someone who is supposed to have a PhD.

The article I quoted in the original post is not a "study"; it's just a blog post expressing opinions. Likewise for the Medium post that he refers to.

The author apparently assumes that the reader shares his educational background and knows what a "social construction" is. It would be nice if he provided some links to explanations of that, but, since he didn't, I've dug up some links for you, below.

On the social construction of race:

- Race as a Social Construction by Gordon Hodson, Psychology Today, Dec 05, 2016.
- Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue by Megan Gannon, Scientific American, February 5, 2016.
- Race is a Social Construct by Sarah McAfee, Center for Health Progress, October 24, 2017.

On the social construction of gender:

- Sociology of Gender by Zuleyka Zevallos
- The Social Construction of Gender, part of an online Introduction to Sociology course taught by Scott Cresswell
- Social Constructionism, from an online textbook on Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies by Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, and Laura Heston.
- Yes, gender is a social construction. No, that doesn’t mean it’s not real by Sam Killermann.


See links above.

And that really is the weakness of the post. Chapman clearly has an agenda, but is presenting it in an authoritative way. I would really like to see some work on an inclusive approach to autism that can equally deal with the science and social science aspects of the issue. Chapman really demonstrates the limitations of advocacy. This approach really turns me off autism advocacy and disengages me from the neurodiversity movement. I really like the idea behind the neurodiversity movement, but it need to be more than proselytizing and focus on solutions.

It was an interesting read and some very good points, but there is nothing really new here. Trying to frame autism as a gender construct really falls apart as he really does not understand the history of the science or science itself. Silberman did a far better job in NeuroTribes.

The author skates over up-to-date scientific evidence of the understanding of autism, including professor Simon Baron-Cohen extreme male brain theory, which was misrepresented in the article.

SBC`s theory basically states that traits associated with the male brain are amplified to the extreme in autism, which is caused by excess testosterone in the womb. This is coupled with brain malformation that causes a lot of the other symptoms in autism including dyspraxia, anxiety and a whole lot more. Differences in male / female brains are identifed soon after birth and are hardwired in the author ignores this.

This video goes into detail the theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjTR-VJNm3w&app=desktop

The author basically implies that just because we haven’t yet found the exact genetic causes of autism in 2020 it doesn’t exist. A bit like when they once drilled holes in people`s skulls to let out the demons before they knew about schizophrenia.

The author also skates over and ignores the more disabling implications of autism in the individual as if it doesn’t exist. If she was referring to light Asperger’s fair enough but she refers to all autism as if those with more severe symptoms would have been celebrated.

No, they wouldn’t they would have been labelled “feeble minded”, “an idiot” or “moron”, used as a slave for labouring work or suicide cannon fodder in a war.

At worse put in an asylum as a child and allowed to die.

Not sure what you mean by that. To me it was clear (at least from the article as a whole; maybe my excerpt didn't make it clear) that the article's main idea was being presented as a speculative hypothesis, not an established "authoritative" fact.


What specific aspect(s) of "the history of the science" or "science itself" does he not understand?

For speculation, he seems very confident in his argument.

As far as the science goes, he is very dismissive of the science he does mention. And goes further by declaring it fundamentally flawed. He also does not seem to understand the iterative nature of the sciences or how psychology has developed. Much of the early history was from direct observation and simply trying to identify patterns of behavior of a small sample (200 in the case of Asperger and about 11 for Kanner). The focus was to help that particular sample. It might be important to note the Asperger's ideas were lost for a very long time so it is hard to see how influential those ideas were for most of the history of autism.

If you like the author's ideas, that is great. Obviously, he has articulated something that speaks to you. Thank you for sharing.

To Carlos:

I don't have time to watch a whole long video right now, although I did watch the first part, in which Simon Baron-Cohen talks about genetics. In there, I don't recall him saying anything to contradict What Wendy Chung had to say in the video linked by Dvdz earlier in this thread.

Regarding the fetal testosterone aspect of Baron-Cohen's "extreme male brain" hypothesis, I decided to do some Googling for text-based sources instead.

I found a Spectrum News opinion piece by by Simon Baron-Cohen, Linking autism, sex, gender and prenatal hormones, 19 October 2015.

Looking for more up-to-date stuff, I found a Science magazine article, Study challenges idea that autism is caused by an overly masculine brain by Emily Underwood, Sep. 3, 2019. (This article includes a statement by Baron-Cohen explaining why he thinks the study results do not contradict his hypothesis.)

I also found a Science Daily article, High levels of estrogen in the womb linked to autism, July 29, 2019, regarding another study, led by none other than Simon Baron-Cohen himself, apparently showing that elevated pre-natal levels of not only the male hormone testosterone, but also the female hormone estrogen, are associated with an increased likelihood of developing autism. So, based on his own results, it looks like Baron-Cohen may have to revise his hypothesis at least a little bit.

I'll reply to the remainder of your post later.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 19 Oct 2020, 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Testing the Empathizing–Systemizing theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism in half a million people (2018)

Thanks. This has helped me write a reply in another thread.

I’m no huge fan of SBC but his theory is quite convincing even if it explains a subset but substantial number of autistic cases. The science behind it still needs work.

It may be no coincidence that the rise in autism in the last 30 years which has divided scientific opinion ( some think the rise is real others better diagnosis) has coincided with a poorer diet and increased obesity which is a risk factor for autism in pregnant women. That and later life pregnancies which is another risk factor.

The author alludes to a golden age of autism in the past where autistic people were more accepted.

I have a hard time believing that a society that sent kids to work up chimneys and be poisoned in match factories, where wife / child abuse was accepted, would be
kind to those who had communication difficulties and had trouble standing up for themselves

I think the worse predatory aspects of human nature would have been accepted back then. Autistic people would have been used and abused as a slave Labour force where possible.

Even with intelligent Aspies, the communication/ social deficits would have led to many loosing out to NTs stealing their ideas for themselves and being drowned out by those with better social political skills able to sell themselves to those above.

He doesn't claim that there are no genetic causes, but only that the category "autism" is much too heterogeneous for there to be just one underlying cause, genetic or otherwise. That's in line with well-established scientific findings.


The more severely disabled autistic people were already pathologized under other labels, of course. The question he's exploring is how and why the category "autism" came to be conceptualized -- as distinct from "feeble-minded," "idiot," "moron," etc.

One last note about hormones in pregnancy and autism.

There`s a therapy for teenage girls with severe acne called Spironolactone which acts to lower male hormones. Its been given to aspie girls, and some have reportedly shown an improvement in symptoms

https://thestaracademy.co.za/wp-content ... pt-1-1.pdf

At the time the article was written (2016), autism science was indeed mostly a big bunch of irreproducible false starts, due to small sample sizes. Substantial progress in understanding biological underpinnings began to be made only with the advent of mega-projects like SPARK.


The interesting question is how and why these particular kids were deemed to need professional help, in the first place, at that particular time (and not earlier). Another, related question is why Asperger's concept of "autism" was much broader than Kanner's. The answers to these questions would likely have something to do with a difference between American and Austrian cultures at that time.


Asperger might have been an unacknowledged influence on Kanner, via Georg Frankl, who worked at both Asperger's and Kanner's clinics. See Leo Kanner, Hans Asperger, and the discovery of autism by Simon Baron-Cohen in The Lancet, October 03, 2015.

I don't understand this. Lorna Wing's work to define and determine the prevalence of autism was a false start? The research that led to the DSM-IV and DSM-5 was just random? And as you point out, the research is continuing with new and larger datasets and tools. To say that autism research was untenable in 2016 is, well, untenable.



Could it have simply been selection bias? Asperger was working in a progressive school for children with special needs. He was observing a large population of children in an educational setting and noticing patterns of behavior in a subset. Kanner was in a clinic. He was seeing children with sever disabilities that could not be diagnosed/treated by other doctors and were sent to him.

There was a cultural difference between the men. There was also a difference in personality. And their training could have been very different. However, selection bias can easily account for the children they were exposed to, which would have influenced their concept of autism.



But Kanner did not promote Asperger's work. He sat on it. All the information that was going into the world was through the lens of Kanner. It was but accident that Lorna Wing rediscovered Asperger much later on.