ancusmitis
Well-Known Member
I've got to warn you, this is going to be a little bit rambly. The reason I started thinking about chest hair is because someone on another forum claimed that ASD's were a form of hyper-masculinity.
I don't want to give more credence to those theories by granting them airtime, but oh well, you'll probably hear about them eventually. They bug me a lot, because at least part of the evidence for them is the under-diagnosis of ASD in girls. I simply do not consider it proven that ASD is actually less common among female persons, instead of just overlooked. I also don't care for the concept of "male traits" being autistic traits, because those are culturally defined. On the AQ test, neurotypical men get two points more than neurotypical women. Autistics of any gender tend to score higher by ten or twenty points. Boys in western society tend to communicate less about their feelings because when they do communicate them the same way as girls do, they are "corrected" and taught to do things the way men are expected to. Autistics tend to communicate less about their emotions because autism includes impairment in communication skills. As I have gotten older and gotten to know myself better, I have begun expressing myself a lot more freely. So yeah, that really bugs me.
But most of all, my body has always struck me as kind of odd for someone who is supposed to be "hyper-masculine." I think it's relevant to mention that my ascribed sex is male. But I never developed the thick, bushy mats of hair on my chest and back and arms, and even my leg hair is rather sparse. As for my chest, I did not have chest hair through my teens or even into my twenties. At one point I had eight long, black hairs poking out around my nipples. Seriously, I counted them. As of right now, I've got this area shaped like a bell curve stretching between my nipples sparsely scattered with dark hairs. I have arm hair, but it is very thin and light, and the back of my hand is not hairy at all. David Tennant has much hairier hands than I do (Seriously, look at the hair on the back of his manly hairy hand).
And although I'm focussing on hair here, my voice also never deepened all that much, so I'm often mistaken for a woman over the telephone.
One final note, I've sometimes perceived my "figure" as a bit feminine as well, but other times I don't feel that way or at least not very much. I doubt my body is physically changing shape, but that perception is also part of my experience. (My long hair has gotten me called "ma'am" in the past, but I am pretty much certain that that's cultural).
Has anyone else got this experience? Do you ever wonder where your "hyper-masculinity" is hiding? I know I have, because it's not on my chest.
I don't want to give more credence to those theories by granting them airtime, but oh well, you'll probably hear about them eventually. They bug me a lot, because at least part of the evidence for them is the under-diagnosis of ASD in girls. I simply do not consider it proven that ASD is actually less common among female persons, instead of just overlooked. I also don't care for the concept of "male traits" being autistic traits, because those are culturally defined. On the AQ test, neurotypical men get two points more than neurotypical women. Autistics of any gender tend to score higher by ten or twenty points. Boys in western society tend to communicate less about their feelings because when they do communicate them the same way as girls do, they are "corrected" and taught to do things the way men are expected to. Autistics tend to communicate less about their emotions because autism includes impairment in communication skills. As I have gotten older and gotten to know myself better, I have begun expressing myself a lot more freely. So yeah, that really bugs me.
But most of all, my body has always struck me as kind of odd for someone who is supposed to be "hyper-masculine." I think it's relevant to mention that my ascribed sex is male. But I never developed the thick, bushy mats of hair on my chest and back and arms, and even my leg hair is rather sparse. As for my chest, I did not have chest hair through my teens or even into my twenties. At one point I had eight long, black hairs poking out around my nipples. Seriously, I counted them. As of right now, I've got this area shaped like a bell curve stretching between my nipples sparsely scattered with dark hairs. I have arm hair, but it is very thin and light, and the back of my hand is not hairy at all. David Tennant has much hairier hands than I do (Seriously, look at the hair on the back of his manly hairy hand).
And although I'm focussing on hair here, my voice also never deepened all that much, so I'm often mistaken for a woman over the telephone.
One final note, I've sometimes perceived my "figure" as a bit feminine as well, but other times I don't feel that way or at least not very much. I doubt my body is physically changing shape, but that perception is also part of my experience. (My long hair has gotten me called "ma'am" in the past, but I am pretty much certain that that's cultural).
Has anyone else got this experience? Do you ever wonder where your "hyper-masculinity" is hiding? I know I have, because it's not on my chest.
Last edited:
