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Females And Autism / Aspergers: A Checklist

I fit literally 100% of all the criteria but this section really stood out to me:

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One thing that sucks is the constant annoying female habit of feeling guilt about anything and everything that you do, say, think, feel. Noticed it being mentioned on this list too. Especially guilt for enjoying isolation and one's own company, or guilt for your obsession and interests. I'm about to have a couple weeks to myself and I'm super ecstatic. All my friends look at me like I'm insane for wanting alone time. And now I feel guilty for wanting to be by myself.
 
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After more than 20 years of working with people with developmental disabilities, including autism, I had no idea I was autistic myself until I accidentally found a couple of articles about professional women and missed diagnoses because women present differently from classic autism.

I make most of the criteria in the list.

@LadyS: Getting alone time has been a struggle all my life and I need a lot of it. I am glad to hear you have two weeks of solitude and applaud you for being able to arrange that.

And people don't understand that. I no longer worry about what others think of my particular need for alone time. (In the past I worried a lot about what others thought of me.)

(I am leaving next week for a long trip that will include 3 weeks of total solitude in the Canadian wilderness. Just to say, I get it.)
 
From my understanding of the literature and from the many posts on here, I am not convinced that, autism at its core, is different between males and females, per se. I am not sure how to accurately word this, but I think the way autism may outwardly present to others,...professionals even,...may be different in the sense that, generally speaking,...the female brain typically has enough anatomical and functional differences (enhanced connectivity between the hemispheres, more connectivity with emotional centers, etc.) that "milder variants" of autism may not be as obvious in females, as it is in males. Another way to put it, I think males and females, intrinsically, experience similar symptomatology, but, in some cases, it may be expressed extrinsically in different ways. This may, in some cases, be influenced by our traditional and cultural "gender roles" within our societies,...as a male, I am supposed to behave this way,...as a female, you are supposed to behave that way. It can be a bit nebulous.
 
Neonatal RRT said:
From my understanding of the literature and from the many posts on here, I am not convinced that, autism at its core, is different between males and females, per se. I am not sure how to accurately word this, but I think the way autism may outwardly present to others,...professionals even,...may be different in the sense that, generally speaking,...the female brain typically has enough anatomical and functional differences (enhanced connectivity between the hemispheres, more connectivity with emotional centers, etc.) that "milder variants" of autism may not be as obvious in females, as it is in males. Another way to put it, I think males and females, intrinsically, experience similar symptomatology, but, in some cases, it may be expressed extrinsically in different ways. This may, in some cases, be influenced by our traditional and cultural "gender roles" within our societies,...as a male, I am supposed to behave this way,...as a female, you are supposed to behave that way. It can be a bit nebulous.
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I agree. The differences seem from what I've read to be an extension and amplification in someways of the differences between men and women, whether intrinsic or culturally manifested.
 
Neonatal RRT said:
From my understanding of the literature and from the many posts on here, I am not convinced that, autism at its core, is different between males and females, per se. I am not sure how to accurately word this, but I think the way autism may outwardly present to others,...professionals even,...may be different in the sense that, generally speaking,...the female brain typically has enough anatomical and functional differences (enhanced connectivity between the hemispheres, more connectivity with emotional centers, etc.) that "milder variants" of autism may not be as obvious in females, as it is in males. Another way to put it, I think males and females, intrinsically, experience similar symptomatology, but, in some cases, it may be expressed extrinsically in different ways. This may, in some cases, be influenced by our traditional and cultural "gender roles" within our societies,...as a male, I am supposed to behave this way,...as a female, you are supposed to behave that way. It can be a bit nebulous.
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I am also inclined to agree with this thinking, with a heavy emphasis on the cultural influence. My immediate culture (close friends, family), my extended familial culture, my regional culture (Northeast USA), and even the decade I was born in has significantly affected the manifestation of my ASD traits. I am 41, and just being diagnosed now and it is extremely difficult to unmask myself.

My first steps on the path toward freedom was to listen to older autistic women who are willing to share their stories, and after that things rapidly started to make a whole new kind of sense. These lists are interesting, but the perspective of folks who are living it seems more salient to me.
 
Rodafina said:
I am also inclined to agree with this thinking, with a heavy emphasis on the cultural influence. My immediate culture (close friends, family), my extended familial culture, my regional culture (Northeast USA), and even the decade I was born in has significantly affected the manifestation of my ASD traits. I am 41, and just being diagnosed now and it is extremely difficult to unmask myself.

My first steps on the path toward freedom was to listen to older autistic women who are willing to share their stories, and after that things rapidly started to make a whole new kind of sense. These lists are interesting, but the perspective of folks who are living it seems more salient to me.
Click to expand...

Unmasking for me was extremely difficult because I had to use substances to do it in the first place and had since I was 14 but didn't know any of this until I was in my mid to late 30s.

My baby girl being born was the catalyst to end everything I was doing at the same time. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than warfare. But she, my wife and now son are worth every sacrifice I am able to give.
 
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Alaric593 said:
Unmasking for me was extremely difficult because I had to use substances to do it in the first place and had since I was 14 but didn't know any of this until I was in my mid to late 30s.

My baby girl being born was the catalyst to end everything I was doing at the same time. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Harder than warfare. But she, my wife and now son are worth every sacrifice I am able to give.
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Oh yes, and I should add, the men’s perspectives are valuable too! Male, female, trans, non-binary, any of the things, the real stories to me are interesting and important.
 
I can't say that I'm an exact match 100% for this checklist, maybe between 70 and 80% at various times of my life. I have changed and evolved as I have grown older; things that affected me, or the characteristics I displayed as a child or young adult are different to those I have as an older adult.

As a child, I was much more impulsive and likely to say or do something socially inappropiate, not so much now. I still have to think carefully about what to say - I learned to do so as a young adult, but I still feel very unsure of myself in social situations. I still tend to overthink, misinterpret or misread a situation, I don't think that will ever go away.
 
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WhitewaterWoman said:
After more than 20 years of working with people with developmental disabilities, including autism, I had no idea I was autistic myself until I accidentally found a couple of articles about professional women and missed diagnoses because women present differently from classic autism.

I make most of the criteria in the list.

@LadyS: Getting alone time has been a struggle all my life and I need a lot of it. I am glad to hear you have two weeks of solitude and applaud you for being able to arrange that.

And people don't understand that. I no longer worry about what others think of my particular need for alone time. (In the past I worried a lot about what others thought of me.)

(I am leaving next week for a long trip that will include 3 weeks of total solitude in the Canadian wilderness. Just to say, I get it.)
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That trip sounds like a dream! Hoping to do that one day once the kiddos are grown. Hope you enjoy every second :) .
 
Since when did writing poetry become a very specific, female autistic trait?

While I am female and very much autistic and poetry is a special interest of mine, I have very rarely encountered other female autistics who read poetry, let alone write it. I work frontside at a bookshop; I'm active on multiple poetry and writing forums. The number of female autistics poets I've encountered, I can count on one hand while still including myself. Real world experience and being autistic, there are certain thing I pay attention to. Poetry, reading and writing thereof is one of them. Autism is another one. And autistics have a pretty reliable knack for identifying other autistics. Behaviour pattern recognition in our brains predisposes us to spotting what is familiar.

As a categorising criteria that is a total red herring and is probably extrapolated solely from the author's experience.

Writing. (A very high prevalence leaning toward YA fantasy/adventure/science fiction. It is a scripted escape and/or coping mechanism.) Yes.
Music. (Again, there will be a focus on very specific genres of music, constant repeating of certain songs, deep dives into the artists, genres, lyrics, instruments, etc. Musical abilities often accompany the interest.) Yes.
Reading. (Genre related, obsessive rereading, deep dives on favoured worlds and/or characters, periods in history, etc.) Yes.
Art. (This is a big one. As a whole, autistics tend to be a pretty creative group simply because of the unique biology of our brains. We see and experience the world very differently and that can translate itself pretty readily to creative mediums like painting and drawing. It can present as a fascination with things like fashion, etc.)

These are more accurate criteria. Poetry. No. Even on this forum, while there are a few threads in the Off Topic area it is a very niche interest.

I could ask about paradelles and Golden Shovels and folk would think I have lost my mind.

Top section reads more like a list of introvert traits, which while being the major personality type among autistics, it is not the only one. You focus on introversion, but leave no provisions for ambiverts or extroverts and it indicates that objectivity-wise there is a skew toward what seem like personalized traits and not empirical data.

Where I struggle with this is, it is very easy for me to edit redundancies down to lowest common denominators from a hypercomplex extrapolation. OR reducing a list to behaviour pattern archetypes. The number of redundancies are making me a little nuts because autism is a spectrum and each individual is unique and there are huge biases toward introverts and the language arts. The female sterotype, (if you will).

Dr. Temple Grandin is a bit of an outlier among masked female autistics because presentationwise she comes across as presenting with the more easily recognized 'classic' autistic traits.

These are areas that don't require social interactions and allow for a greater ease of masking. (A topic that was surprisingly not addressed because female autistics tend to be more adept at masking their abberant traits than our male peers. We are taught to mask in the very ways we play. It is drilled into us at an early age, and it is why the ratio of female diagnosis are still 1:4. As recently as 2020 that number was 1:10.)

Divergent Mind by Nerenberg is one of the better resources on adept autistic maskers. And is a bit more current. (2020)
 
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