-
Feb22
Women, Girls, and Asperger’s Syndrome
17 CommentsA few months ago, I participated in a very spirited online discussion with a number of other women about whether female Aspies present differently than male Aspies. The more I learned about women’s experiences, the more I realized that the diagnostic criteria and the resulting research are based mainly on male models of thought and behavior. As a woman, I fit the relevant criteria, but they don’t explain the whole of me.
For example, Simon Baron-Cohen posits the “extreme male brain theory” to explain Asperger’s Syndrome. He employs a dichotomy between the empathizing female brain and the systematizing male brain. In Baron-Cohen’s theory, Aspies have extreme versions of the systematizing male brain. It’s as though the good professor has never considered the idea that systematizing and empathizing could exist in extreme measure in the same brain. His theory leaves out those of us who both systematize and empathize in non-normative ways.
I was becoming very frustrated by these kinds of ideas when I discovered Tony Attwood’s The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome. His book was the first one by a male researcher that made any sense to me as an Aspie woman.
Attwood begins his discussion of girls and Asperger’s Syndrome by questioning why the ratio of diagnosed male to female Aspies is 4:1. He suggests that the reason for this disparity is not that there are more male than female Aspies, but that many female Aspies do not appear to meet the clinical criteria. In a clinician’s office, female Aspies can often hold a reciprocal conversation, make eye contact, and use facial expressions appropriate to the subject matter. In other words, female Aspies can appear to have no social impairments.
As always, the problem is that many professionals do not look more deeply into whether we learn such skills intuitively. Attwood very aptly notes that we do not. Rather, we employ a number of intellectual strategies to learn social skills or to mask the lack of them.
Some male Aspies use the very same strategies. In fact, it would be difficult to find an adult Aspie, male or female, who has not employed at least some of these strategies. For the present, however, I will concentrate on Attwood’s insights about the social skills of female Aspies and why we often do not seem to meet the diagnostic criteria.
1. Careful observation of social situations
Girls with Asperger’s Syndrome often appear to be passive bystanders in group interactions. However, we are anything but passive. We spend our time actively observing others in a social group and determining what to do. As Attwood writes: “An example of a camouflaging strategy is to conceal confusion when playing with peers by politely declining invitations to join in until sure of what to do, so as not to make a conspicuous social error. The strategy is to wait, observe carefully, and only participate when sure what to do by imitating what the children have done previously (Attwood 46).”I have always been the person on the outside of the social bubble, watching. As a child, I would look in, figure out the rules of the game, and decide whether I could successfully fit in. I would only enter a group if I felt reasonably sure of the rules of engagement. If the rules changed, I became quite disoriented and would leave the group very quickly (if I weren’t simply paralyzed by confusion, in which case I might remain until the group broke up).
One positive outcome of a lifetime of observation is that I became a very good facilitator in my last job. From all my years of watching people interact, I’d become well versed in observing process, so I could facilitate our weekly meetings with ease. I would notice who was quiet and hadn’t spoken up yet, who was talking too much, and who was trying to speak but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I could step in and make room for each person to speak, and when the conversation was losing its focus, I could lead people back very easily. It was one of the best roles that anyone has ever given me.
2. Taking on the persona of a socially skilled peer
Many Aspie girls become very accomplished mimics. As Attwood writes: “The child adopts a social role and script, basing her persona on the characteristics of someone who would be reasonably socially skilled in the situation, and using intellectual abilities rather than intuition to determine what to say or do (Attwood 46).”As I’ve written before, I chose a different girl each year of high school and tried to be like her. In creating a false persona, I was able to mask much of my confusion and insecurity. I spent a great deal of time observing the girl I wanted to become, thinking everything out, and getting my script in place. It was quite painful to shoehorn myself into another girl’s personality, but it allowed me to interact with other people, which felt much safer than enduring the ridicule that came with being alone.
3. Being quiet and following instructions
Despite the fact that I can do a monologue as well as the next Aspie, my main coping strategy as a child in school was to be quiet. Attwood writes that many of us use “strategies to avoid active participation in class proceedings, such as being well-behaved and polite, thus being left alone by teachers and peers (Attwood, 47).”I went to a very conservative school that rewarded politeness. So long as I was well behaved and answered the questions the teacher asked, I didn’t get myself into any kind of trouble.
4. Developing protective friendships
Girls with Asperger’s tend to be more loyal in friendships than typical girls, and often develop friendships with someone who is safe and maternal. Attwood writes:“A girl with Asperger’s syndrome…is more likely than boys to develop a close friendship with someone who demonstrates a maternal attachment to this socially naive but ’safe’ girl. These characteristics reduce the likelihood of being identified as having one of the main diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s syndrome, namely a failure to develop peer relationships. With girls, it is not a failure but a qualitative difference in this ability. The girl’s problems with social understanding may only become conspicuous when her friend and mentor moves to another school (Attwood 47).”
In my senior year of high school, I became best friends with a girl who was quite maternal and protective of me. She was very talkative and funny, and I allowed myself to get swept up by her energy. She was also an outsider and was thrilled to make friends with me. We were nearly inseparable. But when we went off to different colleges, I was a complete basket case. I showed up at college with absolutely no idea about how to interact with a new group of people. My freshman year roommate was anything but maternal and protective, and I made a number of social faux pas on which she was only too happy to capitalize.
It wasn’t a good year, especially after I flooded the entire first floor of my dorm by attempting to flush tampons down the toilet. An act of passive aggression, you say? Very likely.
5. Becoming little philosphers
While Aspie boys tend to become little professors, capable of holding forth with an astonishing array of facts, Aspie girls tend to become little philosophers who think long and deeply about human interaction. As Attwood writes: “From an early age, girls with Asperger’s syndrome have applied their cognitive skills to analyse social interactions and are more likely than boys…to discuss the inconsistencies in social conventions and their thoughts on social events (Attwood, 47).”Analyzing social situations and human motivation is still one of my favorite pastimes. I can’t say that I always understand what makes people tick, but I’m very interested in the question nonetheless. The fact that female Aspies tend to observe, analyse, and critique social interactions may appear to indicate that we have no social impairments and feel more comfortable with people than with objects. It seems to me, however, that the only people interested in observing, analysing, and critiquing social interactions for free would be people who can’t intuitively grasp them.
6. Watching soap operas
My friends, I’m about to let you in on my deepest, darkest secret. When I was a girl, I watched soap operas with my mother every winter afternoon. We watched daytime dramas called The Edge of Night, The Secret Storm, and Another World.There. Now I’ve said it. I feel so much better.
Actually, this special interest is not unusual for Aspie girls. Attwood writes: “The unfolding drama provides a voyeuristic insight into interpersonal relationships…The activity also provides a ’safe’ vantage point from which to observe and absorb knowledge on friendships and more intimate relationships (Attwood 181-182).”
Because of the melodramatic aspect of soap operas, I can’t say that I learned a lot about how to form intimate relationships. What I did learn, however, was very useful to me: People make messes of their lives because they won’t say anything directly. In every single episode of every single soap opera, people suffered unnecessarily because someone, somewhere, was hiding something. It was absolutely excruciating.
I used to ask my mother why people didn’t just come out and say who they loved or whose baby they were having. Her response was always the same: ”Well, if they did THAT, there wouldn’t be a STORY!”
If anything, watching soap operas confirmed in me the value of Aspie directness.
For those who are Aspie women, or who are raising Aspie girls, I hope this information will be a useful starting point for understanding more about how we navigate our world.
© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
17 Responses to “Women, Girls, and Asperger’s Syndrome”
-
Liresse February 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Lovely summary!
Took a break from the forums for a while and never noticed you’d made your own website. This is fantastic, and yes that thread was incredibly supportive and reassuring in so many ways. Definitely agree that female AS really needs to be given its own attention outside of AS generally as the issues associated with it are so different (from male AS perhaps) and just as complex. Best wishes with the site – will be back.
-
Liresse February 22nd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Forgot to add, you organise your thoughts extremely well. Wish I had the same abilities, but apparently I’m also comorbid ADHD so I usually forget whatever point I was trying to make in the first half of the paragraph (which is not helpful to organisation of thoughts, of course).
again great to hear your version of the AS story
-
Hey, Liresse, great to see you here! I remember you very well from the forums. Thanks for your comments.
-
When I read about Aspies using intellect instead of intuition in social situations, I had my own personal epiphany. See, I thought all people used intellect, and figured I was just a slow learner.
I also never understood why people said they valued honesty, but whenever I was really honest, people cringed. It took many years and many injured egos to realize that people only really like to hear the good honest things.
-
camilla (millie) February 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 am
Another thread contributor here! It is great to read this summary, Rachel. I think Attwood and Minds and Hearts (his clinic in Brisbane) really do understand the complex issues we face as women with AS. We DO present somewhat differently and we do need to be understood and encouraged to be women with AS who have a distinct presentation from that espoused by Baron-Cohen and some other academics in the field, who assume a painfully narrow criteria that often leaves us just “out in the cold.”
I think one of the most important aspects of my journey as a woman with AS has been meeting other women with AS and getting some very real identification and relating happening.
as for the philosophising and social analysis that we do —- it’s been a lifelong pursuit – an attempt to make sense of a foreign and strange world.
oh…and i put my hand up to a bit of soap indulgence also!
-
[...] Rachel does a great job discussing the differences found in women Aspies from that of men, here. We are a unique breed, us female Aspies. Attwood begins his discussion of girls and Asperger’s [...]
-
Your posts always give me so much to think about. More than two years after self-diagnosing, I still have a lot to learn and process. One thing that does always strike me about my difference even from the norm for female aspies is that I never modeled myself on anyone, nor did I have any “protective” friendships. I was, right from the start, a loner, and I think that had as much to do with being an introvert and having a high IQ as with being an aspie. I’ve read enough personal accounts by other female aspies like myself to believe that these two traits need to be taken into account more than they currently are. High IQ alone can be a serious impediment to socializing; add introversion, and you have someone who is going to have real difficulties with socializing, regardless of their ability to observe and analyze.
-
John Dale Lyons February 23rd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I think Atwood is correct, and so is Rachel. But males tend to use these strategies later in life than females, or at least I did. Therapy also helped. Is Simon related to Sascha Baron Cohen? They’re both Brits.
-
Yes, Sasha Baron-Cohen and Simon Baron-Cohen are cousins.
-
This is very helpful. Thank you so much for sharing this. I need to read Tony Attwood’s books. I just finished Girls Under the Umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorders. It was okay, a little lite…looking for something heftier. I love maternal girls…they go right for my daughter, they seem to know she needs some help.
-
Jennifer February 25th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Great blog-post.
Coincidentally I had read the same part in Tony Attwoods book but hadn’t properly picked up on what he wrote (until you explained it here.)My daughter does that too- cognitively analyses social interactions, and philosophises.
I misunderstood that as being a non-Aspie thing.
My daughter however, is the “maternal” friend of two younger children that would possibly otherwise be outsiders. The friendships are never-the-less just as real as those of other children.
-
as an AS male, i have to say that we, or at least, i, do most of these things as well, and at different stages in my life. i’ve been a wicked mimic when younger, picking up accents unconsciously, as well as mannerisms from real people, and unfortunately, TV people. argh.
i no longer feel like a fake, but went through many emotional years feeling just so.
it sounds like brown-nosing sometimes, and i don’t praise easily, but i really appreciate your writing all this stuff down, Rachel. thanks -
This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, especially as I’ve been traveling the last week amongst quite a few Aspie males. At first I was confused by how different they were from my daughter and I, and then I started piecing out the differences and similarities. What you’ve written here is spot on with my observations. The experiences of the last week are something I hope to write about soon…
-
This is really useful. I’m recently self-diagnosed. I do have keen interests but not “special interests.” I recently converted to Christianity and I’m fascinated by the social relationship aspect of the faith.
-
Jainene October 30th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I happened upon this post while searching for blogs about females with Asperger’s Syndrome. Finally, it’s good to this stuff from someone else. My brother and I both have AS, but I was never noticed because of my ability to acquire social skills. I had to protect my brother, who wasn’t as observant. We also moved around a lot when I was a child, so I never tried to model myself on others, because I always filled the “outsider” role anyway. I acquired the “mother-friends” in my middle school and high school years; they themselves were part of a very understanding, neuro-diverse home-school co-op that I attended. It was a real blessing from God.
I agree about being “little philosophers” too. My socially-necessary obsession turned into a degree in Cross-Cultural Studies. I find safety and security being in a field where it is acceptable to be constantly learning new social conventions and comparing them with existing ones.
Even so, I do get exhausted so much by all of the social confusion that people create, and all the noise they make. That’s when it’s time for a nice bit of science fiction (my version of “soap operas” because I always felt like the alien). -
Hi Jainene,
Good to hear from you, and welcome!
-
Thank you so much Ever since i’ve been diagnosed I have not been able to accept my aspergers because I was comparing myself to males with aspergers I kept saying maybe I didn’t have it. Thank you for finally making sense. By the way I watch soap operas all the time too and I still can’t understand why people are not direct it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
Leave a Reply
Unique Visitors
8,964 | Unique Visitors |
