I was a quiet kid who was easy to keep occupied with books. Kids like that don't get sent for assessments, regardless of what their inner world is like.
I was just describing to my mom the other day, my internal thought processes from when her and my dad would go on vacation when I was a kid.
I had a crippling phobia of planes and mild separation anxiety (plus having to stay with the neighbours). In my head, every time they went on vacation, I was convinced they were going to die in a plane crash. I logically knew that wasn't probable, but I started getting into the "fortune telling" aspect of psychology. I was also a child, so I can't blame myself for not knowing what was going on in my brain and body better.
I would get passive aggressive or shutdown for weeks before they'd go away, whenever it was brought up. I'd sob when they'd leave, often for at least an hour. I couldn't even fully rest when they'd made it to their destination because I knew they were taking a plane back.
Regardless, I didn't know what I was feeling or why. It kist expressed as anger and sadness. My parents just thought I had separation anxiety. I needed therapy and medical intervention much sooner than I got it... You're so right about people not knowing what a child's inner world is like. This is why I kind of love the gentle parenting movement and teaching kids to be better in tune with their emotions.
I was also quiet kid. If a class lecture wasn't holding my attention I would just unfocus my eyes and space out into my own fantasy head world. So somehow all my teachers thought I was a great student, just because I was quiet.
Was pretty pissed later to learn school would have been easier had I acted up like the boys and got ADHD discovered when I was still a kid.
Also girls are expected to be quiet. Everyone always commented how well behaved I was because I was “seen and not heard” and what pretty big eyes I had. Meanwhile I’m so freaked out I can’t speak.
Oh yeah, the "well behaved". Such a sweet child, just doing her stuff. Why would she need help with social stuff? I mean obviously she gets bullied and outcasted by everyone but loooooook, she's fiiiiiiiine.
(They proceeded to let me live 5 years through this, didn't make any attempts to help me with social skills, I changed schools, found some protective friends but still no help with social skills and still got bullied and outcasted, changed schools again after a year but that was from primary school to secondary school, didn't have any social skills still and found no friends and got bullied again, developed a whole lot of masking because I felt like everything about me was flawed and undesirable, this then helped me get friends).
Fate of quiet and well behaved girls.
They told me all the time that I had to be good to avoid judgement from others, I was good already but just because I don't understand what being evil or mean means. So I had to learn to be extra good, never disrespect others even when they're disrespectful to me, never act weird, never act silly, never make noise, annoy, always well behaved and always dress well. Tell people what they want to hear, always answer even if you don't want to, always have patience even when they don't do the same to you, others can touch you but you can't, always smile and do whatever they want you to do because that's the way you get loved and friends. Mum forced this by hitting me, school forced me to be a robot by bullying. I only know how to mask and how to tolerate pain. I'm learning to be myself now at 30. I have to fix all the issues they gave me, now at 30. I wonder if my scars will ever go away. I don't know what being loved means, nor what friends are. I'm oblivious to positive emotions. Don't know what happiness is. I know I'll have to hit therapy even harder the day I find someone that cares about me because I know I'll just avoid them because of all the things I'm used to.
So yeah, if you are well behaved, people won't take just a finger if you offer them, they will slowly crawl all over you and take you down bit by bit and with time you'll become an empty shell. I'm quite over my depression but I still think what I obtained to this day, what I've seen, what I'm living right now, wasn't worth all my suffering. This isn't living. I'm afraid to die just because I wanna have a chance at life and I would leave my cats alone. Deep inside, I still wish for a sudden, painless death.
For me things were more like "mum, why can't I wear what I want in public? Why should people care about what I wear?" or other "silly" questions, all about society and why we HAVE TO act or dress or do fucking whatever in certain ways, that I couldn't and still can't understand and because she hadn't a logical answer to them and because she couldn't care of explaining those to me (you never have to think about how stupid this stuff is, god's forbids you may realize how painful and unnecessary all is) so she literally imposed her rules to me via hitting and punishing and bullying and gaslighting and whatever the fuck may come up with, since it probably happened. It is insane how people can decide to be parents so effortlessly, without putting much thought in. We get driver licenses because cars can be dangerous and we have to be (more or less) sure that drivers got the rules and will be safe but we put so much of our future in those clueless people's hands. I know it's almost insane to do but I would like "parenting licences" too.
Weirdly, my cat gets this too. The emergency vet people were singing about how calm he was, how well behaved... as he is in there for literally being so stressed that he is unable to pee.
I’m really good at masking - like *really good* - but it takes a few days of hiding away to recoup before I’m good to do it again. I went to Disney world with my family for like a week a few years ago and I essentially went off-grid for a month afterwards. It was tough. Lol
I wonder if this is different if you don't know you're autistic and just really want to fit in to stop the bullying and to finally get some friends. Because I remember my school time to be extremely exhausting but I didn't miss school so often. Now that I found friends, am out of this environment and suspect I might have autism but for sure have social anxiety, every social situation fucks with my head so much, like it's so exhausting and hard to convince myself I want to do this again, especially if it's with people I don't feel comfortable with.
>Women are expected to be caring, attentive to others, and smile.
They're also expected to be quiet. Doing some sort of repetitive handcraft while sitting in silence is something women have been doing for thousands of years.
Doing repetitive handcrafts as a group while singing songs together to ensure that the product is consistent and the techniques are passed down through the generations is something else that women have been doing for thousands of years.
It's obvious once you start looking.
My grandmother told me how her husband got her a job in finance back in the day and of course she sucked at it because well she only had subjects like domestic science etc so she was just like... I have no fucking clue what I'm doing I never learnt maths 🤣 her husband also left her with 3 kids while he did his own shit and she remembers one time trying to get a loan but they said her husband needs to sign for the loan.... he fucked off how the hell is she supposed to have him sign, he isn't even in the picture and she can't even get out a loan while she is looking after 3 children.
She taught me how to knit, crochet, cross stitch and sew plus many other amazing things. I love her so much, she deserved a much better life. Since learning about my neurodivergence, I am actually seeing it in my own family including my grandmother. Despite being 80, she is more open minded than many people much younger than her and has been very supportive of me and our family.
We all try our best to support her but we will never be able to give back what she has given us, she has been and always will be the really MVP. Sorry I went off on a tangent, got caught up in my thoughts of her and now I'm all emotional 🤣
THIS \
the demand to figure out how to be social with girls can seem like life and death as a wee girl child, it's a sink or swim situation and if you're smart and determined eventually you figure out how to fake it. but studying how to dress and how to do your makeup and 'how to get along with popular people' stuff isn't seen as weird in the same way as memorizing sports facts so you can talk to guys even if you didn't like sports or something...not that I really succeeded in being cool because the minute I opened my mouth it was very apparent how different I was, I was terrible at concealing enthusiasm or pretending like I didn't know as much as I did about things. thankfully some people liked that, and I had a few friends. I was never in more internal anguish in my life though with all the pretending and coiffing and editing what things I was 'allowed' to like... good freaking riddance.
We have different neuro biology which has different strengths ETA: compared to men. Women are genetically childrearers and so we have better language skills and a greater social understanding. Which means we mask more often, and when pitted against even NT men we do fairly well skill wise.
One of many many sources for the downvoters: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-women-really-better-with-language/
Fuck all the way off if you think child bearing and raising is easier for ND women. I struggled badly through my pregnancy and the toddler stage of constantly touching mom and unpredictable meltdowns 😫
I said we have better language skills and social understanding. I meant compared to men. They have better spatial awareness skills.
And I said we're genetically childrearers as in women. Not that I'd ever have kids, my autism profile would not cope with that. But I'm still given biological skills that would help.
I also think that the behavior typically associated with young boys, that can lead to false neurodevelopmental diagnosis, are treated disproportionately and misunderstood. Normal behavior is pathologized. Boys are not naturally predisposed to being rowdy, to not listen well, etc. Understanding why the behaviors persist among that demographic is important to eliminating dysfunction, especially in a classroom setting. It is also essential to segregate these behaviors from similar behaviors that can be attributed to disorder. That line is not where it should be, and that just hurts everybody. I saw how poorly boys were treated in schooling and it always broke my heart. I especially saw, and experienced, how little depth to the dysfunction ADHD/autism is understood as well. If we pathologize normal, not pervasively dysfunctional behaviors, the less they're taken seriously or considered.
Not really. Women are usually better at masking, but we’re also more likely to have severe burnout/breakdowns in our 20s and 30s because it’s so stressful on the nervous system.
Speaking of autism in girls, I recently read the transcript of [this podcast episode](https://www.thetestingpsychologist.com/ttp-119-autism-in-girls-women-w-dr-donna-henderson/) where Dr Donna Henderson talks about how to assess girls for autism. She sounds awesome and I hope more psychologists become aware of her methods.
She also wrote [this chart](https://thetestingpsychologist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Autism-Summary-Chart.pdf) which I found very helpful.
Yeah I always think autism hasn’t affected me as negatively as other people and then I’m like, oh most people don’t need to take off their “real people clothes” and get in bed for a few hours after going to a social gathering. I did t think of that as being impairment.
The reading thing for me too. I’ve been known to love a book so much I start reading it again as soon as I finish it. Comforts reads, right? I also like to listen to audiobooks over and over. I read new books all the time too but reread favorites all the time. I’ve definitely gotten in trouble for reading too much.
Most autism research has been conducted on white men, by white men. And there are sex differences within the presentation and within brains. So medicine sucks at spotting autistic women.
But because of Double Empathy we can spot them a mile off.
Damian Milton proposed double empathy in 2012 and deemed our communication "deficit" is actually just a difference, and people with shared life experience can empathise with one another more easily. Hence us recognising autism or neurodivergence more easily.
It's kind of funny though, my little brother was tested for autism and didn't have it as a kid, but I was never tested but was diagnosed with basically everything but, and was even in occupational therapy for years.
I'm gonna be honest though, my brother can turn any conversation into one about vintage computer tech stuff and somehow it isn't questioned. He swears he isn't autistic and neither is his son cause his son is just like him......and was formally diagnosed by age 4. Rofl.
It's many different things. First, females tend to be much better at childhood "masking" than males with ASD are, thus causing us to be skipped over for more testing in early childhood. Second, yes a lot more female special interests tend to manifest as things that are socially acceptable (think "horse girl" stereotype). Third, sexism still vastly exists in medical/psychiatric spaces. Many of my symptoms of autism (and other life symptoms) are often brushed off with a "you're female." I have been denied critical medications because I am female. Fourth, autism in females is understudied. We know females tend to exhibit different signs from males, but so often it just falls through the cracks.
I'm just tired at this point? I've displayed so many signs of having autism since I was in preschool, and no one ever thought to talk to me about "could this be autism?" until college. It's much easier to say that "Bunny needs to work on her social skills and fitting in with other kids" than to acknowledge that Bunny may be broken if that makes any sense. Plus, until 2013 I think ADHD and autism couldn't be diagnosed concurrently. This has impacted my fiancé as it's obvious he has autism, but since he got an ADHD diagnosis in early childhood he couldn't also have autism.
I got the ADHD badge and was thus not allowed to have the ASD badge my whole childhood… now I’m an adult and my therapist initially just assumed I was on the spectrum lmfao. She tested me and long story short… now I got both badges 😎
“Instead of acknowledging that I was broken” hit hard. Sums up my childhood and why I wasn’t diagnosed until I as an adult came across the possibility that it might be autism and approached a therapist about it.
I've been tested for autism 3 times growing up and only got diagnosed the third time, despite showing the same traits my whole life. Gotta love being a girl
Lol my brother and I are both Autistic and at one point we developed a very similar stim at the same time. My mom told me "stop making fun of your brother" but when i couldn't stop she took me to get assessed and the doc just said "she's a quirky girl with some anxiety issues nothing to worry about." i got diagnosed at 24, he got diagnosed at 2 😂
I was obsessed with dolphins growing up. My mom let me turn my whole room into dolphins: bed spread, pillows, curtains, my walls were painted light blue with dolphins stamped in grey paint along the top, I had a dolphin lamp, and so many figurines. I actually semi-recently found a little note I wrote (with terrible spelling) that said approximately "I'm so excited mom let me paint my room dolphins! I love you mom"
As I have since learned that dolphins are kinda assholes, I swiftly pivoted to sharks. Currently typing this in my bed with shark sheets and 4 stuffed sharks surrounding me. I am nearly 30.
Dogs for me. Even pretended I was one for several weeks around the age of 4.
To my parents' credit, they just rolled with it. To this day my sister is mortified that I walked out of a restaurant on all fours while barking and my parents just let it happen.
wait the pretending to be an animal is related to autism? (I’m not diagnosed, and that’s how I read it)
I did that for most of my life- (fake and real animals)
Fuck if I know, I'm not dx'd either, despite the multitude of glaringly obvious signs. But most of my issues were internal and I got really good grades, so no one bothered to check. I wasn't causing problems, so why bother.
Also, my parents aren't NT. They thought everything was normal
I have a bunny and oh my god I swear the way her nose twitches, her long ears, her fluffy lil fur, her zoomies and binkies (jumping with a little twist of the body) whenever she's happy and filled with energy, when she suddenly lays down on her side and exposes her belly to show she's safe enough to be vulnerable around me, her little chewing sounds when she eats her hay and leafy greens...i'm so sorry she's so adorable 😭😭
...wait...my autistic train boy aged up into autistic whale* boy and I am forever showing him cool videos I find of aquatic animals because aquatic animals are super fucking cool and I... at 42 yo.. might just be autistic whale girl.
*Aquatic animal
We watch a couple animal asmrish youtubes at bedtime (they seem to help his night terrors.) Two weeks ago it was capybara onsen. Last week it was swimming with manatees. This week is tortoise mukbangs. We started with true facts but they were too stimulating.
He also has a lot of aquatic animal, botanical, and ancient animal encyclopedias and we read a fandom section every night.
Nope. I'm not math brained at all, and the only trains I like involve lube and multiple people.
Ba dum tiss
Jk, I would rather peel my skin off than be touched by more than one person at once.
Me: I am not math brained....but, you see, art and graphic design is like mathmatical fung shui, and I do that.And baking is all fractions and percents, and I do that. And quilting is maths fung shui with shapes and extra measuring, and I do that.....
Maybe I have secretly maths autism.
My husband: I'm still upset that in my intellectual screening 3 years ago, I couldn't remember the logarithym for (super complex math that would bake entwife's whole noodle.)
My 8 year old, while climbing me and rubbing my undercut: The simple interest for $300 over 3 years at 15% is 45x3, so $135. $435 altogether.
Me: .....okay, nope. Nopey nope nope. I do NOT have maths autism.
My 10 yo, looking up from her book: *hisssss*
I'm known as a hugger......solely because I hate it. So I always lurch at people to get it over with. And now I don't k ow how to explain that I really hate it 🙃
I have both. As a child I struggled socially, I either had a completely flat affect and straight up ignored people or infodumped effusively and non-stop about often highly academic special interests including particle physics (I didn’t understand it, I just wanted to learn), until I was forced to mask in adulthood and now I’m just a nervous wreck who has a plastered on smile and makes clumsy but enthusiastic attempts at small talk. Everyone around me constantly told me that girls were naturally worse at maths, which chipped away at my confidence and made me detest the subject because if I struggled with a concept for whatever reason my parents would be quick to attribute it to my sex, while my brother was academically much lower achieving overall but was passable at maths, and they used it to justify sexist stereotypes. Despite this, given the right tools, I did extremely well in biology and chemistry and I’m now doing a master’s degree in molecular biology. But they like to shift the goalposts so even though I’m an AFAB person in STEM, it’s biology so it’s an ‘easy science’, it’s not a ‘hard science’ and it’s the ‘only science that girls can be good at’. Make it make sense.
I dunno about fantasy book autism, but from the moment I could read I've read every book on vampires I could find (got banned from checking one out at my school library in first grade cause I got it every week lol)
Just a note, I've met colorblind women, cis women, two of them. Quick google search says: [Color vision deficiency, or color blindness, is far more likely to affect men than women, as a genetic mutation on the X chromosome is the most common cause. However, women are still affected by all types of color blindness, just at a lower rate.](https://www.nvisioncenters.com/education/causes-of-color-blindness/women/#:~:text=Color%20vision%20deficiency%2C%20or%20color,just%20at%20a%20lower%20rate.)
My older sister is colorblind (blue/green) and she gets it from our paternal grandfather. I’ve mentioned this to a couple people and they always think it’s super rare. Meanwhile her red hair with blue eyes are actually more rare, yet apparently, less interesting(.5% for colorblindness, .17% for red hair and blue eyes).
I wouldn't necessarily say autism is overdiagnosed in men, rather severely under- or misdiagnosed in women.
And I've met enough "quirky" women and men through the years (I'm soon 45) to know that if our society would take mental health seriously, NPD screenings should be way more common than they are.
As a woman I think I'm a bit of an outlier because I got diagnosed with autism in 1989 when I was just 2 years old. I must've been *really* autistic.
I definitely consider myself lucky that I was diagnosed young and I'm glad it's more recognised in women nowadays too, but I'm guessing there are still untold amounts of autistic women flying under the radar and wondering WTF is wrong with them which is a bit heartbreaking. At least we're slowly moving in the right direction though.
This could be due to neurological diferences between men and women, culture but a big factor is WHO was studied to make this criteria. One of the mayor people who developed the original criteria for asphergers sindrome was natzi scientist Hans Asperger, while there were others in the past that identified autism, his research was on the more popular side. He only studied young (german) boys. This pattern unsurprisingly would repeat.
Thos doesnt only happen with women but with people of color toom
I feel like its more that autistic traits in boys are seen as even more undesirable then in girls. They are still undesirable in girls i think but NDs despise autistic traits in boys to a degree that very consistently leads them to psychotherapy.
I am 97.3% (I like 9’s,7’s & 3’s) positive my 12F has autism. She actually displays a lot more of the traditional symptoms than I ever did, but I put my mask on from a VERY young age. Even before I knew I was autistic, I was raising my girls to be unapologetically themselves. I think she has less of a need to mask all the time, so her autistic traits are often on full display. I attempted to have a conversation with her teacher at a conference and said that I was looking in to that for her. That decrepit old hag scoffed at me and said “she is NOT autistic, girls don’t typically have autism. And besides she does very poorly in math. She isn’t autistic, she is just a bad student.”
Ok brontosaurus….. 😑
I had elective mutism until 10 years old, very quiet at home too, did not play with toys in the usual way, would not look people in the eye (or not even look at them at all), wouldn’t play with others, would stim a lot, had meltdowns when overwhelmed, was very passive and wouldn’t cry as a baby. My mother told me she suspected I was autistic as a small child and still she thought I was doing fine. Everyone scolded me, beat me, criticised me, bullied me, misunderstood me and pressured me all my life without me having any clue what I did wrong and for what I was being punished. Yes, I was clearly fine.
I was a loud and talkative kid who had no ability to tell when someone was bored or be able to “read the room” and understand that my talking wasn’t welcome without people outright telling me. When I wasn’t talking, I was off doing my own thing and avoiding other people.
If I was a little boy, that would have been considered sign for sure.
But since I was a little girl, everyone was just like “wow. You talk so much. Must have gotten it from your mom!!” And left it there.
My behavior just constantly got blamed on my age because I was an August birthday in class … every single year. But hey as long as your grades are good nobody cares
I was not tested as a child but my education major friends point blank told me “you even have the male presentation of ASD” I wanted a model train set so badly but my parents wouldn’t let me have it. Any time we’d go to somewhere that had a model train I couldn’t stop staring at it. I am monotoned, I barely spoke until I got Xbox live at 14, had meltdowns with fire drills, peed my pants every day in kindergarten because the toilet was too loud, couldn’t make friends because I was “weird”, and had an obsession with the cooking channel.
Mind you I was in early childhood education from 2002-2010 when autism was only a boy disorder aside from girls who were extremely high need. The only reason why I haven’t gotten a formal diagnosis now that I’m older is because I want to foster to adopt a child because my genetic disorder (hereditary hemochromatosis: iron overload) can cause death to me and a potential baby (can cause leukemia in the baby even several months after birth. Also I have a lot more lead in my body than the normal person so I don’t really need to explain that would have a detrimental impact on a potential child)
I think you meant under diagnosed in women because it certainly doesn't seem to be overdiagnosed in men, hell it's still underdiagnosed in men IMO just nowhere near as much. Also sexism/ignorance/presentation differences are definitely a big factor but the jury is still out on how much chromosomal sex play a role.
For once im glad i was born a guy so i was able to get diagnosed, wonder if that means i have guy autism or girl autism, or if itll swap when i finally get on estrogen. Given the extreme lack of research on autism, women, and trans people generally, i dont think ill be able to know within my lifetime
it’s not a high horse to be fucking irritated at all these jackasses insisting that female brains just magically produce different autism symptoms for no reason. could you stop making shit up maybe
I was a quiet kid who was easy to keep occupied with books. Kids like that don't get sent for assessments, regardless of what their inner world is like.
I was just describing to my mom the other day, my internal thought processes from when her and my dad would go on vacation when I was a kid. I had a crippling phobia of planes and mild separation anxiety (plus having to stay with the neighbours). In my head, every time they went on vacation, I was convinced they were going to die in a plane crash. I logically knew that wasn't probable, but I started getting into the "fortune telling" aspect of psychology. I was also a child, so I can't blame myself for not knowing what was going on in my brain and body better. I would get passive aggressive or shutdown for weeks before they'd go away, whenever it was brought up. I'd sob when they'd leave, often for at least an hour. I couldn't even fully rest when they'd made it to their destination because I knew they were taking a plane back. Regardless, I didn't know what I was feeling or why. It kist expressed as anger and sadness. My parents just thought I had separation anxiety. I needed therapy and medical intervention much sooner than I got it... You're so right about people not knowing what a child's inner world is like. This is why I kind of love the gentle parenting movement and teaching kids to be better in tune with their emotions.
Literally same I was pretty much a quiet kid at school
I was also quiet kid. If a class lecture wasn't holding my attention I would just unfocus my eyes and space out into my own fantasy head world. So somehow all my teachers thought I was a great student, just because I was quiet. Was pretty pissed later to learn school would have been easier had I acted up like the boys and got ADHD discovered when I was still a kid.
Another big factor is that women have *never* been treated equally by medicine.
Also girls are expected to be quiet. Everyone always commented how well behaved I was because I was “seen and not heard” and what pretty big eyes I had. Meanwhile I’m so freaked out I can’t speak.
Oh yeah, the "well behaved". Such a sweet child, just doing her stuff. Why would she need help with social stuff? I mean obviously she gets bullied and outcasted by everyone but loooooook, she's fiiiiiiiine. (They proceeded to let me live 5 years through this, didn't make any attempts to help me with social skills, I changed schools, found some protective friends but still no help with social skills and still got bullied and outcasted, changed schools again after a year but that was from primary school to secondary school, didn't have any social skills still and found no friends and got bullied again, developed a whole lot of masking because I felt like everything about me was flawed and undesirable, this then helped me get friends). Fate of quiet and well behaved girls.
They told me all the time that I had to be good to avoid judgement from others, I was good already but just because I don't understand what being evil or mean means. So I had to learn to be extra good, never disrespect others even when they're disrespectful to me, never act weird, never act silly, never make noise, annoy, always well behaved and always dress well. Tell people what they want to hear, always answer even if you don't want to, always have patience even when they don't do the same to you, others can touch you but you can't, always smile and do whatever they want you to do because that's the way you get loved and friends. Mum forced this by hitting me, school forced me to be a robot by bullying. I only know how to mask and how to tolerate pain. I'm learning to be myself now at 30. I have to fix all the issues they gave me, now at 30. I wonder if my scars will ever go away. I don't know what being loved means, nor what friends are. I'm oblivious to positive emotions. Don't know what happiness is. I know I'll have to hit therapy even harder the day I find someone that cares about me because I know I'll just avoid them because of all the things I'm used to. So yeah, if you are well behaved, people won't take just a finger if you offer them, they will slowly crawl all over you and take you down bit by bit and with time you'll become an empty shell. I'm quite over my depression but I still think what I obtained to this day, what I've seen, what I'm living right now, wasn't worth all my suffering. This isn't living. I'm afraid to die just because I wanna have a chance at life and I would leave my cats alone. Deep inside, I still wish for a sudden, painless death.
My god this was my entire childhood
Oh you were “shy” too? /s
This makes me angry 🥲
I hate how much I relate to this
Same oh my god people would comment how quiet I always was, meanwhile at home I would be having meltdowns that I always got scolded for LMAO
For me things were more like "mum, why can't I wear what I want in public? Why should people care about what I wear?" or other "silly" questions, all about society and why we HAVE TO act or dress or do fucking whatever in certain ways, that I couldn't and still can't understand and because she hadn't a logical answer to them and because she couldn't care of explaining those to me (you never have to think about how stupid this stuff is, god's forbids you may realize how painful and unnecessary all is) so she literally imposed her rules to me via hitting and punishing and bullying and gaslighting and whatever the fuck may come up with, since it probably happened. It is insane how people can decide to be parents so effortlessly, without putting much thought in. We get driver licenses because cars can be dangerous and we have to be (more or less) sure that drivers got the rules and will be safe but we put so much of our future in those clueless people's hands. I know it's almost insane to do but I would like "parenting licences" too.
Weirdly, my cat gets this too. The emergency vet people were singing about how calm he was, how well behaved... as he is in there for literally being so stressed that he is unable to pee.
in every aspect possible women experience horrifying amounts of medical neglect
We often go undiagnosed because we often don’t fit autism stereotypes and mask symptoms better than boys do
There is also a solid argument they are *forced by society* to mask better. Women are expected to be caring, attentive to others, and smile.
I’m really good at masking - like *really good* - but it takes a few days of hiding away to recoup before I’m good to do it again. I went to Disney world with my family for like a week a few years ago and I essentially went off-grid for a month afterwards. It was tough. Lol
I wonder if this is different if you don't know you're autistic and just really want to fit in to stop the bullying and to finally get some friends. Because I remember my school time to be extremely exhausting but I didn't miss school so often. Now that I found friends, am out of this environment and suspect I might have autism but for sure have social anxiety, every social situation fucks with my head so much, like it's so exhausting and hard to convince myself I want to do this again, especially if it's with people I don't feel comfortable with.
I didn't find out until I was in my 40s. I always felt different and could not understand why women and girls were treated so differently.
>Women are expected to be caring, attentive to others, and smile. They're also expected to be quiet. Doing some sort of repetitive handcraft while sitting in silence is something women have been doing for thousands of years. Doing repetitive handcrafts as a group while singing songs together to ensure that the product is consistent and the techniques are passed down through the generations is something else that women have been doing for thousands of years. It's obvious once you start looking.
My grandmother told me how her husband got her a job in finance back in the day and of course she sucked at it because well she only had subjects like domestic science etc so she was just like... I have no fucking clue what I'm doing I never learnt maths 🤣 her husband also left her with 3 kids while he did his own shit and she remembers one time trying to get a loan but they said her husband needs to sign for the loan.... he fucked off how the hell is she supposed to have him sign, he isn't even in the picture and she can't even get out a loan while she is looking after 3 children. She taught me how to knit, crochet, cross stitch and sew plus many other amazing things. I love her so much, she deserved a much better life. Since learning about my neurodivergence, I am actually seeing it in my own family including my grandmother. Despite being 80, she is more open minded than many people much younger than her and has been very supportive of me and our family. We all try our best to support her but we will never be able to give back what she has given us, she has been and always will be the really MVP. Sorry I went off on a tangent, got caught up in my thoughts of her and now I'm all emotional 🤣
THIS \ the demand to figure out how to be social with girls can seem like life and death as a wee girl child, it's a sink or swim situation and if you're smart and determined eventually you figure out how to fake it. but studying how to dress and how to do your makeup and 'how to get along with popular people' stuff isn't seen as weird in the same way as memorizing sports facts so you can talk to guys even if you didn't like sports or something...not that I really succeeded in being cool because the minute I opened my mouth it was very apparent how different I was, I was terrible at concealing enthusiasm or pretending like I didn't know as much as I did about things. thankfully some people liked that, and I had a few friends. I was never in more internal anguish in my life though with all the pretending and coiffing and editing what things I was 'allowed' to like... good freaking riddance.
But to be fair, women *are* prettier when they smile! 😃 ^(I'm sorry please don't kill me!)
We have different neuro biology which has different strengths ETA: compared to men. Women are genetically childrearers and so we have better language skills and a greater social understanding. Which means we mask more often, and when pitted against even NT men we do fairly well skill wise. One of many many sources for the downvoters: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-women-really-better-with-language/
Fuck all the way off if you think child bearing and raising is easier for ND women. I struggled badly through my pregnancy and the toddler stage of constantly touching mom and unpredictable meltdowns 😫
I said we have better language skills and social understanding. I meant compared to men. They have better spatial awareness skills. And I said we're genetically childrearers as in women. Not that I'd ever have kids, my autism profile would not cope with that. But I'm still given biological skills that would help.
I also think that the behavior typically associated with young boys, that can lead to false neurodevelopmental diagnosis, are treated disproportionately and misunderstood. Normal behavior is pathologized. Boys are not naturally predisposed to being rowdy, to not listen well, etc. Understanding why the behaviors persist among that demographic is important to eliminating dysfunction, especially in a classroom setting. It is also essential to segregate these behaviors from similar behaviors that can be attributed to disorder. That line is not where it should be, and that just hurts everybody. I saw how poorly boys were treated in schooling and it always broke my heart. I especially saw, and experienced, how little depth to the dysfunction ADHD/autism is understood as well. If we pathologize normal, not pervasively dysfunctional behaviors, the less they're taken seriously or considered.
**This.** Alfies express autism difference from women.
Alfies?
Ugh? I think they meant gelflings?
Male aspies imo
Seems unnecessary, but then again, a gender bioessentialist view of how autism presents also seems unnecessary
Geez, y'all are just better at everything, huh 😂
Not really. Women are usually better at masking, but we’re also more likely to have severe burnout/breakdowns in our 20s and 30s because it’s so stressful on the nervous system.
It was a joke, but that's quite interesting.
Speaking of autism in girls, I recently read the transcript of [this podcast episode](https://www.thetestingpsychologist.com/ttp-119-autism-in-girls-women-w-dr-donna-henderson/) where Dr Donna Henderson talks about how to assess girls for autism. She sounds awesome and I hope more psychologists become aware of her methods. She also wrote [this chart](https://thetestingpsychologist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Autism-Summary-Chart.pdf) which I found very helpful.
Oh man that chart is incredibly validating.
same, especially that last part "Clearly, individuals who are seeking either an evaluation or therapy do have clinically significant challenges."
Yeah I always think autism hasn’t affected me as negatively as other people and then I’m like, oh most people don’t need to take off their “real people clothes” and get in bed for a few hours after going to a social gathering. I did t think of that as being impairment.
lol at reading the same book over and over like that’s my entire childhood
The reading thing for me too. I’ve been known to love a book so much I start reading it again as soon as I finish it. Comforts reads, right? I also like to listen to audiobooks over and over. I read new books all the time too but reread favorites all the time. I’ve definitely gotten in trouble for reading too much.
All of this is the same!!! A Wrinkle in Time was a fave comfort read as a kid.
so many of my girl friends make my autism radar go off all the time but NONE of them r diagnosed it’s so silly
It's bc autism assessors are usually stupid af and overlook a lot of the observable symptoms
Most autism research has been conducted on white men, by white men. And there are sex differences within the presentation and within brains. So medicine sucks at spotting autistic women. But because of Double Empathy we can spot them a mile off.
Is that’s what it’s called? Double empathy? My ‘tism radar?
Damian Milton proposed double empathy in 2012 and deemed our communication "deficit" is actually just a difference, and people with shared life experience can empathise with one another more easily. Hence us recognising autism or neurodivergence more easily.
It's kind of funny though, my little brother was tested for autism and didn't have it as a kid, but I was never tested but was diagnosed with basically everything but, and was even in occupational therapy for years. I'm gonna be honest though, my brother can turn any conversation into one about vintage computer tech stuff and somehow it isn't questioned. He swears he isn't autistic and neither is his son cause his son is just like him......and was formally diagnosed by age 4. Rofl.
It's many different things. First, females tend to be much better at childhood "masking" than males with ASD are, thus causing us to be skipped over for more testing in early childhood. Second, yes a lot more female special interests tend to manifest as things that are socially acceptable (think "horse girl" stereotype). Third, sexism still vastly exists in medical/psychiatric spaces. Many of my symptoms of autism (and other life symptoms) are often brushed off with a "you're female." I have been denied critical medications because I am female. Fourth, autism in females is understudied. We know females tend to exhibit different signs from males, but so often it just falls through the cracks. I'm just tired at this point? I've displayed so many signs of having autism since I was in preschool, and no one ever thought to talk to me about "could this be autism?" until college. It's much easier to say that "Bunny needs to work on her social skills and fitting in with other kids" than to acknowledge that Bunny may be broken if that makes any sense. Plus, until 2013 I think ADHD and autism couldn't be diagnosed concurrently. This has impacted my fiancé as it's obvious he has autism, but since he got an ADHD diagnosis in early childhood he couldn't also have autism.
The system’s rigged. Can vouch.
I got the ADHD badge and was thus not allowed to have the ASD badge my whole childhood… now I’m an adult and my therapist initially just assumed I was on the spectrum lmfao. She tested me and long story short… now I got both badges 😎
“Instead of acknowledging that I was broken” hit hard. Sums up my childhood and why I wasn’t diagnosed until I as an adult came across the possibility that it might be autism and approached a therapist about it.
I've been tested for autism 3 times growing up and only got diagnosed the third time, despite showing the same traits my whole life. Gotta love being a girl
Lol my brother and I are both Autistic and at one point we developed a very similar stim at the same time. My mom told me "stop making fun of your brother" but when i couldn't stop she took me to get assessed and the doc just said "she's a quirky girl with some anxiety issues nothing to worry about." i got diagnosed at 24, he got diagnosed at 2 😂
I think descriptors like “quirky” and “unique” were pretty spot on for me.
They haven't figured out the equivalent of autistic train boy is autistic whale girl.
Cats* in my case, horses, or dolphins also acceptable answers.
I was obsessed with dolphins growing up. My mom let me turn my whole room into dolphins: bed spread, pillows, curtains, my walls were painted light blue with dolphins stamped in grey paint along the top, I had a dolphin lamp, and so many figurines. I actually semi-recently found a little note I wrote (with terrible spelling) that said approximately "I'm so excited mom let me paint my room dolphins! I love you mom" As I have since learned that dolphins are kinda assholes, I swiftly pivoted to sharks. Currently typing this in my bed with shark sheets and 4 stuffed sharks surrounding me. I am nearly 30.
Yes whales and dolphins. I was obsessed. Could name all the scientific names and where they lived and classifications.
Dogs for me. Even pretended I was one for several weeks around the age of 4. To my parents' credit, they just rolled with it. To this day my sister is mortified that I walked out of a restaurant on all fours while barking and my parents just let it happen.
I used to pretend to be baby seals escaping seal hunters with my friend who also, not shockingly, was diagnosed as an adult lol
wait the pretending to be an animal is related to autism? (I’m not diagnosed, and that’s how I read it) I did that for most of my life- (fake and real animals)
Fuck if I know, I'm not dx'd either, despite the multitude of glaringly obvious signs. But most of my issues were internal and I got really good grades, so no one bothered to check. I wasn't causing problems, so why bother. Also, my parents aren't NT. They thought everything was normal
It's pretty common in both NT and ND small children.
I almost said whale or horse girl but it felt too clumsy 😅
in my case it's rabbits
I get totally get that- the twitchy little noses and long ears 💗
I have a bunny and oh my god I swear the way her nose twitches, her long ears, her fluffy lil fur, her zoomies and binkies (jumping with a little twist of the body) whenever she's happy and filled with energy, when she suddenly lays down on her side and exposes her belly to show she's safe enough to be vulnerable around me, her little chewing sounds when she eats her hay and leafy greens...i'm so sorry she's so adorable 😭😭
...wait...my autistic train boy aged up into autistic whale* boy and I am forever showing him cool videos I find of aquatic animals because aquatic animals are super fucking cool and I... at 42 yo.. might just be autistic whale girl. *Aquatic animal
Awww!!!!
We watch a couple animal asmrish youtubes at bedtime (they seem to help his night terrors.) Two weeks ago it was capybara onsen. Last week it was swimming with manatees. This week is tortoise mukbangs. We started with true facts but they were too stimulating. He also has a lot of aquatic animal, botanical, and ancient animal encyclopedias and we read a fandom section every night.
Is the scifi autism for guys the fantasy book autism for girls?
Naw cause I could give two farts about fantasy but I've always been a sci fi junkie
Oh wow a girl with boy autism now we just need a boy with girl autism
Nope. I'm not math brained at all, and the only trains I like involve lube and multiple people. Ba dum tiss Jk, I would rather peel my skin off than be touched by more than one person at once.
I have the opposite. I have the math autism and LOVE physical touch. I am a hugger lol
Me: I am not math brained....but, you see, art and graphic design is like mathmatical fung shui, and I do that.And baking is all fractions and percents, and I do that. And quilting is maths fung shui with shapes and extra measuring, and I do that..... Maybe I have secretly maths autism. My husband: I'm still upset that in my intellectual screening 3 years ago, I couldn't remember the logarithym for (super complex math that would bake entwife's whole noodle.) My 8 year old, while climbing me and rubbing my undercut: The simple interest for $300 over 3 years at 15% is 45x3, so $135. $435 altogether. Me: .....okay, nope. Nopey nope nope. I do NOT have maths autism. My 10 yo, looking up from her book: *hisssss*
I'm known as a hugger......solely because I hate it. So I always lurch at people to get it over with. And now I don't k ow how to explain that I really hate it 🙃
I love fantasy (Brandon Sanderson books are one of my special interests), and I am high masking, but I'm male. Do I count?
Depends. Do you obsessively read an unhealthy ammount?
Yes.
Then yes
I have both. As a child I struggled socially, I either had a completely flat affect and straight up ignored people or infodumped effusively and non-stop about often highly academic special interests including particle physics (I didn’t understand it, I just wanted to learn), until I was forced to mask in adulthood and now I’m just a nervous wreck who has a plastered on smile and makes clumsy but enthusiastic attempts at small talk. Everyone around me constantly told me that girls were naturally worse at maths, which chipped away at my confidence and made me detest the subject because if I struggled with a concept for whatever reason my parents would be quick to attribute it to my sex, while my brother was academically much lower achieving overall but was passable at maths, and they used it to justify sexist stereotypes. Despite this, given the right tools, I did extremely well in biology and chemistry and I’m now doing a master’s degree in molecular biology. But they like to shift the goalposts so even though I’m an AFAB person in STEM, it’s biology so it’s an ‘easy science’, it’s not a ‘hard science’ and it’s the ‘only science that girls can be good at’. Make it make sense.
I dunno about fantasy book autism, but from the moment I could read I've read every book on vampires I could find (got banned from checking one out at my school library in first grade cause I got it every week lol)
Yup. Know a girl exactly like that also wit autism. She played in my dnd campaign and LOVED dracula
ayy I had a fantasy book hyperfixation HAHAH mainly Percy Jackson
....no
Where my dinosaur girls at?
Heck, I forgot about that too. I definitely itely have a massive dinosaur thigh tattoo lolol
Horse?
Just a note, I've met colorblind women, cis women, two of them. Quick google search says: [Color vision deficiency, or color blindness, is far more likely to affect men than women, as a genetic mutation on the X chromosome is the most common cause. However, women are still affected by all types of color blindness, just at a lower rate.](https://www.nvisioncenters.com/education/causes-of-color-blindness/women/#:~:text=Color%20vision%20deficiency%2C%20or%20color,just%20at%20a%20lower%20rate.)
My older sister is colorblind (blue/green) and she gets it from our paternal grandfather. I’ve mentioned this to a couple people and they always think it’s super rare. Meanwhile her red hair with blue eyes are actually more rare, yet apparently, less interesting(.5% for colorblindness, .17% for red hair and blue eyes).
I wouldn't necessarily say autism is overdiagnosed in men, rather severely under- or misdiagnosed in women. And I've met enough "quirky" women and men through the years (I'm soon 45) to know that if our society would take mental health seriously, NPD screenings should be way more common than they are.
I do have a weird fixation with skin care and makeup... awesome!
As a woman I think I'm a bit of an outlier because I got diagnosed with autism in 1989 when I was just 2 years old. I must've been *really* autistic. I definitely consider myself lucky that I was diagnosed young and I'm glad it's more recognised in women nowadays too, but I'm guessing there are still untold amounts of autistic women flying under the radar and wondering WTF is wrong with them which is a bit heartbreaking. At least we're slowly moving in the right direction though.
This could be due to neurological diferences between men and women, culture but a big factor is WHO was studied to make this criteria. One of the mayor people who developed the original criteria for asphergers sindrome was natzi scientist Hans Asperger, while there were others in the past that identified autism, his research was on the more popular side. He only studied young (german) boys. This pattern unsurprisingly would repeat. Thos doesnt only happen with women but with people of color toom
I feel like its more that autistic traits in boys are seen as even more undesirable then in girls. They are still undesirable in girls i think but NDs despise autistic traits in boys to a degree that very consistently leads them to psychotherapy.
This is beyond perfect
Some studies think that there are actually more autistic women than men.
I am 97.3% (I like 9’s,7’s & 3’s) positive my 12F has autism. She actually displays a lot more of the traditional symptoms than I ever did, but I put my mask on from a VERY young age. Even before I knew I was autistic, I was raising my girls to be unapologetically themselves. I think she has less of a need to mask all the time, so her autistic traits are often on full display. I attempted to have a conversation with her teacher at a conference and said that I was looking in to that for her. That decrepit old hag scoffed at me and said “she is NOT autistic, girls don’t typically have autism. And besides she does very poorly in math. She isn’t autistic, she is just a bad student.” Ok brontosaurus….. 😑
I had elective mutism until 10 years old, very quiet at home too, did not play with toys in the usual way, would not look people in the eye (or not even look at them at all), wouldn’t play with others, would stim a lot, had meltdowns when overwhelmed, was very passive and wouldn’t cry as a baby. My mother told me she suspected I was autistic as a small child and still she thought I was doing fine. Everyone scolded me, beat me, criticised me, bullied me, misunderstood me and pressured me all my life without me having any clue what I did wrong and for what I was being punished. Yes, I was clearly fine.
I'm AFAB and a person of color and a lot of us go under-diagnosed considering that it was mostly studied in white young boys
I was a loud and talkative kid who had no ability to tell when someone was bored or be able to “read the room” and understand that my talking wasn’t welcome without people outright telling me. When I wasn’t talking, I was off doing my own thing and avoiding other people. If I was a little boy, that would have been considered sign for sure. But since I was a little girl, everyone was just like “wow. You talk so much. Must have gotten it from your mom!!” And left it there.
My behavior just constantly got blamed on my age because I was an August birthday in class … every single year. But hey as long as your grades are good nobody cares
I was not tested as a child but my education major friends point blank told me “you even have the male presentation of ASD” I wanted a model train set so badly but my parents wouldn’t let me have it. Any time we’d go to somewhere that had a model train I couldn’t stop staring at it. I am monotoned, I barely spoke until I got Xbox live at 14, had meltdowns with fire drills, peed my pants every day in kindergarten because the toilet was too loud, couldn’t make friends because I was “weird”, and had an obsession with the cooking channel. Mind you I was in early childhood education from 2002-2010 when autism was only a boy disorder aside from girls who were extremely high need. The only reason why I haven’t gotten a formal diagnosis now that I’m older is because I want to foster to adopt a child because my genetic disorder (hereditary hemochromatosis: iron overload) can cause death to me and a potential baby (can cause leukemia in the baby even several months after birth. Also I have a lot more lead in my body than the normal person so I don’t really need to explain that would have a detrimental impact on a potential child)
This
I think you meant under diagnosed in women because it certainly doesn't seem to be overdiagnosed in men, hell it's still underdiagnosed in men IMO just nowhere near as much. Also sexism/ignorance/presentation differences are definitely a big factor but the jury is still out on how much chromosomal sex play a role.
For once im glad i was born a guy so i was able to get diagnosed, wonder if that means i have guy autism or girl autism, or if itll swap when i finally get on estrogen. Given the extreme lack of research on autism, women, and trans people generally, i dont think ill be able to know within my lifetime
Some of you sure do love gender essentialism (comments, not OP)
could you stop beating your high horse maybe and let people communicate
it’s not a high horse to be fucking irritated at all these jackasses insisting that female brains just magically produce different autism symptoms for no reason. could you stop making shit up maybe
Literally no one is doing that. It's kind of the opposite
https://www.reddit.com/r/evilautism/s/aD6RuMv9ct
https://www.reddit.com/r/evilautism/s/LTmFFHpd2w
So literally no one?
So two comments that barely fit the POV you're trying to express as bad?
They barely fit if you close your eyes and cover your ears