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Apr

2009

File Under D for Duh

Posted on 08:59, April 13th, 2009 by EKSwitaj

Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

The UK Guardian reports that Dr Judith Gould who, together with Lorna Wing, carried out important research into the link between Asperger’s syndrome, autism and other pervasive developmental disorders in 1979 is now criticizing the medical establishment for failing to diagnose Aspergers in girls:

Gould, who is director of the National Autistic Society’s Lorna Wing centre for autism and co-founder of the Centre for Social and Communication Disorders, said: “We’re failing girls at the moment. We are doing many thousands of them a great disservice. They are either not being picked up in the first place, but if they ask for help they are being turned away. Even if they are referred for diagnosis, they are commonly rejected.”

She argues that this occurs in part because stereotypes of how Aspergers manifests itself are based on boys rather than girls. I would add that this is not unusual: most of our models for different categories of being are based on the male gender with girl versions being seen as adaptations thereof.

The article goes on to mention that girls learn to mask their Aspergers because they are taught that if they are good, no one will see their differences. I know from my own experience that girls are much more likely to be told to put down their books and “be social”. When you are forced to spend time with other children, you learn quickly to hide your differences so as to escape at least some of the taunting.

Also mentioned in the article are differences in the subjects of obsessions:

boys hyperfocus on facts and certain interests, such as trains or weather. Girls escape into fiction. They have imaginary friends, live in another world with fairies and witches, obsessively watch soap operas or become intensely interested in celebrities.

This in itself would appear to be stereotypical. Some of my obsessions have been fictional (fairies, witches, and even soap operas), but in elementary school I also had a deep interest in dinosaurs. My fascination with science fiction led also to an interest in science fact. I suspect that the differences being described here have more to do with social conditioning than anything else. A young girl desperate for social contact might just develop (or seem to develop) an interest in horses leading to obsessive collecting of My Little Pony, even if she never has an opportunity to ride the real thing and would really rather ride a Stegasaurus anyway, if that’s what all the other girls in her class do.

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3 Responses to “File Under D for Duh”

bluedancer on April 5th, 2010 at 6:00 am

i came across you blog while on a google search for more information about yoko ono and her (apparently new?) association with autism speaks. i hope you don’t mind if i comment.

(i really liked your entry on ono and “autism speaks,” btw. i agree. i like her too, and i like her artwork, and i hope she gets a clue that there’s something else out there.)

anyway–i do think girls are radically underdiagnosed, and i do think autism often presents a little differently between the genders. it probably is social conditioning, i agree. but i’m glad that the information is getting out there about potential differences.

i relate to those descriptions. in fact, i still “collect” celebrity heroes and at times escape into fantasy. (i also had anorexia as a teenager, which apparently is not uncommon among girls on the spectrum—i was truly obsessive about diet, and about finding some type of acceptance somewhere. i thought “thin” was the way to go.”

i was earlier diagnosed as having a schizotypal pd because of some of these traits. i wonder how many women and girls are still being misdiagnosed because the misconceptions still abound(?)

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EKSwitaj on April 5th, 2010 at 3:14 pm

Hey, it’s always good to hear from other folks who have similar-but-different experiences. I can definitely see there being differences between how Asperger’s present across the genders, but I get worried when it is presented as a rigid difference because in many ways I present a more typical “boy” Asperger’s than a “girl” Asperger’s.

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bluedancer on April 5th, 2010 at 6:39 pm

yes, no doubt. gender rigidity is a pain. if the ideas get “set in stone” that girl auties are always this, boy auties always that, there’s really no point.

in some ways i’m more “boy” than “girl” i think, but i do have a lot of the traits that tend to get diagnosed as schizotypal pd. (the escape into fantasy, ex., and the fascination with celebrity heroes. and since schizophrenia spectrum do’s have some superficial similarities with autism—i don’t have much facial expression, i have “repetitive movements”–stim–it was easy to put that label on me.)

so i think there is some usefulness in realizing that some autistics escape into fantasy, or develop eating disorders, etc., so that the schizophrenia and borderline pd misdiagnoses aren’t so prevalent.

but yes–i see your point. if the traits are too divided along gender lines too consistently, they can become stereotypes.

(thanks for the blog, btw!)

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