The spectrum and females

So autism, Asperger's syndrome and everything else that falls on the spectrum shows different symptoms and signs based on sex. For instance, boys are more likely to have very specific interests and girls are more likely to try to copy others (called masking and is almost exclusive to girls who fall on the spectrum). Now of course, the signs mesh and collide with each other but it's fact that most females who are autistic are usually misdiagnosed, not diagnosed at all or diagnosed at a very late stage of their lives when the disorder makes doing every day tasks such as socialising difficult. For the longest time I have been wondering what's the matter with me. I thought I had OCPD (routine), Anorexia Nervosa (obsession with numbers) and bipolar disorder. Though none of these disorders checked all the boxes. Are there any other girl Aspies? What's your story? When did you seek help? Is it just as exhausting to just pretend to fit in every day for others?

>>10648 wait. so you're so obsessed with numbers that you don't even eat??

>>10664 not OP, but, your weight can feel like a highscore. Getting that number as low as possible is the game

>>10664 Yes, calorie counting, body measurements and body weight can really take over my mind. But not for the same reason an anorexic would do that. For example an anorexic might restrict food as a way to feel control. I count my calories because it doesn't feel right to eat an odd number of calories in a day. See the difference? >>10666 is right too.

My waifu isn't on the spectrum AFAIK, but she does have OCD, which manifests in a love of counting, and being able to remember large numbers, like phone numbers and even bar codes, which made her a bit of a terror as a supermarket cashier. One thing she is remarkable at is gambling, because her OCD overrides her gambling addiction and she always walks away when she is winning, instead of trying to gamble it back chasing a loss. So I must be the only husband who is completely OK with his wife having a flutter on the pokies, because I know she's break even or win big, never lose big.

God I wish I could find a cute aspie girlfriend to watch civilization crumble with. Or anyone, really. Haven't talked to anyone besides family in about two uears now.

>>10697 Why do you think that's not OCD?

same here, I've had problems with anorexia/bulimia & also was told I could have OCD or bipolar. Really it was just trying to get to the rout of the problem, and it was only after my own suggestion of autism that i was diagnosed. Everything makes a lot of sense when i think back to my childhood. It is just a shame I wasn't diagnosed earlier since now I'm at an age where its very difficult to socialise, as my automatic response is to stay home by myself

>>10648 I've been fascinated by this difference for some time. Im in that really rare group of guys that manages a pretty high level of mimicry for my sex. Do girls have days where you lag behind in getting the act up and going? I feel like its happened to me a lot when I havent interacted with people for a while.

I had a very old fashined autistic girlfriend, it was terrible, she was obsessed with her college entrance grades. I spent years with her, got to the point she was annoyed about every single thing about me and she was pretty manipulative into making me do every wish of her and making me feel miserable about it. I got anxiety and then broke up very carefully when i had enough, she still tried everything to make me feel guilty about breaking up and go back to her. Stuff is fine now, though, its all solved and talked through. I dont mean all autistic girls are like that, this one had a very strict creation and family.

>>10648 >>10805 The mechanism behind this is pretty simple - females have an extra set of genes, as they have two X chromosomes, while males have only one. This increases females' overall fitness. If Asperger's, autism, etc. have genetic basis and some of its genes are located on the X chromosome, then the inheritance pattern showed on picrel applies in this case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_recessive_inheritance

>>17953 >The mechanism behind this is pretty simple - females have an extra set of genes, as they have two X chromosomes, while males have only one. This increases females' overall fitness. what a load of horseradish.

>>17956 >what a load of horseradish. Can you elaborate? Y chromosome is known to have fewer genes than X, it mostly contains the gene coding spermatogenesis and testicles. Of course the extra X chromosomes are inactivated in cells, due to Barr bodies, but still you have 1:1 ratio of types of cells. How else would you explain inheritance pattern of Daltonism? If a recessive gene is located on X chromosome, females are less affected than males.

>>17958 Of when you give anabolic steroids to ordinary men or women it might be obvious why men with autism behave differently than women

>>10805 I definitely have times where I run out of steam and can't mask anymore, but that's usually at the end of a long day after I've already had to keep track of when to blink and nod and smile all day. >>10666 Counting calories can be fun in the same way. I used to love getting as few calories in a day as possible.

>>10648 Never formally diagnosed, but I likely have it. I don't care; you shouldn't get invested in this mortal realm cause you're never going to be rewarded for your efforts.

>>10648 >called masking and is almost exclusive to girls who fall on the spectrum I thought masking was common to high functioning autistics regardless of sex? I'm a male autist and was told about it by health care professionals after my diagnosis and it seemed to fit well with my behaviour and experience.

>girls are more likely to try to copy others Isn't this how all girls work?

heres a piece of advice from (not diagnosed but probably) sperg stop caring about fitting in and being normal now, i suppose it's more difficult for girls to do but yeah, it worked for me if you feel youre worthless and unlikable, instead of tryharding to fit in you should work on becoming a better person, spend more time on hobbies (those that matter, like literature, fitness, music, linguistics, not video games, netflix and anime) youre as likeable to others as much as you like yourself, cuz if those feeling project onto how people perceive you

>>20369 Yes it is. Masking is done by almost every single high function aspie at some degree.

Egadinell (O God in Hell)! masking is like kicking dead whales down the beach the life out of me. But I can't stop because (I think) habit. I used to not mask, and everything worked out fine, because I would be pedantic about how I said things, and if they misunderstood, I could simply go through what I said piece by piece and they would understand it. When I am masking, I don't understand what I said. I'll have a thought, and I'll say something that I think they'll understand as the thought I had, but then if I think about what I just said, I can't understand what thought I was trying to communicate. But when I ask them to tell me the thought that they got from what I said, but using a different language pattern, the thought that I infer from what they say is the same as, or similar to, the thought that I had tried to convey, but unless they described the thought using simple language, I still don't know if they really got the thought that I tried to communicate, or if somehow their translating what I said to a thought in their mind, their translating a thought in their mind to something they said, are both broken in corresponding ways. This feeling never goes away. Before I did masking, any time that I didn't understand something that someone said, I would ask them to explain what they meant and why they said that phrase when they meant that thought. This would give me data about different language patterns that a person might use and the meanings that might be associated with that language pattern, so that when I see a similar language patter, I can try to guess what might have been meant, so that next time, I can ask them that when they said X, whether they mean Y, whether they mean Z,, the answers to which are a truth value, which may be easier for them to answer than the `open ended' question that asks them what they meant by X, the answer to which can be any thought. After starting to do masking, I did less asking about what they meant when I didn't understand something they said. This is a big problem, because now it's difficult to read something and think about the different possible meanings, so now if I don't understand something, most often I skip it, which makes me stupider because I am not learning all the time that I could be learning. I was more `high functioning' before I started doing masking.

I find it kinda strange to attribute masking as defined in this thread to autists. Most people get their values from copying whatever seems to be most popular. >>20547 And this is the exact problem normal people have due to this. They dont do their own value judgement. They just follow imitating to stay in the cool group. Hence they end up as npcs steered by marketing deciding whats popular.

This "masking" thing you're all talking about is interesting. Have any of you taken the MBTI test and if so, what do you test as? Although I've repeatedly tested as INTP, the symptoms of depression in ENTPs and my own extroverted childhood before I became depressed all seem to suggest that I am actually ENTP rather than INTP. The form the ENTP takes when unhealthy more accurately describes my current state than that of an unhealthy INTP. The reason why I bring this up is precisely because of masking - ENTPs are known for "social chameleon" type behaviour, donning different masks depending on the social climate. They're often stereotyped as sociopathic actually, due to this masking tendency. To see that this trait is so readily apparent with the Autistic Spectrum and is especially pronounced amongst the females on the spectrum is a very peculiar overlap to me. Perhaps it's just mere coincidence? I don't know. I do wonder how all of you test but I sincerely, sincerely apologise if this thread gets derailed by MBTI discussion because of this post. I hope it stays on-topic and I hope anyone hoping to discuss MBTI in more detail do so in their own, separate thread. Then there's that other poster ITT, telling people that when they start to crave fitting in, they should pursue useful hobbies instead. That really sounds like the unhealthy ENTP to me, when Fe distracts you from pursuing Ti despite the great irony of the fact that if you disregarded Fe and pursued Ti anyway, both Ti and Fe would be fulfilled. https://youtu.be/gzqKOupuGBs Giving in to the cravings of Fe, as the video states, leaves you dependent on being valued for being entertaining rather than being knowledgeable and so, you're always cracking jokes and deeply craving someone to confirm that they like you. There seems to be some kind of weird overlap between autism in females and the signs of the ENTP personality type in my eyes. Any thoughts on this speculation? I think it's worth noting that Carl Jung, the creator of the theory that MBTI is founded upon, stated that ENTPs are the most feminine of all the types. In summary, I have the prediction that a lot of high-functioning women would test as ENTP and I would like data to confirm this suspicion. Perhaps someone should do a survey of sorts.

>>20555 Can you give an example of a thought expressed with and without masking, or does it require a model to be present? >>20547 >ENTPs are known for "social chameleon" type behaviour, donning different masks depending on the social climate What distinguishes this from "acting appropriately for the situation"?

>>20556 A social chameleon switches personalities completely when switching groups. Means you act like a nerd among nerds and like a gangster among gangsters to the point people are convinced thats your natural personality. People just trying to fit in are always off and others know you dont belong to this group.

My gf has asperger's but she says she tries not to do masking and tries to be herself. Even though she says she never does it with me sometimes I worry that her interactions with me are fake. I trust her though. She's a generally normal person. She just gets annoyed by loud noises and is sometimes socially awkward but who isn't really? I didn't realize she had it until she told me. Because socalizing is very important to women they try really hard to be normal which not only makes it hard to diagnose, but it also makes it possible to misdiagnose someone who's just a bit socially awkward.

>>20563 I want to announce my warning about marrying a woman with aspergers. Psychologists have demonstrated that the effect upon a child that's been raised by an emotionally cold mother is similar to brain trauma. It seems that for mothers to play with their children was in the blueprints. You say your girlfriend's practically normal so that's good. I hope other men are wary of marrying a cold mother, one that possibly even hates children and refuses to play with them.

>People just trying to fit in are always off and others know you dont belong to this group. Masking isn't `just trying to fit in.' >Can you give an example of a thought expressed with and without masking, or does it require a model to be present? It depends on the audience, but my default is to use a random masking method and adjust it as I get more data about them. >>20547 is still slightly masked (e.g. using the word ``masking'' instead of the fully descriptive phrase ``pretending to speak in a way that's foreign to me, for the convenience of the audience''). I'm not sure I would ever have the motivation to completely mask it, so I usually say a masked version of the abstract version (approximately the first paragraph of >>20547): >I'm pedantic because talking normally makes it extremely difficult to understand. (Note, though, that I haven't done this in a long time, so maybe things have changed for the worse.) It's baffles me, but they seem to understand it perfectly. Sometimes, they don't believe that it's difficult unless pedantic, but I insist it is, and if they insist it's not, I insist, exactly the same way, that it is---with no further explanation, because they have no business knowing---and keep repeating that over and over until they stop insisting that it's easy for me. >I find it kinda strange to attribute masking as defined in this thread to autists. Most people get their values from copying whatever seems to be most popular. Masking isn't just mimicry. The difference is that `normal' persons easily integrate the mimicked style into themselves. That never happens for me. When I mimic, it hurts. Often, when I mimic, I mimic so much that I stop feeling it, but it still hurts: it is like kicking dead whales down the beach the life out of me. (What a wonderful language enhancer.) For them, the style they mimic becomes part of how they naturally speak. For me, it's always like a code, unless it's systematic and I have an explicit definition of the pattern. (Note: that's one reason I found many anonymous messageboards difficult to use: they would invent new slang every few months, and expect us to just know what it means! Lainchan has this problem, too, but it's usually just the language enhancer, or, rarely, slang from an other messageboard.) >Means you act like a nerd among nerds and like a gangster among gangsters to the point people are convinced thats your natural personality. I use different personalities with different persons. Each time, that personality is my natural personality. But I still have all my autistic characteristics.

I want to announce my warning, to anyone who might have difficulties understanding figurative language, about reading >>20565. In >>20565, ``aspergers'' does not mean aspergers, but means the quality of being emotionally cold. Persons with aspergers are not more emotionally cold than persons without aspergers.

>>20567 I don't get it. Whats the goal of masking if not trying to get group acceptance? And why does it hurt? Personally I see it no different to roleplaying on stage. No emmotional involvement in playing a character thats completly different to your true nature. >But I still have all my autistic characteristics. All people talk different to mom/friend/work. chameleon is simply a label for people who do it perfectly and dont let any characteristics slip through the facade when switching mode. Hence chameleon - they have perfect camouflage.

This basically explains it in manga. https://mangahua.com/manga/aspe-chan-25502

>>20584 Thanks lain, this was really comfy and informative. But god jammit, I hate it when I relate to the things that aspe-chan says cause I clearly don't have autism (at least not medically) and constantly fear if I'm trying to force myself into it to feel special.

This morning I read a study about what's discussed ITT. Masking is one of several categories that fall under the umbrella term "compensation". What is called masking ITT is called compensation in the study. The other categories are shallow compensation, deep compensation and accomodation. Masking: Strategies that involve regulating (increasing/dampening) pre-existing social behaviours (e.g. suppressing SEL references that come to mind when talking with co-workers) Shallow compensation: Strategies that enable production of neurotypical behaviour (e.g. social behaviour) without solving the cognitive difficulty/difference in question (e.g. continued theory of mind difficulty) Deep compensation: Strategies that enable an alternative route to solve the cognitive difficulty in question (e.g. successfully solve theory of mind, albeit differently to neurotypical people) Accomodation: Srategies that help accommodate, but do not necessarily alter, one’s cognitive difficulty/difference (e.g. choosing the right work environment) They compared deep compensation to blind people who use echo location to "see". They also found that compensation for autism spectrum disorder correlates with high IQ, high executive function (no idea what that is to be honest) and anxiety. You can find the study here: https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-019-0308-y If you scroll down, there is also a link with "supplementary information" that leads to the checklist of compensation strategies used in the study. It describes 31 ways of compensation. Personally, I always thought I'm not autistic because, even though I relate to all the internal symptoms, I can force myself to outwardly act like a neurotypical and have "devised" theory of mind in a non-intuitive way. Apparently I could have autism. I do match the first 29 descriptions in the checklist and used to literally write down python-style pseudo code to help myself with social interaction. On the other hand, I can interact well with people in many situations. I wonder if all this compensation was a good thing. Obviously, being able to fit in and the accompanying social status come with a lot of perks. But up until my twenties I never searched for an authentic connection to anyone because I was to busy learning how to become one more average person.

>>20571 >Whats the goal of masking if not trying to get group acceptance? I said that masking isn't `just trying to fit in.' I didn't say that masking is not to be accepted by the group. I also didn't say that masking isn't to try to fit in, but I don't use masking to try to fit in. I started to use masking to get away from pedantry, I continued using it for their convenience, because I like being as accommodating as possible, and I am still using it often, despite knowing that _ and despite knowing that it hurts, because it's difficult to kill the habit. >why does it hurt? Because I don't really understand the things I'm saying. It's all guesses about what the right phrase is for my thought in that situation, and that is painful because I NEED to understand things clearly and exactly. >Personally I see it no different to roleplaying on stage. The difference is that roleplaying is a collective fiction. Because it is a fiction, there are different rules for interpretation. For example, unless you are stupid-religious, in the real world, there is no author that has direct concrete control of what is happening. There is no way to know, about reality, that somebody set up the whole situation for the sake of teaching a moral. In addition, a fiction is just some data that I can interpret any way I choose, even if my interpretation is different from the intention of the author. Also, in roleplaying, there is an element of improvisation, which means that anyone can do anything that is consistent with the visible actions, and is expected to do everything they can to continue the improvisation so that it is consistent, even if that means changing the intention of an action. Improvisation, acting, roleplaying, do not hurt. It hurts when there is an intention in the other person's mind that I cannot know but I am expected to know and act consistently with despite not knowing how my actions might affect their mind. >All people talk different to mom/friend/work. chameleon is simply a label for people who do it perfectly and dont let any characteristics slip through the facade when switching mode. Hence chameleon - they have perfect camouflage. You don't understand psychology. Most qualities are `a spectrum.' `Social chameleon' too. My personality changes at least 90%. And you don't understand chameleons, either. Chameleons are visible if you look close, and sometimes they are obvious unless your vision is blurry. The metaphor works for me, because geeks think I'm a geek, artists think I'm an artist, philosophers think I'm a philosopher, and it's not just a facade because I really become these things `inside.' For example, my use of the word ``facade'' just now is part of my `social chameleon' trait, because I never use it, but right now, it's perfectly natural like I've used it forever. Masking is different, because it is always exclusively a facade. It is always like following stage direction through a book code that I don't have a copy of so I have to guess. And it's terrifying how good my guess can be without my understanding any whit of it. >>20587 That checklist is not loading. Also, it's also a `.docx' file, which I don't know if I have the software to open. In addition, thank you for your comment. I was using the wrong word. What I have been calling ``masking'' is what that says is `shallow compensation.' I do something similar to that `masking' in that I wear neutral clothes that can `fit in' in any situation, or not talking nor gesticulating when I'm tired. Actually, I think one of the reason I started doing `shallow compensation' is because of the challenge because I thought it would be fun. Really, I think it was a mistake, or at least a mistake to do it as intensely as I do. I also for some reason thought that `deep compensation' (e.g. coming up with my own model of how a person works despite having 0 evidence that it's accurate), which I did more of before, was anti-truth, and I thought I was a truth-extremist. Basically, I used to use `deep compensation' and got accomodations, which were `woven into' / part of my `deep compensation' strategy, and some `masking' sometimes, but now I'm mostly using `shallow compensation' and more `masking' more often. Actually, I think this may be why I've started to be less `high functioning' because `shallow compensation' it's a very intellectually strenuous activity, so I have little `mental energy' left to have real thoughts, and it has only little long-term intellectual enrichment compared to `deep compensation' which leaves me with more knowledge about.. a fiction I construct in my mind? about how the world works, but that correspond with `reality' in all (or rather, in many, but I'm often learning more to improve it) practical ways. >high executive function (no idea what that is to be honest) Executive function, as I understand it, means you are able to successfully execute a plan. Like planning an activity that involves `going out of your comfort zone.' ``High function'' is a stupid word that means you don't need much accommodation to do enough `normal' things (that includes generic things like having a job or talking to other persons) to survive on your own. Not sure what they might mean combined like that. Maybe it means having good executive functioning.

>>20592 So I guess it was a fun experiment, but now that I understand what it is I'm doing better, I can easier go back to getting a real fake understanding of how things work, instead of using this fake real understanding.

>>20584 >aspe-chan I think the most important thing, if you have a psychological condition, that it only briefly mentions, is that when you are asking for an accommodation, it's better to describe concrete things/characteristics. For example, it mentions to lower brightness. The idea is to mention only what's necessary, so that there is less that they could understand.

>>20592 i perceive normal conversation exactly as you describe roleplaying. Understanding is make believe. What someone means speaking and what you hear and interpret might align or be worlds apart. Miss communication is common and we pretend we understood each other and let it be too often because its less of a hassle. Precise language is hard and seldom used in a casual setting. If you harbor a need to understand someone precisely you are doomed because its a fuzzy process with uncertainty by its nature.