If children are children and gender isn't a hardwired difference - why is it then...

[tabulahrasa]

that boys and girls with Asperger's present differently?

Just musing really, I'd like to think that boys and girls aren't fundamentally different and that a lot of what is taken to be that is created by parenting and environment...but it's widely accepted that girl's with Asperger's don't have the same traits as boys - why's that then?

We don't know what causes Aspergers or autism, so we don't know if it is influenced by hormones.

We do know that boys and girls are treated differently, even when they are tiny and are basically machines for turning milk into poo.

Different presentation of autistic traits could be related to biology or to socialisation, or most likely to an interaction of both.

Everyone who has any interest in this subject area should read Cordelia Fine before citing or believing any studies about how 'different' men and women actually are.

I loved Cordelia Fine. Buy it here, really, it's great

Maybe it's because I like science. It was easy to read and interesting. It described generalisations that people have made in the past (and you think "huh, how silly of them") and generalisations that people make now, and interesting experiments on the ways in which social expectations affect behaviour and performance and how they could be interpreted.

Now moving on to other "feminist books" and The Equality Illusion (recommended as being modern and not hard-going) is a bit dull. Just a lot of facts with not much in between.

Have you ever done a book club on it (Delusions of Gender) ?

I personally do think there are certain differences between males and females, but those differences are nowhere near as exaggerated as the culture claims them to be. Cultural conditioning is huge, it is absolutely the main factor. All the violence on TV, porn etc training young boys to hate women and attack them.

But that aside, I think that even in a gender neutral society there still would be some slight differences. ONe example is when a woman gives birth, the connection she has with her baby can never be mimicked by a man. THe hormones involved or the instinct or whatever it is you get when you feel you've been amputated if someone picks your baby up without asking. That, is female specific.

I do think men are hierarchical creatures, a lot moreso than women, and that this might be connected to the fact that men are comparatively expendable to the human race compared to women by virtue of their high fertility and women's low fertility.

BUt really, I'm just musing here> I don't think violence and rape is inevitable at all, and I certainly don't think that women are driven to become mothers. Those traits are exaggerated by culture.

But anyway, it would be interesting to see how a child behaves in an egalitarian society.

Cordelia Fines book is brilliant in debunking the silly myths that men create under the guise of "science" or evolutionary psychology