Extreme Male Brain

[StarshitTerrorise]

Can anyone help me put an end to my DH's indoctrination on this matter?

ApParently it makes perfect sense but it sounds about as sensible as when the US started publishing 'evidence' that black people were intellectually inferior.

Many Tia!

Tsk, I should have guessed!

Lol, he's been put up for promotion but it seems to take YEARS to get through the red tape etc.

Is there evidence that they are not genetically/hormonally influenced? Assume that's the determinism issue.

What? Men and women?

SBC has this Oxytocin thing going on which is what I have read about more.

He says that autism symptoms reduce after sniffing oxytocin.

DH is a strong systematiser, but not a rubbish empathiser, so not extreme male brained. Apparently. He says this makes him stand out in engineering circles...

S and E type brains.

YY, they haven't done enough work on female aspies or gender-ish factors like hormonal profiles. This is never going to be a true science, not in my lifetime anyway, because it's impossible to apply the same kind of testing to babies. Even if babies could do the tests (!) their brains are way different from adults'.

My endocrinologist was very interested in all this stuff, hence my getting tested. That was 20 years ago and it's all moved along since then, but some recent tests still showed the slightly elevated testosterone ... I must admit I'm more bothered about my excess chin hairs than my slightly impaired facial recognition abilities, but then I'm shallow.

I have read about the oxytocin thing.

Wow, really??? I've always wanted an oxytocin sniffer! Where do you get it??

I'm very hairy garlic, but if I could suggest a 'cause' of one of the autisms, or at least a trigger for predetermination genes, I would suggest the interference of birth hormones and reduction of the natural levels of oxytocin at that time.

I dunno 'garlic' but dates are said to contain oxytocin. Perhaps stuff yourself with a few before a social night out and see how you go (if you don't spend all night in the loo that is)!

That's really interesting, Starshit, thank you.

I must avoid hyperfocusing on it I've already wasted a sunny day ...

It might have to be dates and Lomotil, then

And what of early intervention?

I worry that the deterministic idea will prevent investment in education and early intervention for children with autism and might make other unacceptable make behaviour seen as excusable.

Male behaviour!

Not necessarily, because even if traits don't change, you can learn to manage your traits through early intervention, surely.

DD is rule driven, absolutely. So we teach her the rules, and she can behave in a socially appropriate way. Her behaviour changes, but not her way of dealing with things.

www.journeyswithautism.com/2009/07/02/a-critique-of-the-extreme-male-brain-theory-of-autism/

I just found the above.

My DS is an Aspie but/and he's a great empathizer, more so than the most stereotypically sensitive girl you could imagine. However whenever he empathizes people (who know he's an aspie) shake their heads and say that he's overcompensating or that he is practising learned behaviour. Seriously you just can't win.

Or sometimes people who believe in innate differences say that it's because I'm a single mum I have brought him up "like a girl", which makes me laugh because I mean -duh! if it's learned behaviour, it's not innate".

Actually, just read the link, and this is the bit that sums up my main objection to SBC:

"He employs a dichotomy between the empathizing female brain and the systematizing male brain. Apparently, he 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."

Exactly! Why do we always have to think in terms of specialisms, in binary terms of either / or. I've always had a problem with that because I have a mathematical brain AND I am very emotional.

Why does society always feel the need to pigeonhole people as either / or?

You know what's odd about these threads. Not just this one, it's a frequent topic.

All these efforts to quantify & correlate different types of mind are attempts to systematize the available information

Messy, would you say you're high on cognitive and affective empathy? Or higher on affective, perhaps?

He does talk about a highly systematising and empathising brain BTW. It just isn't pathologised.

Yes, TFM ... surely, if he's describing a spectrum with high S / low E at one end and the reverse at the other, then any combinations with fairly equal 'amounts' of both would be in the middle?

Either I'm being remarkably thick (not unknown) or most critics are missing the point of such a system?

Yes, TFM ... surely, if he's describing a spectrum with high S / low E at one end and the reverse at the other, then any combinations with fairly equal 'amounts' of both would be in the middle?

But then surely neither of them would be "high", they would both be in the middle.

Someone upthread said there a 5 different brain "types" in this system of classification he is using, so how have the 5 been boiled down to 2 labelled male and female?

Two dimensions, low E to high E, low S to high S. Not one dimension with S on one end and E on the other.

I think.