Autism = "extreme male brain"

[Treasure114]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6381259/Autism-extreme-version-male-brain.html

I am disappointed that this theory's been put out there again, I think it is really sexist. I also thought it had been debunked years ago but this article is from today!? I would love to hear others' thoughts.

total and utter nonsense been disproved over and over again.

Ffs they need to get away from this male female brain conceptualisation and language. They are using sexed language for the brain, at the same time as erasing ‘woman’ and sexed language when talking about human bodies.

I'm in agreement with bespin too

Even the fragrant Riley Dennis has a video debunking the pink/blue brain thing.

The results show 44 per cent of men are systematic or extreme systematic types, compared to just 27 per cent of women.
That's not a significant enough difference to call autism 'extreme male brain', surely? This was based on a website questionnaire also, didn't study any actual brains. This is just bad science reporting that's the norm from the Daily Fail to stir up the 'ole neurosexism crap.

In another article here, Baron-Cohen whose 'extreme male brain' theory is 20 years old and has since had to accept that he was WRONG states:

“[Undiagnosed mothers are] definitely a growing phenomenon. Putting a number on it is impossible but I’m sure it’s a big number because women seeking diagnoses of autism were likely to be dismissed until just a few years ago, because autism in females was thought to be very rare.”

AND
Autism among women and girls has only started to be widely acknowledged in the past two to three years. The men to women ratio is now recognised as being between 3:1 to 2:1, although some experts believe there are just as many females with autism as there are males.
www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/26/autism-hidden-pool-of-undiagnosed-mothers-with-condition-emerging

Also, I like this quote from an autistic woman on his twitter:
"I don't really appreciate being told my brain is male. It belongs to a woman therefore it's a female brain."
AND
"sorry, but I don't have a male brain. The nice lady at the FBI made me give it back and was very stern about it."

I was gobsmacked when I read Baron-Cohen's 'The Essential Difference'. The methodology and questionnaires were ridiculous.

He's like the Dan Brown of neuroscience. The male brain theory is what he's made his career on so I guess that's why, even though he's made statements such as those quoted above, he's still milking it. It's like a 70s entertainer gone to seed, they think repeating their catchphrase is going to gain them attention even though it's not relevant anymore, and it will but only for those who want to feel reassured that things are as they have always been.

Last time I looked he was trying to salvage his theory by claiming that assertive women have long ring fingers or something

Yeah, he doesn't seem to get that in admitting there are far more women than previously expected with autism, possibly as many as men, this disproves that it is actually 'extreme male brain'. Instead he says 'look, I was right about extreme male brain, only women with autism have male brains too! See, I'm not sexist' - erm, no, that would make them female autistic brains because they are in a female fing body, they follow a 'male' pattern because you previously ignored looking at fing females, you were wrong and you are a sexist little c*. Yeah, I'm not a fan...

What Bespin said

It's a problem. If it's all down to testosterone then logically don't you have to argue that pretty much all men are on the autistic spectrum in order for any women to be?

No-one knows what causes autism; testosterone hasn't been found to cause it, nothing has so far.

Agreed, I was critiquing Baron-Cohen's position not agreeing with it

Thanks all these comments have managed to articulate what I couldn't put into words about why I dislike this theory so much.

Money would be better spent on support across the lifespan

And better recognition of the ways it presents in women, instead of ignoring an entire population in order to allow male academics to feel superior about their systematising brains.

I think if Baron-Cohen had called the theory the ‘amniotic androgen theory’ or some such instead of the ‘extreme male brain’ people would be less dismissive.

There is some evidence that it is related to testosterone but since girls also have testosterone (albeit at a lower level than boys) it is wrong to label the hormone a ‘male hormone’ and therefore label a brain subjected to higher levels a ‘male brain’.

The relevance of finger length is that the 2D:4D ratio (the ratio of the length of the index finger to the ring finger) correlates with fetal androgen. This isn’t surprising since that ration is greater in men.

Autistic people do tend to be more systematising and less empathetic than neurotypicals because that’s pretty much the definition of autism: preference for routine and poor social skills. If you have great social skills and hate routine I’m not sure in what sense you could be considered autistic.

These are attributes society attributes more to boys and this is one of the reasons such a high percentage of girls being referred to Tavistock are on the spectrum: they are not behaving in stereotypical ‘girly’ ways.

the problem started with Kanner - his original criteria was geared to male children's presentation, as it has been ever since - Lorna Wing pointed out that the presentation was different with females which makes sense when you consider that in mental disorders such as schizophrenia women develop symptoms later & differently so why shouldn't autism diagnosis? As a parent of an adult dd I can tell you that going through the hoops with doctors/specialist/etc was difficult (!!!!+++) & long winded & she didn't conform to the standard diagnosis - what Lorna Wing et al noted was that girls were more likely to be considered OCD, or have eating disorders, & have interests in collecting crafts & fantasy fiction/films (not trying to stereotype here!) as be more able to "mask" socially but they are/tend to be more socially immature/clumsy/naïve/vulnerable.

It was the high number of autistic girls being referred to Tavistock that first made me concerned about the way transgenderism is being pushed. I didn’t really think about public toilets and the rest, I rarely encounter transwomen in real life.

But autistic children tend to be less gender conforming. Autistic girls and boys don’t have stereotypical patterns of play and social behaviour. TRAs will argue that they are in the wrong body but this is nonsense. I get why people here object to the implications of Baron-Cohen’s use of terms like ‘male’ and ‘female’ brains but that doesn’t negate the possibility that androgens play a significant part.

Alternative hypotheses such as ‘poor socialisation’ are just recasting the ‘refrigerator mother’ theory; gut bacteria or meconium in the amniotic fluid are, frankly, icky; and genes carried on the X chromosome can more validly be classed as ‘male brain’ hypotheses than can a hypotheses routed in a hormone that is naturally present in both boys and girls.

I'm not against the idea of testosterone playing a part, it's just at this stage we still don't know, as you've pointed out there are various different strands of research going on. Of course, because of the historical bias against girls having autism which has caused untold damage to those concerned through neglect of their needs and false diagnosis, it is very damaging to still be referring to 'autism as extreme male brain' and may lead to further ignorance and girls being neglected. The fact that Baron-Cohen seems to ignore this to bolster his image/book sales is what's most hurtful.

that doesn’t negate the possibility that androgens play a significant part

No definitely not. But as you touched on there's a need to consider how they may act differently in females versus males rather than lazily reclassifying female biology as one end of the male spectrum or whatever SBC thinks he's doing.

My main objection to his stuff is that I think he's been allowed to get away with this sort of lazy thinking to an extent that wouldn't have been the case if his biologically essentialist explanation for stereotypical gender roles had not appealed to lots of male reviewers.

This^^

It annoys me that some people just don’t want to know what causes autism on principle, or because of fears of ‘eugenics’.

We have eugenics right now because autistic children are being put on puberty blockers.

TRAs are opposed to research on transgenderism because it might reveal that children being referred for gender reassignment aren’t gender dysphoric, they have some other undiagnosed condition. Autistics shouldn’t embrace that same wilful ignorance.

Whatever the causes of autism, or gender dysphoria for that matter - knowledge valuable in itself. Fetal testosterone is a valid hypothesis and should be studied.

But it takes years to study. You can’t just ask an autistic whether they have a bottle of their mother’s amniotic fluid handy. You have to collect random samples and then correlate it against whether or not the children grow up autistic.

I’m too old to accept any ‘cure’ but anything that would alleviate hypersensitivity to noise or bright light or smells, or to cold, hard surfaces would make my life a lot less stressful. The pittance spent on current research would make negligible impact if spent a few dimmer switches and soft furnishings.

I am who I am now and I am happy with that but I would have liked to have had a social life when I was younger and found a permanent job before I was in my thirties.

I am not so wedded to my identity that I would deny younger people better opportunities than I had. I do not need a younger generation to go through what I did to validate how I now feel about myself.

Didn't Asperger himself originally think autism was only found in boys? Then he discovered women have it too? The theory being women mask more and learn to "fit in" more successfully as that is the way they are socialised. That's what I think I was told.