Simon Baron-Cohen knighted

[Flappynewyears]

Simon Baron-Cohen has been knighted. I am aghast that someone who's promoted the dangerous ideas that people with autism lack empathy, and have "extreme male brains" has been awarded like this. I would be interested to hear others' thoughts on this.

Really disappointed to read this. It was his work in part that made me realise DD has ASD. Assumed he had been coming from it in a "girls with ASD often behave differently to boys with ASD because of sexism imposed upon them from a young age".

Possibly? I'm probably being overly flippant. And that's not to deny that that is often how girls with asd are. But not all by any means. And some boys in my experience are closer to how Atwood describes girls, and indeed, I've seen a couple being diagnosed late as a result.

I think it's makes more sense to describe differences and difficulties as a whole range rather than to say "girls are like this" and "boys are like this."

I honestly have mixed feelings, because despite me not agreeinhmg with his basic premis on autistic people, plus him being the most boring speaker ive ever had the misfortune to sit through, he has dedicated his whole life to autism research and is highly significant

I say that as an autistic woman

@NeurotreeWenceslas

Really disappointed to read this. It was his work in part that made me realise DD has ASD. Assumed he had been coming from it in a "girls with ASD often behave differently to boys with ASD because of sexism imposed upon them from a young age".

Possibly? I'm probably being overly flippant. And that's not to deny that that is often how girls with asd are. But not all by any means. And some boys in my experience are closer to how Atwood describes girls, and indeed, I've seen a couple being diagnosed late as a result.

I think it's makes more sense to describe differences and difficulties as a whole range rather than to say "girls are like this" and "boys are like this."

Oh i totally agree with you. I was making my point quite clumsily!

@Branleuse

I honestly have mixed feelings, because despite me not agreeinhmg with his basic premis on autistic people, plus him being the most boring speaker ive ever had the misfortune to sit through, he has dedicated his whole life to autism research and is highly significant

Yes that is true... He obviously cares about his chosen area of interest / research.

:) I think he is the clumsy one!

But we've moved on in just a few years I feel re diagnosis.

I personally love Temple Grandin.

I thought this was about Sacha Baron Cohen too!😲 was a bit surprised after the Borat movie!

Me too, although the latest Borat movie is a highly subversive feminist film in which the actress who plays Borat's sister steals the movie, it is really her film. IMO

As for the honours system it is getting to the point where so many highly dubious people linked to social justice and new age cults are being awarded knighthoods, MBEs and OBEs that I am am developing a provisional hypothesis that the honours system is being misused as part of a long game to discredit the UK and fuel anti-UK conspiracy theories.

(adjusts tin foil hat)

One thing I've never quite understood.... There's a significant rejection of SBC's extreme male brain theory among autistic circles and groups. Yet the same people are super big into accepting 'lady brain' trans ideology and totally buy into the idea that males who like adopting sexist stereotypes of women are 'actually' women and are welcome with open arms into female only groups and communities. 😕

Yes, it's ridiculous and fetish driven.

Thingybob, have a look at Damien Milton / PARC work in general for research driven by autistic academics.

Mismatch of salience / double empathy problem make a lot more sense than 'extreme male brain' to me.

@Zinco

I didn't read this properly, and was thinking Sacha Baron Cohen... didn't really agree with the knighthood.

Me too sorry

Thank you for the suggestion Super loud, I'll take a look at him

@SuperLoudPoppingAction

Thingybob, have a look at Damien Milton / PARC work in general for research driven by autistic academics.

Mismatch of salience / double empathy problem make a lot more sense than 'extreme male brain' to me.

Thank you so much for posting this

I had never heard of PARC or the double empathy concept and it makes a lot of sense. As you say, more sense than a woman with ASD somehow having ended up with a man's brain

I only heard about the double empathy problem a view days ago and it made so much sense.

I've spent ages ranting about how for people who are supposed to have all the empathy, neurotypicals can be outright shits to autistic people and it really helped with that. Oh and yes, I do have theory of fucking mind.

Does anyone have a good link to read about double empathy?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008 If you have journal access. He has a book that might actually be called 'a mismatch of salience'. And there's a neurodiversity reader by Pavilion. Plus he's on Twitter.

'Assumptions of social relationality
The inability to ‘read’ the subtext of a social situation is often deemed to be a major feature
of those diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, yet it is suggested here that social
subtext is never fully given as a set of a priori circumstances, but is actively constructed by
social agents engaged in material and mental production. There is a tendency in the
application of positivist methodologies in cognitive psychology and science to incorrectly
assume that there is a set of definable social norms and rules that exist for people to follow.
This ideology is also supported more explicitly by functionalist sociologists. This is not the
philosophy propounded by those of a phenomenological or ethnomethodological persuasion
however. The ‘theory of mind’ and ‘empathy’ so lauded in normative psychological models
of human interaction, refers to the ability a ‘neuro-typical’ (NT) individual has to assume
understandings of the mental states and motives of other people. When such ‘empathy’ is
applied toward an ‘autistic person’ however, it is often wildly inaccurate in its measure. Such
attempts are often felt as invasive, imposing and threatening by an ‘autistic person’,
especially when protestations to the contrary are ignored by the NT doing the ‘empathising’.
The ‘double empathy problem’: A disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed
social actors which becomes more marked the wider the disjuncture in dispositional
perceptions of the lifeworld - perceived as a breach in the 'natural attitude' of what
constitutes 'social reality' for ‘neuro-typical’ people and yet an everyday and often traumatic
experience for ‘autistic people’. '

Extract from article above.

annsautism.blogspot.com/2019/01/autism-some-vital-research-links.html
Ann Memmott is an actual hero for collating all of this research alongside frequent challenges of super-dodgy premises and methodologies.
There'll be a lot of research of interest here for anyone who is after good quality evidence challenging Baron Cohen etc.

Simon Baron-Cohen has been working in this area for decades and the diagnostic criteria and nomenclature for pervasive developmental disorders has evolved substantially during this time. Clinicians have also taken different approaches to diagnosis which has further complicated matters.

But it's not really surprising that theories have adapted to changing pictures of this - when SBC was doing work in the late 1990s he was probably studying slightly different populations from those that would be encapsulated by 2020 understandings of ASD. It becomes a bit of a circular argument - who defines what ASD looks like? Then how do theories fit the new definitions of what ASD looks like?

Interesting thread and I have been lurking on it. Thanks to @Thingybob I've just watched the first 45 mins of Gina Rippon and SBC discussing on You Tube.
Several things arising from SBC’s presentation for me:
He infers empathy from a subject’s ability to deduce the “correct” emotion from a photo of eyes. I got this “wrong” in both examples he showed. Seemed inane approach and I am struggling to see the science behind it. How did he know the “correct” emotion?
He twice refers to a higher number of neurons in a male brain pre and post natally. I want to ask him why he mentions it and how is this significant?
He refers to an “e-type” and an “s-type” brain for empathy and systematising. Despite stating that both sexes fall into categories for e and s type, he still denotes “e-type” as female and “s-type” as male. I think he is proscribing in his categorisation whilst claiming to describe.

I also do take issue with his assertion that ethical experimentation is not possible with humans and so hormone experimentation is conducted on rats instead. I am left with the question that never leaves me. “Are the questions you are attempting to answer of such value to human society that you can justify the suffering caused to the animals you are using?” He does address this and suggests that some people are critical in this respect.

There were many questions arising for me from this piece. Would be fascinated to hear what others think of it.

The final notable thing for me is that he comes across as softly spoken, courteous and polite. However, despite this his work and the way it is used has profound implications for societies responding. I think an ability to acknowledge this is important in presenting “science” to the general public.
A lot of people I know take this stuff lying down because he is an eminent Cambridge scientist. I think there are ethical questions to ask in the decision to conduct these experiments at all. I am not a scientist. Interested in what others think.

apologies for lack of white space in previous post - hit post too soon

I have always scored very highly on the emotions from pictures of eyes tests.

What SBC seems not to have realised is:

Autistic people spend a lot of time learning to fit in - you can learn this shit if you are bright enough
It is even more likely you will learn it if you are a girl - you could actually have fitting in as your special interest FFS if you are that desperate to avoid being bullied

Did he never ask an autistic person? Especially a woman?

Thank you SuperLoudPoppingAction
"A disjuncture in reciprocity between two differently disposed social actors which becomes more marked the wider the disjuncture in dispositional perceptions of the lifeworld - perceived as a breach in the 'natural attitude' of what constitutes 'social reality' for ‘neuro-typical’ people and yet an everyday and often traumatic experience for ‘autistic people’."

That sounds exactly like my day to day with my teen daughters who are autistic, we experience many traumatic breaches unfortunately :(

SBC is still listed as a diagnostic source in our part of the country, when we were in need of a private assessment last year. Not sure how my "girly" DD2 would have fared with his band of autism

Bag, that's such an accurate description isn't it?

It's worth reading up on SCERTS which is an assessment tool for working with children with asd. What's brilliant is it assesses the (mostly) neurotypical staff too!

I find many of the descriptors outline the differences and so the daily difficulties people (children but also adults) with asd have better than some of the stereotypes that get banded around.

@AnnaMagnani

I have always scored very highly on the emotions from pictures of eyes tests.

What SBC seems not to have realised is:

Autistic people spend a lot of time learning to fit in - you can learn this shit if you are bright enough
It is even more likely you will learn it if you are a girl - you could actually have fitting in as your special interest FFS if you are that desperate to avoid being bullied

Did he never ask an autistic person? Especially a woman?

Fabulous post.