Not autistic but I am brain damaged, so I actually mimic a lot of "male" autism symptoms despite being a woman. Those symptoms being:
-Can't read facial expressions
- can't tell tone very well
-can't read a god damn room
-struggle with empathy
-struggle with understanding different points of view
-difficulty regulating emotions (leading to actual melt downs)
-easily over stimulated
-more prone to violent outbursts when frustrated.
-hyperfixations on likes and dislikes
-generally a weird person with weird interests.
Ironically enough it was easier to get help for it since there's so much in place for male autists.
The emotional regulation and empathy was fixed first, since they're so important to female socialization. It took me MUCH longer than an actually autistic woman to get it under control though, because I have scarring on the parts of my brain that controls impulse control and regulation, as well as cognative thinking.
I will treat this like autism though, because most people think I have it when I don't.
"Why is it harder for females to get diagnosed with autism?"
Part of my therapy was speech and language, so I got to witness first hand how other girls with autism acted. They're... hmm... much less reactive to their environment. I.e. seemed to rarely pay attention, and if they were over stimulated, they just read books or did something they knew helped calm them down, so they didn't have as many outbursts. Most autistic girls legit just acted like tomboys, which is societally accepted. If anything, they seemed to be liked more unless thwy were unattractive, or the types to hate showering due to sensory issues. Then they were seen as "legbeards".
"What problems do women with it face that guys (usually) don't?"
you struggle pretty badly with making friends, are very quickly outcasted by other women, and if you don't learn to addapt fast enough, it gets worse with time. So women can be incredibly lonely but not taken seriously by doctors because "lol she's just emotional", (this was when I was a kid, not talking about now) guys may find weird girls hot sometimes, but that doesn't mean they share our interest, they just want to fuck them, and most autistic girls want to date someone with their weird ass interests.
"Did you actually mind having the tism or is it just 'what it is'?" i definitely hate my brain damage. It ruined my life and made it harder than anything else. Therapy was a god send, but living like an autistic kid (with male presenting autism, not the calmer one girls get) made my childhood hell and terrifying. There is nothing worse than not being able to talk when you're upset, or feeling so overwhelmed by an emotion you can't tell what it is. Extreme happiness and extreme sadness were basically the same to me, just overwhelming and made me shut down.
The only good things about it are that I can stay very level headed in high stress situations, and I have genuine retard strength when I get mad. I also don't feel fear very easily (for good and bad) and have heavily reduced pain reception, so it means I do decently well protecting myself. It also scares the shit out of people when they manage to hurt me and I don't stop. (I got stabbed in the arm once at school and instead of getting scared, I threw them against and deeply dented the lockers. This did not help with fitting in but boy did I never get physically bullied again)
What's your take on "self diagnosed autists"?
Seems a lot of genuinely autistic women self diagnosed first, since theirs tends to be diagnosed much less frequently until very recently. Now it's mostly munchies or tumblrinas looking for quirks to collect like pokemon cards, and those people suck ass. As for the rest, don't care.
Do you feel bad for any of the cows with autism or do you just feel schadenfreude?
One big thing taught in therapy was "you can't control what you feel, but you can control how you react to it." Autistic cows deserve it, they should know better if they had any form of help at all, and it's never an excuse to be a shitty person. I don't blame my brain damage for tantrums, despite literally being a verifiable reason, because I can mostly control my outbursts now. I am not my injury, it's just a part of me. Same with autism, you aren't your autism, it's a small part of you that you can gain control of.
) ITT with knowledge on the genetic component: how does that interact with advanced maternal age as a potential cause? Does a mother being older straight up cause the autism or would she have to have the genetic predisposition for it already and it only gets "switched on" if she has kids later? My mom had me at almost 40 and I wonder sometimes if that's why I'm like this. My brother probably has the 'tism too and he's way more impaired/tarded than I am, and she had him at 35, which is sort of late too but not as extreme.
