Life as a Female with Autism

Throughout the past few decades, autism diagnoses have skyrocketed for both genders. There are various theories for this that have been brought up in the community. Autism also appears to affect more people who are male than it does for those of us who are female. Various theories as to why that is the case have arisen too.

Regardless of the statistics, there are a considerable number of males and females around who have got autism. Each gender also displays the characteristics of autism slightly differently, and it’s often debated as to who exactly has it harder. The answer is that neither males or females with autism have it easy. Yet this post is about the feminine challenges merely because I myself am female (and that’s all that I’ve personally experienced).

A major problem for us is that if we were to have all the stereotypically feminine characteristics, we would need to have not the slightest form of autism. Everything stereotypically feminine involves exemplary skills in the areas of emotion, socialising and communicating.

Autistic females generally have difficulties socialising for several reasons. When we have autism we are unable to read body language well and we don’t have a great understanding of emotions. This makes it harder for us to always express sympathy and compassion to other people. It does not in any way make us uncaring people. We generally do care very much when we know that someone is hurt, and the percentage of us who aren’t too nice matches the rest of the human population. However, if we can’t see in front of us that a person is in a difficult situation (that we ourselves have never been in before), we may be perceived as cold and uncaring. Most females are very emotionally driven and don’t always enquire if someone cares about them directly.

Female friendships are generally glued together by that, and most autistic people simply cannot comprehend or understand it. Women also tend to talk a lot more and change topics of conversation very rapidly, which (due to our slower processing speed) autistic people can end up drained and anxious afterward.

Something else that seems to occur is that autistic boys and men are much more likely to be looked upon with the silver lining of being a savant (like Raymond from Rain Man). Whereas an autistic female is often overlooked as just being a disabled person. I notice this a lot when it comes to me and my autistic brother. Whenever Brendan talks about his knowledge of cars he doesn’t appear to get the same reaction I’m usually given, even if the person knows that he’s autistic. For me, however, I’ll often receive the same look you’d expect to see on someone’s face if they saw a pig grow wings and fly, even if I just said something that’s common sense. In truth that doesn't happen to me all the time, but nevertheless (between me and my brother) nine times out of ten people give me that reaction. I also get more people trying to take advantage of me, assuming that I’d be gullible enough to be fooled.

The purpose of this post wasn’t to say that males with autism have it any easier than females. I’ve merely written it from my own female perspective. Its purpose was to state that it’s not any easier to be a woman with autism, and metaphorically the grass is not greener on our side of the fence.