Talk:Sex and gender differences in autism

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2022 and 27 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kbischoff99 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Lucyc2, Layladye, Samath1a, Phrenic490.

We can end this silly edit war

(the above heading was added by Pipetricker (talk) 15:17, 25 May 2016 (UTC))

If I seem like I'm not being civil, I apologize. It was my impression that you were revising the page with the intention of squashing commentary from the autistic community. It's one thing to contest statistical claims and a completely different story to remove what could be extremely helpful and relevant resources from a page simply because they are self-advocating. The Autistic community tends to know what it's talking about when the subject is itself. If I was wrong about your aims, and you are simply searching for objectivity without an agenda, then I'll happily look past some of the language you used so we can end this silly edit war. The issue here is that I will not stand by and watch relevant material be removed from a page on purely personal grounds, or out of a misunderstanding of the aim of the material that was added in the first place. It feels antagonistic to me and I know that the person who placed it there shares in those frustrations. Contest sources for statistics and claims all you want, but please do not remove important information that is very related to the topic at hand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:6EC4:F500:983D:2764:AA37:3530 (talk) 23:40, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

In addition, if you want to adjust the wording to feel more objective, that is fine. My issue is the removal of links to resources. Wikipedia is meant to give a summary of the topic at hand - it's important to know the opinions of scholars and advocates when looking at a topic like this. Remember that psychology isn't the same as many disciplines, it is a lot less strict and a lot less defined. Oftentimes there are dozens of competing theories and viewpoints about the same exact thing. It's important for that perspective of self-advocacy to be there as it is highly relevant to the field. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:6EC4:F500:983D:2764:AA37:3530 (talk) 23:47, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Okay, it really seems that you would like to have a smooth discussion about this topic. I really appreciate that. I don't have any problem with these claims if it's told that these are personal opinions by some autistic people, not objective facts. So Wikipedia isn't any mouthpiece for autistic self-advocacy because this kind of advocacy can never be politically nonaligned. It can tell about autistic self-advocacy neutrally but can never take a stand for it - behalf or against.

My problem with some of those resources is that at least some of them, like Australian psychologist Tania Marshall and Rudy Simone are claiming that female autists are "highly intuitive people" and that they even have some kind of paranormal powers. I strongly doubt that there are any real sources for these absurd claims, although some people who are believing in these claims can find them very "helpful". So helpfulness is a subjective feeling and it doesn't have to have anything to do with the truth.

Authors like Tania Marshall, Rudy Simone et al. aren't real researchers or scholars. They haven't any peer-viewed journals. I agree that all competing theories and viewpoints by different researchers and scholars should be displayed on the page, but only if they are made by real scholars. Not every different opinion by someone private person told by them in their blogs is important enough to be displayed on Wikipedia.

What comes to the article written by Cynthia Kim, it seems to be somewhat biased, because it discusses only opinions by some individual women, who are not representative of the whole autism community. In the other words, there are too many autistic people living on this globe that they all could be included in this article. This is why layman opinions (if they aren't specifically important) must be excluded and only studies by scholars and opinions by some very famous autistic people (Temple Grandin?) should be included.

With kind regards, --Cupido1234 (talk) 00:17, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

For me the idea about the own article about "female autism" seems very strange, because there aren't any articles about "female schizophrenia", "female intelligence" etc. but there are articles about sex differences in schizophrenia and sex differences in intelligence, for instance. So why autism should be some kind of an exception? You claimed that my editions were ableist and sexist, but in my opinion it is sexist towards males if they are not included in the article about different presentation in autism between sexes at all. It is weird too that there is a list about famous female autists but not any lists about male autists. In my opinion, these lists aren't really helpful because everyone knows what sex these persons are in every case. --Cupido1234 (talk) 00:27, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Let's take a deeper look at this chapter, for instance:

"Autistic females, and clinicians who work closely with them, have compiled many resources highlighting the traits that are often associated with autism as it presents in females.[17][18] Some of the main differences noticed in females compared to their male counterparts include increased social mimicry abilities, more expressive gestures, special interests perceived as "more practical", and more prevalent interest in animals.[17] Several other characteristics of autism that have been noted specifically in females include: uneven learning profiles, difficulty in completing higher education, struggles with organization, difficulties communicating feelings or asking for help, anxiety, depression, gender dysphoria, high levels of empathy, sensitivity to suffering, and individuals are often highly intuitive. For a more complete list of characteristics please refer to some of the lists available online, such as those by Tania Marshall or Rudy Simone."

I know that these claims are based on the blog written by Tania Marshall, but she bases these claims on... what? That list made by her looks very much like vague lists about indigo and starseed children around the web:

https://taniaannmarshall.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/moving-towards-a-female-profile-the-unique-characteristics-abilities-and-talents-of-asperwomen-adult-women-with-asperger-syndrome/

http://galacticforces.weebly.com/starseed-characteristics.html

These vague lists fulfill all the criteria of Barnum effect and this is the main reason so many people find these lists helpful. We must remember that many people found astrology and tarot cards helpful too, and yet these pseudoscientific claims are not propagated in the Wikipedia.

Of course the claims mentioned above are welcomed to the article, if they are supported by real peer-reviewed studies. I don't think that unfounded and unscientific claims are really self-advocating and helpful; if they are untrue, they are doing only harm, do you agree? --Cupido1234 (talk) 00:53, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I have to be honest, I don't see the similarities between her list and the Starseed list, aside from a few scattered characteristics about feeling lonely, but I suppose that's a fair enough complaint, if you do see it that way. What I'm wondering is why lists of public figures, novels, and media representation were removed, and why the links were entirely removed. If you want to adjust the wording, talk about some of the things you've said here - how the Barnum effect applies, how autism is a difficult subject to pin down due to its nature - then more power to you. The issue here for me is the antagonism. Whether or not you are entirely comfortable with her tone, or think that some of her claims are pseudoscientific, Tania Marshall is a well-researched, credible person in the field, and citing her work on a page about gender differences in autism makes perfect sense. The dismissal of her work, combined with some of the language being used - "social justice warriors," disparagement of self-advocacy, etc. - makes me feel like there is a considerable effort to silence autistic women's voices on this page. Maybe that's not true, maybe that's a bad interpretation. In that case, I'd have to say - why cover it up then? Why revert all the changes? The page that was reverted is the result of a months-long, well-researched community collaboration. Undoing it, and mouthing off about "social justice warriors," does not put forward the best image. What happened here wasn't the removal of a few unreliable sources, or a note asking people to be more careful when citing. This was a complete undoing of a lot of work, not all of which even had anything to do with the issue you've raised. I don't want there to be an antagonistic, raging edit war over this or anything, nor do I want the page to be one specific certain way. I want to see a healthy discussion about it without reactionary politics coming into it. I want to see all points of view represented in what is often a very muddled and difficult-to-discuss subject. I don't think that's anything bad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:6EC4:F500:FD3F:48A0:66A8:A274 (talk) 02:05, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

No, Tania Marshall is not a credible and well-researched person on the field but a completely quack. Maybe that sounds cruel, but unfortunately it is true. She hasn't any credits on the field of the academic research and her claims haven't any basis on the science and her stories about Asperger's syndrome as the "superpower" and that female aspies have witch-like abilities are simply ridiculous. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, but your accusations of "sexism" and "ableism" were just so typical social justice warrior stuff. Lists of female autistic celebrities etc. were removed, because they have very little doing with the issue of sex differences in autism, like individual female schizophrenics and fictional representations have very little doing with the sex differences in schizophrenia. Personally, I don't have any passion against self-advocacy (autistic or female or any else) but because this is the encyclopedia page, we must to commit to the neutral point of view. Self-advocacy and different scientifically unsupported claims can be displayed in the articles, but it must be done in neutral way. Because self-advocacy is always politically biased, it can't be straightly included in these articles. Neutral point of view doesn't mean that all claims are equal: If I say that one and one makes two and someone else says that it makes sixteen, the truth is not nine (median). Wikipedia is officially committed to the scientific method, which means in the practice that scientifically unsupported beliefs, like tarot cards, homeopathy etc. are considered as pseudoscience. If you can give evidence that some links removed by me are scientifically well-grounded, I believe that these links can be returned.

With best regards, --Cupido1234 (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

PS. I made a new version of the article concluding the female presentation in literature and autistic self advocacy; from the declaratory point of view, of course. Hope that all are satisfied with that. --Cupido1234 (talk) 02:55, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi there! I came across this article (and edit war) from a social media posting that is putting this entire affair (particularly Cupido's remarks) in a very negative light. Being autistic (male, mind you) myself, I wanted to check things out, as I'm not one to make judgements based on accusations alone. After a lengthy review, I have to commend you for working hard to find compromise, Cupido1234, and I have to fault you, 2604:6000:6ec4:f500:983d:2764:aa37:3530, for being aggressive and abrasive. Wikipedia is, first and foremost, an Encyclopedia, and, second, a collaboration between many. If there's a problem, take it to the talk page. Edit warring only leads to large problems for everyone else, and makes an administrative headache.

I currently like the current edit, as I find it balances Wikipedia's point of view, with the wishes of some to include the self-advocacy, which I agree with. I also like that the article was renamed (moved) in order to be more balanced. But, to make it even better, I would like to see information added for -male- advocacy, as, as Cupido1234 aptly stated, it's biased toward women, and, considering that far more men are diagnosed than women, it's important to include both viewpoints, as there are advocates from both sides of the fence. I even dare say that this page be deleted, and merged with one of the main pages as a section of it.

Thanks! The Legacy (talk) 17:26, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I admit that I first made a mistake when I removed the section concerning autistic self advocacy from the article because after all, it is the remarkable thing for its own sake. It was not the self advocacy part itself that was the problem but the style of that section: it looked like an essay containing writer's personal opinions and its sources were mainly other similar subjective blog posts and autobiographies written by private persons. It was largely unresourced or its sources were mainly biased. Quite frankly, it was hugely unencyclopaedic. But self advocacy could and even should, like political ideologies and religions, be displayed in objective way. Let me demonstrate:

This is unencyclopaedic style: Barack Obama is a good president because he is a fine role model for African American people.

This is encyclopaedic style: According to the latest gallup, 90 % of African American people aged between 15 and 75 years think that Barack Obama is a good president and most of them regard him as a fine role model for African American people.

I agree that possible autistic male advocacy should be included in this article too, but the main point of this article is not autistic self advocacy itself but biological sex differences in autism. I think too that maybe the article should be deleted and merged with one of the main pages as a section of it, but I am not sure. Legacy, I am interested to see the social media posting about this discussion page, so would you give a link?

With kind regards, --Cupido1234 (talk) 21:18, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry you find me aggressive and abrasive, Legacy, but I'm simply unable to ignore issues like this, and tend to get very passionate about them. The truth is that I find it difficult to compromise with someone who insists on painting female self-advocacy as negative and insists on referring to sexism and ableism as "typical social justice warrior stuff." Obviously these are very real forces which have a very real impact on the reality faced by many people, especially female autistics - who this page was originally about. Keep in mind, I'm male myself - this doesn't even really affect me that much. It just makes me pretty angry that all of the hard work of a marginalized community is being erased because a couple of people decided it was too "social justice" for their personal tastes. Truth be told, autism in men is almost over-discussed in the autistic community, as is evident by the trend of misdiagnosis or even outright ignorance of autism in women and girls.

See, "balance" to me would be adding an article discussing autism in men, if that. Pretty much every article about autism on this website or any other primarily discusses autism in men, because of that pesky "sexism" thing that happens to affect a lot of human interaction (this is not "sjw" stuff, this is legitimate academic discussion based on decades of sociological research and observation). Even so, it wouldn't upset me in the slightest to see an article added for autism in men. Instead, what I'm seeing here is this chain of events: autistic women and nonbinary people in an internet community create a page dedicated to discussing some of the issues they feel aren't discussed enough. They collaborate for several months - as wikipedia is a collaborative effort, after all - adding resources that, whether you think they're serious or not (and I am still having difficulty finding the supposed voodoo-like qualities of Marshall's research, which comes across as pretty rational to me, if a little optimistic), do actually come from people who have dedicated their lives and careers to exploring this exact issue. Then, several men from the autistic community (if even? I'm still not sure of the identities of everyone involved in this, forgive me) come in, decide that it's too biased towards women (a bias that, as previously discussed, does not exist in this area of academia) despite the fact that it was created explicitly to explore women's issues in the first place, and start dismantling it while simultaneously complaining about "social justice warrior stuff."

It is my personal opinion that those who reduce the complex issues at play here to just "social justice warrior stuff" are probably not fit to be commenting on them. But it's clear to me that I'm kind-of outnumbered by people who have a lot more spare time and energy than me to mess around on wikipedia. So instead of what I see as an appropriate compromise (i.e. try to stay out of issues you aren't close enough to to fully understand the nuances of) I guess the page is staying as it is now whether I like it or not, huh? Just know that you're squashing the efforts of a community to try and compile the information that it itself has generated as is related to its own experiences. If you're okay with that due to some misguided sense of what you deem to be "rational" taking priority over all else, and you truly believe that people being so dismissive of the issues that plague this exact subject in a very politically charged way somehow is an indicator of that rationality rather than extreme bias, I guess I can't stop you. Because, again, I have things to do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:6EC4:F500:6841:1516:BBAE:56EC (talk) 20:36, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

"I'm sorry you find me aggressive and abrasive, Legacy, but I'm simply unable to ignore issues like this, and tend to get very passionate about them. The truth is that I find it difficult to compromise with someone who insists on painting female self-advocacy as negative and insists on referring to sexism and ableism as "typical social justice warrior stuff."

I think that you shouldn't be so angry and passionate about this topic. I have never painted female self advocacy (or even male or any other self advocacy) as a negative thing, I have just tried to say that this is an encyclopedia and not a web page promoting female autistic self advocacy. There are many web pages promoting many kinds of self advocacies out there and Wikipedia shouldn't just give them free advertisement.

If you claim that Wikipedia should be promoting some kind of a self advocacy, shouldn't it be promoting all other kinds of self advocacies and ideologies, too? Like vegetarianism, marxism, Christianity, you name it. Why you should have to be permitted promote female autistic self advocacy in Wikipedia, if vegetarians and Christians aren't permitted to advocate their own ideologies here?

I find it very hard to see how I can be a "sexist" and "ableist" person because I am a female person myself and I have some autistic traits, too. Maybe you should approve that not everyone who disagrees with you is "sexist" or "ableist".

"Obviously these are very real forces which have a very real impact on the reality faced by many people, especially female autistics - who this page was originally about."

Like I said before, it's not business of Wikipedia what real-life impacts these articles have - after all, this is an encyclopedia and not a self-help book or a manual. Quite frankly, as a female with mild Asperger traits I didn't find those forces helpful at all. There are no any objective criteria for what different people find "helpful". For instance, some people find taoism or astrology very helpful but Wikipedia shouldn't be promoting these ideas, do you agree? --Cupido1234 (talk) 21:53, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

First, to 2604:6000:6EC4:F500:6841:1516:BBAE:56EC; I wanted to make clear that I don't disagree with you that we shouldn't be covering up self-advocacy. Rather, the original article was poorly sourced, and was very non-encyclopedic, which is inappropriate to Wikipedia. Specifically, Wikipedia is not a Soapbox or means of promotion, Wikipedia is not a blog or social networking service, Wikipedia is not a directory (which the original article largely read like that), Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal, and most importantly, and was the biggest problem with the original references, Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought.

The current edit addresses this problem, but in the process removed some of the parts regarding self-advocacy. What should be done, however, is that this article should stick strictly to the actual differences between male and female autism, and not anything about advocacy. As for advocacy, that too should be in a seperate article in its own right, covering both male and female advocacy efforts across the board. That would fix the problem entirely, and keep the original intent of the original article intact, while maintaining Wikipedia's Neutrality. Honestly, even if this was done, both subjects should be added to the original article, depending on length of the final edits.

Cupido1234, as for your question, you can find the article that brought me here, here. The Legacy (talk) 22:20, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

It was a stupid mistake on my part to take part in the edition war, I really regret that now.

"Truth be told, autism in men is almost over-discussed in the autistic community, as is evident by the trend of misdiagnosis or even outright ignorance of autism in women and girls."

I am not sure, but is this an appeal to spite? The article focusing on only autism in females is not in my opinion very balanced about the topic, even although "autism in men" could be a "over-discussed" thing in some circles. You can't fix the problem about "over-discussing autism in males" over-discussing autism in females.

I know that many people, laymen as well as clinicians and researchers, have discussed the possibility that girls and women with autism are under-diagnosed, but there are other possible hypotheses, too: 1) men and boys are over-diagnosed or 2) autism is genuinely less common in females. Because these alternatives aren't mutually exclusive, the real explanation can also be some kind of a combination of all of these.

The talk about the female misdiagnosis and "outright ignorance" about girls and women is only speculative by nature if it lacks solid scientific basis. I must admit that those other hypotheses are speculative by their nature and possibly wrong, too. Apparently no one knows for sure why there are less autistic females.

If the article by Tania Marshall (she hasn't made any real scientific research about any topic) concerning "sixth sense in females" isn't extremely voodoo-like, I don't know what is.

I agree with Legacy that the self advocacy thing is not properly speaking the issue of this article, although it surely is an important thing for its own sake and this article should be handling only differences between males and females. With kind regards, --Cupido1234 (talk) 23:21, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Cupido1234, could you be awesome and make a new page for self-advocacy, and reformat this page to strictly stick to gender differences for autism? :) I'd do it myself, but I don't have a lot of time to spend on this huge task. The Legacy (talk) 23:48, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Factually, there is already an article about autism advocacy and it is called autism rights movement. I will transfer the last remaining parts of autistic self advocacy from the page to this article, to the new subsection. After this the article is only about the sex differences. With kind regards, --Cupido1234 (talk) 23:22, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Recently I found a page called Sociological and cultural aspects of autism and there was a subsection about gender aspects and autism. So I removed these female self advocacy parts from the page autism rights movement to this page where they belong to. With kind regards, --Cupido1234 (talk) 00:44, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Gender identity, sex, etc.

I know these are trendy topics nowadays, but they are not well-established core features or issues related to female autism. I'm a female on the spectrum, cis hetero, and it didn't make sense for there to be such a large focus on those topics. I have removed them. Autism, and my diagnosis of it, has everything to do with social impairments, dyspraxia, and other classic traits, not questions of gender identity. --kdm1984 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.98.102.162 (talk) 06:05, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The personal opinion of editors is not a good reason to delete sourced information. Don't do that. Letupwasp (talk) 04:46, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

genetic and environmental factors for autism

Having an immediate family member with autism increases the risk of having autism yourself. If someone was the first in the whole family to have autism & it was a boy and he later as a man had a daughter, would his daughter have autism if there are no factors that contributed to it? --Evope (talk) 22:56, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

This isn't the place for this kind of question. Hipotecas (talk) 04:04, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

The first paragraph in the sexuality section is largely a personal opinion

The first paragraph doesn't cite any sources, and the claims are seemingly anecdotical. The editor cites his/her experience in the "autistic community" and makes the claim that there are more autistic LGBT than neurotypical LGBT (where's the source?). Then proceeds to make the wild assumption that this is a byproduct of "autistic people not conforming to society's norms", which is highly questionable for various reasons.

This paragraph should be removed and replaced for statistics backed up by research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hipotecas (talk • contribs) 04:02, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

While there is no longer anything that pertains to personal experience — as far as I can tell — in the first paragraph of the "Differences in gender and sexuality identification" section, there still are no sources next to any of the sentences in that paragraph. HiPlanet (talk) 11:24, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: GWSS 1101 Introduction to Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2022 and 21 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): BlazethePanda, Maxle.madness (article contribs). Peer reviewers: JHolman43, Madchurch, King1567, Olive461, Thegayginger.

— Assignment last updated by MNmagistra (talk) 19:43, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 10 May 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved uncontroversial and undiscussed. (non-admin closure) >>> Extorc.talk 05:02, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

---

Sex differences in autism → Sex and gender differences in autism – The article covers not just sex differences but also gender differences. Hence, I propose to move this entry to Sex and gender differences in autism. What do you think? TempusTacet (talk) 10:45, 10 May 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. CLYDE ^{TALK TO ME}/_{STUFF DONE} (please mention me on reply) 14:12, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

How to make a link with the same subject in a different language?

I don't know how to make link to the Dutch version of this article. There is still no link to the Dutch page when I look at the subject in other languages.

https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autismespectrumstoornis_bij_meisjes_en_vrouwen Shy Aroace (talk) 03:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2024 and 6 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mpulmano (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Alexxburnette1, Vasquez ariana, BreyannaC, Gabby.p7, Caelynt.

— Assignment last updated by Gcnewber (talk) 00:37, 6 October 2024 (UTC)