#extreme male brain theory of autism

[macksting]

[ID: Reblogger hashtag. Says, "Felt this big time when my corporate team lead asked me if I understood what empathy was. Made me feel so demotivated. So inhuman." /end ID] *blinks* Christ. Did you talk to HR? I know, prolly no good would come of it, but at the end of the day their job is to make sure work keeps getting done, and this is not appropriate workplace behavior on their part.

D'ya ever notice that folks who talk about empathy don't have a definition for it, or not one that makes any sense? I don't know for sure, but I blame Simon Baron-Cohen. (Not Sacha, I don't have strong feelings about him. But they are cousins.) I remember back in the 90s reading about the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism and thinking, "wow, this is bullshit." I then proceeded to not think about it for a few years until I encountered it again in an opinion piece about how we as humans respond to a large scale tragedy vs. a small, intimately described tragedy, revolving around the boy who got trapped in a well. It was a not-uninteresting article until I got to the point where the writer started talking about how an autistic person has to create morality from logical principles, lacking (apparently) any inherent ability to empathize with others. That's the first time I realized anybody took that seriously. It's such an absurd, offensive premise. Naturally I looked deeper into it and discovered that asshole has an outsized influence in the UK and his bullshit research, some of which is done rather dishonestly according to a friend whose friend had to study under him, is gonna pollute the discourse around us for a long time. I wonder how much effect he has both on the mistreatment of autistic people in Great Britain* and on the infamous medical gatekeeping of transition. Not that there isn't more than enough going on without his ass. I don't really have a point here. I'm just angry that folks who talk about autistic people and empathy often have no reasonable or consistent definition of empathy. I mean, I had a friend who was legitimately low-empathy. (We aren't friends anymore, but it's not her fault per se and I mean her no ill will.) And she did have a very logical framework for why she has cultivated a "help first" response to crises. We suspect her ability to not feel strongly about the pain of others probably actually helps her keep a clear head, so it's a strength. So I get it! Low empathy people exist, and autism can be a part of that. But I do not fucking trust the field of psychology to talk about this in a responsible or intelligible way. They'll freely use mutually exclusive definitions of empathy to try to vilify us without ever addressing the illogic of it. Assholes. Honestly I wouldn't even mind as much if they were merely wrong, or worse yet right, but they don't even care. * I have a friend in Glasgow who has the same problems, so it's not just an English thing, and it sounds like it's a problem in Wales too; I just don't know anything about Ireland in this regard and am loathe to lump them in with England for any reason whatsoever.

[ID: Warning decal. Says, "Warning!" in white on red for high visibility, then in black impact font, "This machine does not know the difference between metal and flesh, but cares a lot, so please stay out of its way. It would be very sad if it accidentally hurt you." /end ID]

[pjharvey-moved]

like i always feel super cringe when i talk abt feeling a particular solidarity with trans women bc i imagine it’s prob annoying to have some cis girl be like oh im just like u ^_^ but the ways butch/masc/gnc women, autistic women, and trans women get treated by other women who should literally be our allies have a lot of similarities

[drdemonprince]

Reviewing Simon Baron-Cohen (strong advocate of the "extreme male brain theory" of autism and general fucker)'s empathy measure and man oh man. not having dreams is taken as evidence of low empathy. so is saying you'd ever break the law under any circumstance. not worrying if you are running late to meet a friend is a sign of low empathy. HMMMMM very interesting dr bitch

[gatheringbones]

[“Due in part to the prevalence of the ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism spectrum conditions in the 90s, and the fact that clinicians had not yet shaken themselves free of the association between an autism diagnosis and perceived ‘male’ behaviour, my not fitting into traditionally masculine trait categories worked against me. Many of the more disruptive aspects of traditionally male stereotypes were in the 90s part and parcel of a clinician’s willingness to diagnose autism, and because my autism presented in a way that was more in line with people assigned female at birth with the condition, I was just somewhat overlooked.

While there’s not yet any firm list of differences between boys with autism and girls with autism, there are several observed differences in autism presentation that are now generally accepted as existing, and being overlooked by current diagnostic tool assumptions. These are not hard and fast rules, but some things that can make it troublesome for women to achieve a diagnosis. Girls with autism tend to have less trouble than their male peers socialising in their early years, but have a spike in difficulty entering their teen years. Girls with autism are more likely than boys to demonstrate a comorbidity with SSRI-treatable depression. Where boys with autism tend to be disruptive to gain access to physical items, girls with autism tend to be disruptive more often for human attention and contact. Girls with autism tend to be more passive, self-isolating and withdrawn, compared to boys with the condition who tend to be more outwardly aggressive. Girls with autism are also often more able than their male peers to follow pointing fingers and to gaze track.

While none of the above are absolutes, they are factors that are important, because they’re all aspects of autism that applied to me growing up, in spite of my being designated male at birth. I was designated male, but was displaying more traditionally feminine expressions of autism. Pair that with the fact that twenty years ago these differences were overlooked by the male-focused diagnostic criteria of old, and you start to see how the diagnostic system overlooked me.”]

laura kate dale, from uncomfortable labels: my life as a gay autistic trans woman

[callmemanatee]

There could (and probably should) be a Neurotribes-sized book about gender essentialism in the autism world, how it's been there since the early days, and how it harms every autistic person, of every gender.

From Dr. Asperger's failure to recognize that girls could be autistic, to the "extreme male brain" theory (and the fact that we're still using autism screenings based on it), to the reductive idea of "female autism", to gendered social skills programs that are often conversion-therapy-lite, to the way transgender autistics are currently having rights taken away...

...we need an in-depth look at all of it.

[massharp1971]

"do your own research", hm, and i wonder what that research is going to be based off... could it be... academic work? scientific literature? no... impossible

Dear anon I have literally no idea what you're referring to. So, it vastly depends what we're talking about. It might be about me saying you shouldn't just automatically believe academics any more than you should automatically dismiss them. Say we're talking about superconductors. Yeah, doing your own research on that would be extremely hard. But say for example you wanted to find out whether trans people detransition a lot or vaccines cause autism. (they don't, x2) Well, yeah, you should totally look at the academic research in volume not just the most popularly cited stuff. Most of all, you should look to see if the research has been verified by others.

But you should also look at activist/community discourse. And when I say activist discourse I don't mean the first ten hits on youtube where you'll be firehosed with gender critical or antivaxx lies, but what large groups of people most impacted by the issue (i.e. trans and autistic people, including trans and autistic academics) are collectively saying and LISTEN TO HOW THEY DEBUNK THE BAD RESEARCH. And how they highlight the ways these two myths (for example) are inherently stimatising of and creating a moral panic about existingly stigmatised, marginalised folks.

When you've heard forty knowledgeable trans people all cite the slews of research debunking the idea that detransition is common or "desistence" in trans kids is common, you'll start to understand the research better from a more embedded perspective, and critique it. There is good trans research out there, but the popular stuff that makes the headlines and decides policy is often very, very bad and easily debunked by anyone who bothers to think past their own instinctive bias. It's bad specifically in the way that it says what prejudiced people want to hear and so it doesn't get critiqued well because of confirmation bias.

When you've listened to autistic community on the topic, you will quickly realise the antivaxx movement is a) stemming entirely from Andrew Wakefield's discredited research but more importantly b) truly vile in its attitude towards autistic people. It took a long time for AW to be discredited. His research is still very widely believed, and that's partly because it was extremely popular. On the subject of autism, and obliquely the bullshit idea that there are male and female brains, Simon Baron Cohen still dominates the field but there are whole books on what is horribly horribly wrong with his research. But the Daily Mail likes him, and he again confirms a lot of biases, so it's ok if he was methodologically unsound and his research damaged autistic people and women's rights. He still gets to sit at the top of his field.

Follow the money. Be suspicious of research the comes up first in a search. Listen to what communities most affected have to say about the research methods. It's not that academia is inherently problematic but there are ways in which existing injustices and biases get replicated in research. So when, specifically, we want to learn about marginalised folks, we have to work much harder to examine the positioning of the researcher and listen to community and activist voices alongside the research. Here is another really good example of how academia marginalised indigenous knowledge that influenced the work of Maslow. The indigenous theories are so much better and more useful than anything Maslow came out with.

So, there is knowledge inside and outside the academy, and the academy was built on injustice. Yes, there are times we should listen to the science e.g on covid, but we should also know that some of the science around covid was wrong in a very specific way: it was politically useful, and so became popular (e.g. the whole droplet vs aerosol controversy that meant many of the precautions we took in the pandemic were wrong, and many expensive measures were sold to us that weren't remotely helpful). Yes, it's hard to find trustworthy information these days, but that makes it even more important that we don't just assume research with a lot of money and political will behind it is automatically correct just because it happened inside a university. Bad research that confirms biases can last generations past it being scientifically debunked (e.g. someone once told me men were smarter than women because they have bigger brains, a popular Victorian theory that was disproven in the 1890s!). So I'm really sorry anon but you cannot just believe something because an academic said it. And you cannot assume all knowledge that comes from outside the academy has no value, when it comes direct from marginalised people speaking to their own collective wisdom.

[dread-and-despair-dyke]

i have a theory that likee u know how ppl say that having autism is just having extreme male brain

well i think like normie women and gay men have the extreme female brain or whatever

and normie men and autistic ppl have extreme male brain

well u see here the men already have male brain so autistic males having male brain doesnt cause them such an issue... but autist women having male brain causes an issue bcs its unacceptable to not be a femalebrained female. u know .

i dont know if lesbians have any particular brain allignment bcs i only know like 2 lesbians in the world think so i cant really look into it

[allisticntprivilege]

I saw you reblogging a post about NT experts on mental states&illnesses and I wondered: What do you think about Simon Baron-Cohen and his works&ideas he postulates? (I myself don't like him but that's just me and that would extend the limits of this ask box...)

He has moved from Direct Pathologizing (extreme male brain, theory of mind -- which is still his most cited work, describing autistic transmasculinity & autistic women not being straight as testosterone related disorders) to aspie elitism masquerading as neurodiversity (but still some theory of mind shit) but, like, that’s still bad. Aspie supremacy can kill.

And, like, there’s his idea of what post-diagnostic support means: https://wchh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/psb.1816 and the categorization of AAC as only showing preliminary evidence of benefit https://www.thelancet.com/article/S1474-4422(20)30034-X/abstract (Hint: no, if you consider the AAC fields own literature it gets the same Evidence-Based label, and if you don’t consider the field’s own literature then that rule should be applied to all the other folks studying their own so-called supports.)

He is, at this point, supervising work where a careful reader trying to pull useful bits out will absolutely find those useful buts. However, never trust his framing of anything. The framing still tends to be very Typical Autism Essay.

[redditreceipts]

Don't you think labeling autism as male-brain even as a joke is harmful to women who have autism, who already find it a lot harder to get a diagnosis because of misogyny from doctors and the medical system?

hey :)

I don't really think that it's harmful, I see it as a parody of people who say that there exists such a thing as a "male brain" and a "female brain". nowadays, we know that labeling autism as an "extremely male brain" is bullshit, because our brains aren't gendered.

I myself am autistic, and I found it funny, because the "male brain in female body" theory is still used by people who defend trans identity and I though I would do some kind of parody to show how it's ridiculous.

[autism-unfiltered]

The Overlooked Struggles of Autistic Men

In discussions about autism, there's often a focus on diagnostic disparities and the underdiagnosis of women and girls. This is a necessary conversation, as countless autistic women have gone unrecognized due to biases in diagnostic criteria and societal perceptions of autism. However, the issues faced by autistic men must not be ignored either.

Just as women are impacted by societal expectations and stereotypes, so too are men. The "male brain theory" of autism, which posits that autism is an extreme manifestation of typically "male" cognitive traits, can create a harmful stigma around autistic men. This theory can lead to stereotypes that autistic men are excessively logical, lack empathy, or are incapable of understanding others' emotions, none of which are universally true of autistic individuals.

Societal expectations of masculinity can also exacerbate the struggles faced by autistic men. Men are often expected to be assertive, socially adept, and emotionally stoic. Autistic men, who may struggle with social interaction and often experience emotions intensely, may feel out of place with these expectations. They might face bullying, social isolation, and a sense of not fitting in.

Additionally, autistic men often struggle to access support and understanding. Men are less likely to seek help for mental health issues due to societal stigma, and this can extend to seeking support for autism-related challenges. They may also struggle to find understanding within their peer groups, as male social groups may place a high value on conformity, and autistic traits can lead to standing out.

In the healthcare sector, there can be a failure to recognize the mental health challenges faced by autistic men. There's a high prevalence of anxiety and depression among autistic individuals, but these often go undiagnosed or untreated in men due to a lack of understanding and the stigma around men's mental health.

Addressing these issues requires a shift in societal attitudes towards both autism and masculinity. Autistic men need to be recognized as the diverse group they are, with a wide range of strengths and challenges. There should also be efforts to encourage men to seek support when needed, and to provide autism-specific resources tailored to men.

In conclusion, it's crucial that we acknowledge and address the struggles faced by autistic men. The autism community is diverse, and everyone within it deserves understanding, acceptance, and support.

[switch]

what the hell is “extreme male brain theory,” you find out some new goofy sounding thing that people speculate about autism every day.

[chicago-geniza]

Gathering more material before Twitter tanks for antagonistic reply guys who insult Agnes by labeling her social skills and manner of speaking stereotypically masculine in a way that directly parallels Baron-Cohen's language about Extreme Male Brain theory of autism lol

[cypr1anlatew00d]

wrt lrb in the same way that like extreme male brain theory of autism was cynically used by tech-o-sphere misogynists to be like "aah sorry my Objective and Systematic Mind can't help but think women are incapable of programming computers" you now see "girl autism" emerging as a kind of equally sexist Extreme Female Brain theory (especially manipulable, especially eager to please, especially helpless) for terfs to rally around as like some sort of extra-vulnerable woman that needs extra protection from ~manipulators~ in the form of trans ppl, certain medical proceedures, and their own autonomy like. jeremy fragrance voice. WOMEN, Do not buy this benevolent sexism. lol.

[zekedms]

lol i fucking can't with this video I'm watching on possible causes of autism from a "science channel"

"Even correcting for underdiagnosis males are three times more likely to present with autism" dubious that it's near that high but okay let's pretend and go with it

"The extreme male brain hypothesis has a lot of merit because of this" lol yeah that's why so many of are trans women totally

"Researchers didn't find the expected increase in androgens to support this theory, but they did find another - an elevated level of estrogens, the female hormones during fetal development of people with autism" yes nothing says extreme male brain like extra girl juice

"This study was only done on male fetuses" you didn't even try

F-, ignoring contradictory evidence presented as proof of your pet hypothesis while clearly not talking to anyone in autistic community, see me after class.

[autisticwomen]

The History of Autism and Women

The term autism was first used in 1908 by the psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler in 1908, although it was used to describe a patient with schizophrenia who had completely withdrawn into his own world. The research on autism began once again in the 1940s seperately by two doctors Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger, who both came into contact with girls with similar difficulties to the boys they were studying, but did not look into the differences between them. Asperger’s reasearch only focused on boys. In Kanner’s highly publicized 1944 article on autism, out of the eleven research subjects, eight were boys and three were girls. Research after that was mainly focused on boys, which led to the criteria of autism diagnosis to be heavily male-focused.

Autism was very much seen as a male disease. Some of the symptoms like social disconnect, emotional distance, and lack of emoting can be related to manly ideals such as self-reliance and stoicism. Even as recent as 2003, British researcher Simon Baron-Cohen proposed that autism is a too-highly concentrated version of masculinity. His book The Essential Difference: Men, Women, and the Extreme Male Brain was about this theory, despite it being generally well-accepted that most traits associated with gender are societal constructs.

With a history like this, it’s no wonder that most generally believe that the male to female autism ration is 4:1, despite most scientists believing that the actual ratio is lower, and that 80% of women remain undiagnosed at age 18.

So the question is: is this changing? And how is autism treated in the modern age? We’ll be looking at that in our next and final post.

Sources:

https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/autism-women

https://blogs.uoregon.edu/autismhistoryproject/topics/autism-gender-gap/

[ahopkins1965]

Your Brain Type Results

Your Empathy score (EQ): 12

 

Most females score 6 to 16.

Most males score 4 to 15.

If you score 0 to 4 you are low on empathy, and if you score 16 to 20 you score high on empathy. 

Your Systemizing score (SQ): 16

 

Most females score 2 to 9.

Most males score 3 to 11.

If you score 0 to 3 you are low in your systemizing drive, and if you score 12 to 20, you are high on your systemizing drive.

Your brain type classification: Type S

33% of people are classified as Type E (their EQ score is greater than their SQ score). 

33% are classified as Type S (their SQ is greater than their EQ). 

30% are classified as Type B for balanced (their EQ and SQ are relatively equal).

2% of people are classified as Extreme Type E (EQ is much greater than SQ).

2% of people are classified as Extreme Type S (SQ is much greater than EQ).

 

What are brain types?

Most people can be categorized into 1 of 5 cognitive ‘brain types’. Your brain type is an indication of how you score on two important dimensions of the mind: empathy and systemizing.

Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s thoughts and feelings and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemizing is the ability to identify lawful patterns in the world, and  the drive to analyse or construct systems.

If you are Type E (empathizing) this means your drive to empathize is greater than your drive to systemize. If you are Type S (systemizing), this means your drive to systemize is greater than your drive to empathize. Those with a Type B (balanced) brain type have relatively equal drives to empathize and systemize. Extreme Type E are people who are super-empathic whilst their systemizing is intact or even below average. Extreme Type S are people who are hyper-systemizers whilst their empathy is intact or even below average.

On average, more men than women have a Type S brain type and more women than men have a Type E brain type. It is suggested that these brain types are caused by genetic and prenatal hormonal levels (2,3), as well as by environmental factors.

Score Calculation.

Your brain type was calculated based on your responses to 10-item versions of the Empathy Quotient (EQ) (1, 4) and Systemizing Quotient-Revised (SQ-R) (1, 5). These two scores together provide an indication of your ‘brain type’. 

References

1. Baron-Cohen, S. (2003). The Essential Difference: Men, women, and the extreme male brains. Penguin.

2. Baron-Cohen, S. (2012). Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new understanding of cruelty and kindness. Penguin.

3. Baron-Cohen, S. (2020). The Pattern Seekers: A new theory of human invention. Penguin.

4. Greenberg, D. M., Warrier, V., Allison, C. & Baron-Cohen, S. (2018). Testing the Empathizing-Systemizing theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism in half a million people. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1811032115

 

Your AQ Results

Your AQ score: 2

 

Most non-autistic people score 1 to 5.

Most autistic people score 6 to 10. 

What is the AQ?

Autistic traits fall on a spectrum and can be observed in the entire population. Autistic traits can be measured with the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The AQ is not a diagnostic tool, but rather measures autistic traits in the general population and in autistic people. If you have concerns that predate completing the AQ-10, and you score 6 or above, you may want to consider asking your family doctor to be referred for a specialist diagnostic assessment.         

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