What Autistic Girls Are Made Of

There's an article in today's New York Times Magazine discussing the different challenges facing autistic girls and autistic boys. Since autism is usually associated with males, females with autism have often been marginalized in research, and writer Emily Bazelon cites recent studies that explore the links between sex and autism (including quoting Simon Baron-Cohen- who knew that Borat's first-cousin was a leader in that field?!)

What the article comes down to is this: the girls with Asperger's are anxious and depressed (more so than Asperger's males) because they crave social relationships with their female peers more than do the Asperger's boys, and they have a harder time making those connections.

Girls value emotional connections! Boys like math and chess! Emily Bazelon writes, "It is easier for Asperger’s boys to find other boys — either on or off the autistic spectrum — who want to spend hours on their Game Boys or in a realm of Internet fantasy." A psychiatry professor at the Institute of Child Health at University College London elaborates on the gender difference: “Girls with autism are rarely fascinated with numbers and rarely have stores of arcane knowledge, and this is reflected in the interests of females in the general population."

Throughout the whole article, Bazelon doesn't really explore the cultural possiblities for this behavior; rather, she cruises right on into talking about the biological reasons behind all of this. Researchers in the field believe that the different female/male manifestations of Asperger's (and other forms of autism) are evidence of a chromosomal link for the disorder.

Intriguing, but problematic. Admittedly, if the science behind chromosomal links to autism is legitimate (and not just the 21st-century version of phrenology) ... then maybe gender essentialism isn't so unreasonable. Even though essentialism is awfully gauche in feminism these days, I think we've gotten in the bad habit of crying "wolf!" without looking critically at what lays beyond the essentialism.

Assertion: let's not cast the baby out with the bathwater.