I’ll never cease to be amazed at the kinds of generalizations that people come up with about gender–generalizations that they then try to present as scientific fact. That’s what irks me so much about some of SBC’s work. He starts with these absurd gender stereotypes and then starts using them to explain autism. I can’t believe he’s as well respected as he is. When I was in grad school, anyone who began applying gender stereotypes to any research subject would be laughed out of the room.

I know this is an old post, but a lot of the nonsense branding autistic people as excessively systematising and lacking empathy is commonly thrown at men in general in a lot of pop psychological literature these days. I have one particular friend on Facebook who keeps posting this gibberish (I have heard it called neuro-trash) which at its worst portrays men as not really human, functioning like computers one minute and wild animals the next. If you tell her that books have been written which exposes the cherry-picking of the scientific evidence, she’ll just laugh it off and post more. I bought Cordelia Fine’s “Delusions of Gender” with some of the book tokens I got for Christmas to counter this rubbish.

And to Jason, welcome and thanks for posting. I agree with every word you wrote.

Another excellent post, Rachel. You write well, and your sense of humor is just the icing on the cake.

As a side note. I do math synesthetically as combination of colors. I am horrid at addition and subtraction but excel at division and multiplication (color ratios seem easy for some reason). I almost can’t do algebra at all (letters don’t trigger the colors). Oddly, I am excellent at statistics and calculus. I do calculus using my language center and simply read it as if it were just a second language. Baron-Cohen is way off

No doubt that much of the research into autism and Aspergers is beneficial. However, I postulate that the majority of the benefit favors the neurotypical and mostly excludes those of us most directly affected.

Much of the hypotheses put forth by Simon Baron-Cohen seem to focus on development of a pathological description. It is for this reason that I challenge even the entertainment of many of Baron-Cohen’s conclusions. Pathology (even psychopathology) posits an assumed disease state that is abnormal in function and creates an impairment of health.

Conventional thinking suggests that autism is the behavioral result of a neurological difference. Assuming this is correct, the first posit of the pathological approach is satisfied. I instead challenge the suggestion that it causes an impairment of health and thus likely is outside the realm of psychopathology.

Admittedly, I am only working from my own point of view here. My “problems” revolve around sensory integration issues that create an anxiety condition. It is the anxiety that is an impairment, indirectly due to my AS. However, if care is taken in managing my environment, I fair reasonably well. I acknowledge that this may not be true for other aspies.

Autism researchers, including Baron-Cohen, also seem to focus on the social aspects of autism disorders. This is paradoxical to me as I believe that the social differences are caused by the condition and are not the condition itself. Focusing on pathologically describing it is thus similar to giving someone with pneumonia a cough suppressant. It simply focuses on what disturbs society, not what bothers the person afflicted.

Even this analogy is lacking it seems, since it still assumes a disease state. Maybe it is more analogous to bleaching the skin of a dark skinned individual in order make them “fit in better.” Their increased integration alleviates the disease state.

I currently believe that public awareness is the best route to increased social understanding. There is likely a social benefit to public understand of our differences in behavior. I don’t mind my differences as much as I mind the embarrassment of trying to explain to a waitress why I don’t want to sit next to the table with the screaming children and the big plastic bin where they dump dishes. I suffer more from the funny looks when I say something like, “I have trouble with sounds.” Most of my problems seem have to do with society’s lack of empathy for me more so than my lack of empathy for others. If the major concern of the neurotypical is the social behavioral differences, then the problem should be addressed socially, not pathologically.

All that said, I am a scientist (biochemist) myself and deeply support continued research in autism. It is greatly needed. However, I would like to see more aspie contribution in the direction of the research. Some internal insight might help get these Baron-Cohen types spending their effort on something more useful.