really tired of seeing the idea that women & girls are less likely to be diagnosed with autism because it "presents differently" so widely accepted even in progressive spaces
it is also widely accepted that women get raises less often because they don't ask as much as men. this is objectively not true.
it is also widely accepted that women are more talkative than men. this is objectively not true.
it is also widely accepted that women are taken less seriously when speaking because their speech patterns are associated with a "lack of confidence". this is objectively not true. [1][2][3]
every time we talk about gender discrimination, people look for an explanation that starts with women's behavior.
and every fucking time, actual research shows that across the board, women actually don't behave that differently from men.
women aren't diagnosed less often with autism due to "presenting differently". it's gendered medical neglect, and weaponized diagnoses disproportionately applied to women (e.g. BPD, HPD, bipolar, etc.)
THANK YOU
Look, as a kid, I had the stereotypical 'boy autism'. I was not fucking good at masking. I was not using my 'superior feminine social skills' or whatever to learn the rules of the playground and hide my autism from the doctors.
I was sitting in the corner rocking and talking to myself, putting my toys into regimented lines, throwing up every time I ate anything with the Wrong taste or texture and lashing out at classmates who upset me because I didn't know how to use my words.
My mother claims that she first realised I might be autistic when somebody suggested that my brother might be autistic, and maybe she should read up on the condition, and then she got hold of a list of symptoms and realised that it was literally just a list of things about me.
Everyone fucking noticed. The kids at school noticed. The teachers noticed. The educational psychologist noticed. Like again, short of wearing a sign around my neck saying 'ATTENTION: MAY CONTAIN AUTISM', there really wasn't any way I could have been more obvious about it.
I apparently told one of the doctors that the reason I didn't have a friend at school was because the school had an odd number of students and it was therefore impossible for everyone to pair off without there being an outlier. That is… not a neurotypical line of reasoning.
Anyways, I didn't get a diagnosis until I was seventeen. I did get incredibly close at the age of ten, but was turned away at literally the final hurdle.
Why? Because the consultant in charge of making the final decision openly admitted that he didn't believe that girls could get autism.
