So, let's say, with this article, that Asperger's in women means they are less reflexively capable of understanding the subtleties of social relations and empathizing with other people. But, since, unlike boys, they want to socialize, they try to compensate for the social skills they lack by watching other people in social situations and imitating what they do. This effort to learn social skills is not likely to transform them into the life of the party, but it probably goes some distance to mitigate their native social ineptness. (Story of my life.) So what can it mean to say that a diagnosis of Asperger's helps someone in this situation "seek out the right kind of treatment, and after a lifetime of mimicking others, finally find my own identity." What is this woman's "own identity" if the implication is that all her acquired social skills are not part of it? Has she returned to being aloof, surly, and isolated?
In other news, it turns out that people are making excellent money off of America's Obama obsession, so who wants to rent my room near the Metro in Arlington for $750 a night during Inauguration? Complimentary cat included!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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8 comments:
How can we tell which girls/women are 'underneath it all' socially inept, but have learned at a young age how to pretend to be normal, and which are just normal? Does it make any difference?
(OK, I didn't read this article, but have seen others like it.)
When you say "story of my life," I hope you don't mean that seriously. I have cousins with Asperger's, and it's very different from just being socially awkward. I know from socially awkward, but it isn't just a sliding scale toward Asperger's.
Withywindle,
Are your cousins male or female? I've now read the article, and the point seems to be that, to an outside observer, a girl/woman with the disorder can seem totally normal, but is on the inside struggling to know how to interact.
Yes, my point is what Phoebe says--that the description of female Asperger's presented here is one that emphasizes how relatively indistinguishable it is from garden-variety social awkwardness (hence the difficulty of diagnosing) because women with it have already learned, to some degree, how to get around it. To me, this sounds like a positive trend of learning, coping, and maturity, so why should these strategies be seen as inauthentic? Story of my life is that I also am not innately very socially apt, but I have tried to get around that by imitating people who are, and I don't consider that some sort of tyranny over my authentic self, unless I would prefer to be authentically friendless, which I would not.
Male. And I have difficulty believing that being female would make that much difference. Ever since Asperger's became better known a few years ago, I've been hearing all sorts of people--including yours truly, who generally has acquired such social graces as he has as learned behavior--say "oh, maybe my garden-variety social awkwardness is a mild case of Asperber's." Since seeing the real thing, I've found the phrase, well, repulsively self-indulgent. Awkward is one thing; near autistic is another. How shall I put this? If the outside world is mistaking female Aspergers for socially awkward girls, I suspect that this says far more about the horrifying obliviousness of the outside world than anything else. I don't think you should take anything about female Asperger's as remotely relevant to you, unless you actually get a medical diagnosis that you have Asperger's. The lady in the article shouldn't have blithered about authenticity, but I don't think you need to follow up on it.
Don't worry, I'm not making a doctor's appointment to investigate my social awkwardness, but I don't see why that means I can't blog about confused articles.
My extended family includes an Aspie girl and an Aspie boy (unrelated to each other). Neither is aloof or surly; both have trouble picking up social clues and reading body language. They've learned manners in social skills classes. Anything that's taught in words they can learn.
She is somewhat better at interacting with people and is more interested in socializing. His friends come from his Aspie class in school.
Despite their genius IQs, they'll face a lot of challenges as they try to get through a job interview, work with colleagues and conform to a world that operates by rules they don't understand.
I have a friend with an Aspberger's son, and the boy is very interested in being social, so he tries quite hard, but no one would ever call him "awkward" - it's clearly much beyond that. He is getting better over time, but I have no idea if he'll ever be able to function in the real world. My wife has a cousin who is about 50 with Aspberger's, and despite having graduated from college, he's never been able to hold a job for more than a few months. His mother is very worried about what will happen to him when she is no longer around to make a home for him.
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