Some Basic Stuff as a Warm Up

To begin explaining some things about Autism, I need to first 'review' some basic stuff, like for example the difference between the male and the female brain. This is necessary, because Autism has been referred to as the 'extreme male brain' by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, because of the way that the autistic mind functions.

Yet, one needs to realize that there are males and females who have autism, and thus it is of great importance to understand how the autistic extreme male brain will interact with the brain of a male and the brain of a female.

The female brain is wired in a different way, it is wired for empathy and this means that the extreme male brain's tendency of the autistic way of thinking will be put into a different kind of use than with male Auties and Aspies. Males in general because of their male brain wiring are more concerned with their own personal advancement, their own career, their own greatness, their own kingdom on earth.

Women on the other hand are more concerned with helping others, teaching others, networking with others, not for personal gratification but for feeling that they have managed to bring forth (give birth to) a better life, a better world, not for the world but for the people. Women want to help people in particular, while men want to help the world in general.

This difference is based on our genetic gender goals: a female seeks a safe nest, a safe place to give birth and bring up her young, this will compel her to create this safe place by making sure that the people around her are foe and not enemies. That is why women are more interested in socializing, networking, creating a group of allies around them that will help them protect her young. After all humans are part predators (meat eaters) but also part prey (we can be eaten by other predatory meat eaters).

Like the female animals of a herd that become sexually available and give birth at the same time to ensure that safety is in numbers is present when the young are born, the same way human females 'network' to create a timing, a perceived safety, for their young. It is common knowledge that if several women live in close proximity with each other, in the same household, their menstrual cycle will eventually become the same. They will become like the female animals of a herb that time their pregnancies and birthing so that it corresponds with the rest of the females in the herd.

This is what empathy is, it the instinct of the herd as a group that cooperates together, it is the HERDING instinct that promotes safety and eventually the survival of the species. Males on the other hand are more concerned of their own personal image, they have to prove to the female that they are worth mating with her and allowing the next generation to carry his genes. Males do whatever they do as a show-off of their ability and talents so they will attract the female's attention. They also have to fight off other males, by for example butting heads with each other like rams do, by proving their superiority to them, and showing that they deserve more than the other male(s) the prize of procreation.

Likewise a male with High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Asperger's Syndrome (AS), is doing whatever he is doing as a proof of their own self-worth, as a proof that they are better than another male (or more intelligent for example), and that they are someone worth mating with. If you look carefully you will see that it is mostly men (with HFA or AS or not) that have gotten Nobel prizes, and NOT that many women. Not because women are less capable, or because their work is less groundbreaking. It is because women are more concerned to benefiting others in an individual basis, than with promoting their self-worth through generalized impersonal non-individualized work.

Men are out for the prize: the honor to allow their genes to exist in future generations. Whether men are aware of that or not it is not important, it is still the underlining motivation to anything and everything they do. With HFA/AS men, because of their extreme male brain coupled with the male wiring of their brain, this need is even more extreme and so are the disappointments if this end is not achieved.

This means that a HFA/AS male that has not been given the opportunity to fulfill that need will reject society all together, will reject the competitiveness, feeling he can't compete with other males and that will he will never find a female (love shyness). A HFA/ASfemale feels more the effects of loneliness as an isolation. It is the HFA/AS female that suffer more from the lack of friends and social networking. Men suffer loneliness because of the lack of a (female) partner more than the lack of friends or a social network.

But there is a catch. Because of their extreme male brain-ness HFA/AS females tend to feel the same need (even if it is at a lesser degree than the HFA/AS male) to prove their self-worth by butting heads. They will do that either with their peers and come across as tomboys, either with their boyfriends and come across as dominant and aggressive, or with their husbands and come across as overbearing and controlling. A female, according to the gender stereotyping of society, is not expected to butt heads with others and when this happens the others are taken back by this exhibition of male aggressiveness.

If the 'others' don't butt heads back, the HFA/AS female will not be able to accept them as equal to her, or better. She will then either see them as 'weak' and needy and take over the roll of caregiver, by acting as a 'mother' or will see them as week and intellectually inferior and manipulate them by becoming a control freak as a means for survival.

Or will find them too weak, needy and intellectually inferior and refuse to mother them, control them, deal with them all together and choose isolation. This last kind of withdrawal can also happen to HFA/AS males, too, who see the people and the society around them as not worth dealing with at all and live a life withdrawn from social contacts.