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22 reviews for:
Asperger's and Girls: World-Renowned Experts Join Those with Asperger's Syndrome to Resolve Issues That Girls and Women Face Every Day!
Ruth Snyder, Tony Attwood, Teresa Bolick, Lisa Iland, Sheila Wagner, Catherine Faherty, Mary Wroble, Temple Grandin, Jennifer McIlwee Myers
3.02 AVERAGE
22 reviews for:
Asperger's and Girls: World-Renowned Experts Join Those with Asperger's Syndrome to Resolve Issues That Girls and Women Face Every Day!
Ruth Snyder, Tony Attwood, Teresa Bolick, Lisa Iland, Sheila Wagner, Catherine Faherty, Mary Wroble, Temple Grandin, Jennifer McIlwee Myers
3.02 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
liked it towards the start but the book quickly became obsessed with trying to pin AS girls into boxes that I feel might be more damaging than helpful. Romantic feelings are expected. Sexual attraction is expected but only if it's heterosexual. These are harmful ideas. I skimmed through the second half of the book.
Wonderful, desperately needed resource for parents of girls on the spectrum. Although it was written a few years ago, the information is still useful and current. Includes very interesting and insightful essays by a few adult women with ASD about transitioning to adulthood. Not a long book, but invaluable.
This book seemed like a guide on how to mask neurodivergence. Very disappointing. I didn't even bother reading the entire book.
Mixed feelings over this.
Over all I am not that impressed. I am not entirely sure why.
I can't really comment on the early chapters, I forget what they were about.
The big positive and made the entire book worthwhile?
Aspie Do's and Don'ts: Dating, Relationships, and Marriage. The writer of this chapter was awesome and is someone I would in all probability love hanging out with. A rational perspective and writes from various positions. She truly sees with an AS eye and is able to communicate and interrupt with a higher level of intelligence.
The Big Negative that annoyed the crap out of me?
Girl to Girl: Advice on Friendship, Bullying, and Fitting In. I hated this chapter SO much, probably a combination of reasons, luckily some of this shit was counted by other peoples chapters. I think the biggest issue is it is written by an NT who is focused on making AS people fit into an NT world ... this will NEVER work and should be ignored. The best way to know what not to do is to observe, that is what I did, of course I messed up and I received a hell of a lot of flog, but my intelligence allowed me to comprehend what to and not to do to get by. Impressing the top hats should be no ones goal ... another issue is this is written for American schools and is assumed that it is a a natural situation, it is not, there are common factors in all basic nastiness, but the reality is culture and attitude plays a huge part, making much of this trip pointless to the rest of the world.
Other chapters were pretty much neutral, maybe some positive and negative bias. Over-all ... we are outselves and only a few basic rules can help us. The number one rule I would state (and probably my only true rule) is to watch and observe others, it provides you with what they are like, time is another factor, people can't be fake all the time, eventually some a-hole pretending to be someone else will slip up. Don't hurry and don't try too hard. It always ends in disaster.
Over all I am not that impressed. I am not entirely sure why.
I can't really comment on the early chapters, I forget what they were about.
The big positive and made the entire book worthwhile?
Aspie Do's and Don'ts: Dating, Relationships, and Marriage. The writer of this chapter was awesome and is someone I would in all probability love hanging out with. A rational perspective and writes from various positions. She truly sees with an AS eye and is able to communicate and interrupt with a higher level of intelligence.
The Big Negative that annoyed the crap out of me?
Girl to Girl: Advice on Friendship, Bullying, and Fitting In. I hated this chapter SO much, probably a combination of reasons, luckily some of this shit was counted by other peoples chapters. I think the biggest issue is it is written by an NT who is focused on making AS people fit into an NT world ... this will NEVER work and should be ignored. The best way to know what not to do is to observe, that is what I did, of course I messed up and I received a hell of a lot of flog, but my intelligence allowed me to comprehend what to and not to do to get by. Impressing the top hats should be no ones goal ... another issue is this is written for American schools and is assumed that it is a a natural situation, it is not, there are common factors in all basic nastiness, but the reality is culture and attitude plays a huge part, making much of this trip pointless to the rest of the world.
Other chapters were pretty much neutral, maybe some positive and negative bias. Over-all ... we are outselves and only a few basic rules can help us. The number one rule I would state (and probably my only true rule) is to watch and observe others, it provides you with what they are like, time is another factor, people can't be fake all the time, eventually some a-hole pretending to be someone else will slip up. Don't hurry and don't try too hard. It always ends in disaster.
Seriously?! I mean ... SERIOUSLY!?! Okay, lets calm down and see how I can make this rage coherent.
Firstly, guess who is woefully underrepresented in this volume? Exactly. Actual girls with Asperger's. What do you get instead? A bunch of people that are more or less "experts" at something or other that is supposedly relevant to the discussion. These "experts" dish out lots of not so helpful and quite often rather harmful advise - not to actual girls with Asperger's, mind you, but to the ever popular primary caregivers and teachers. And as an extra bonus most of them do this the most insulting and condescending way possible. Contemplating the harm that could be done if someone actually followed some of that god-awful advise ... the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let's leave it at that. There are really only two notable exceptions one might want to check out (before doing the appropriate thing to do with something like this ...). Those are the articles by Tony Attwood and Jennifer McIlwee Myers.
Firstly, guess who is woefully underrepresented in this volume? Exactly. Actual girls with Asperger's. What do you get instead? A bunch of people that are more or less "experts" at something or other that is supposedly relevant to the discussion. These "experts" dish out lots of not so helpful and quite often rather harmful advise - not to actual girls with Asperger's, mind you, but to the ever popular primary caregivers and teachers. And as an extra bonus most of them do this the most insulting and condescending way possible. Contemplating the harm that could be done if someone actually followed some of that god-awful advise ... the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let's leave it at that. There are really only two notable exceptions one might want to check out (before doing the appropriate thing to do with something like this ...). Those are the articles by Tony Attwood and Jennifer McIlwee Myers.
3.5 Stars: I don't know how to rate/review non fiction since you can't exactly rate fact. All I can say is that while some parts weren't that interesting, there were others that I learned a lot from. As a girl with Asperger's syndrome myself, I can relate to a lot of the content in this book and I hope other women with AS can as well.
This is an uneven book -- never a surprise when picking up a collection of essays/short stories by a variety of different authors. However, this is one of the books recommended by our regional specialist in autism, so I expected more. Is this the best literature that’s out there right now, for people interested specifically in Aspergers as it more typically presents in girls?
The litmus test for a non-fiction book might also be: Can I find equal or better information on the Internet quite easily? The answer in 2016 is yes, yes you can, and in fact you can find Tony Attwood’s entire chapter in this book on his own website. But you don’t hear from Tony Attwood again. You should know this in advance in case you buy this book wanting to hear more from him.
But do you really need to hear more from Tony Attwood on this particular topic? A neurotypical man?
My issue is entirely with language usage, which has a real world effect. When it comes to his descriptions of girls, my frustration with Attwood rests upon his constant use of the word ‘camouflage’ in relation to high-functioning girls on the spectrum. It is harder to pick high functioning autism in girls because girls ‘camouflage’ their behaviours, acting like ‘chamaleons’ in order to fit in:
"They can become quite adept at camouflaging their difficulties and clinical experience suggests that the passive personality is more common in girls."
"Some individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome can be quite ingenious in using imitation and modelling to camouflage their difficulties in social situations. One strategy that has been used by many girls and some boys is to observe people who are socially skilled and to copy their mannerisms, voice and persona."
He then explains that this is called ‘social echolalia’. That’s fine. But let’s consider the ‘camouflaging’ choice of language in the wider context of sexism, which affects everybody. For example, it is widely believed, even today, that women are basically liars. At one end you’ve got ‘women wear make up and feminine accoutrements as a form of deception’ (to lie about how ugly we really are underneath – an experience of ‘deception’ directed at the male-to-female transgender population in technicolour) and at the other end you’ve got ‘women lie about rape to cope with a regrettable sexual encounter’. But it’s absolutely everywhere. Women lie to you when you try to pick her up in a bar, telling you she has a boyfriend when she doesn’t at all. Women present at hospital emergency saying they’re in massive pain but actually we all know women exaggerate. She’s probably just on the rag. Women gossip. Women get themselves pregnant just so they can bludge off the public dime and take men’s money for the next 18 years. Hell, as far back as the 13th century Christian leaders were calling women liars. Saint Albertus Magnus said in the 13th century: “What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. One must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil.”
So here’s the thing about accusing aspie women of ‘camouflage’, which is not just an Attwood term, though I suspect he’s the driving force behind it: Saying that women camouflage our ‘natural’ behaviours is yet another accusation of female lying. Subtler, maybe. But not by much.
Doesn’t everyone ‘camouflage’? Isn’t the ability to seamlessly fit into societal norms the very definition of neurotypical?
But here’s the kicker: Very few aspie women make it to middle age without presenting to the medical/psychological profession with some sort of difficulty. Most often the misdiagnosis is depression/anxiety/BPD/bi-polar, or younger women may have been received a partial profiling for AD/HD. So when psychologists say that ‘women are harder to detect because women on the spectrum camouflage their behaviours’, what psychologists are failing to own up to is their very own professional failure to know what the fuck they should've been looking for.
Given the history of lying women, professionals need to reconsider their language. Yes, I know, autism is fraught with language difficulties and it would be easy to conclude that it would be safer not to say anything at all, and I know that Tony Attwood, overall, is doing a great job of helping everyone to understand neurodiversity. This is also true.
It’s actually quite easy to change the language on this camouflage point, however, and it’s done in a chapter by the lesser-known writer on autism (at least here in Australia) in a subsequent chapter. She writes:
“it is easier to identify boys as having autism because [their] behaviours are more obvious than [those in] girls who may experience inward or passive signs of aggression.”
That’s how to do it, folks. That’s how to write about ‘camouflage’.
Catherine Faherty’s chapter and Sheila Wagner’s chapter, along with Temple Grandin’s few pages at the back almost make this book worth reading, but they are so short I was left wanting more.
Lisa Iland gives ‘Advice On Friendship, Bullying And Fitting In’ which is completely at odds with Temple’s concern (on the final page) that “many parents and professionals fail to understand that emotional relatedness is not the major motivator of the lives of a certain subset of individuals with Asperger’s or high functioning autism. They try to make us something we are not.” Be very wary about taking advice from a young woman whose main claim to autism is having ‘friends who are autistic’ and a sister on the spectrum. ‘Fitting in’ is certainly one option for getting through high school and for some aspie girls it might even be possible and wished for. This isn’t the first young woman I’ve heard dish out such advice. (Such as it is – if they don’t know what some popular thing is girls are advised to look it up on Wikipedia. Groundbreaking insight, there.) But any attempt to fit in is certainly going to have psychological consequences at some point, probably further down the line. This chapter is hardly an advertisement for fitting in with the NT crowd. On the contrary, if I was a 12 year old aspie girl about to hit high school I’d make the decision to spend all my lunchtimes in the special needs quarters!
Better instead to absorb the wisdom in the chapter from Jennifer McIlwee Myers who is in a much better position to dish out advice.
The advice from Mary Wrobel is aimed at parents and caregivers of aspie girls and has some useful advice. But I really rail against her use of language, also, when she describes menstruation as 'dirty'. (Using that actual word, several times.) The last thing aspie girls -- or any girls -- need to be told is that their bodies are dirty.
The inclusion of the essay by Ruth Snyder is an interesting editorial choice. I suspect she was asked to write about what it’s like to be a mother on the spectrum, but she ends up writing mostly about her two autistic sons, ironically saying very little at all about her daughter, who I assume is neurotypical. Still, plenty has been written about boys on the spectrum elsewhere, so I feel it would have been better, in a book titled ‘Girls and Asperger’s’, for this mother to have gone further into her relationship with her daughter. An essay about having a neurotypical daughter while yourself being aspie mother is a dynamic I haven’t seen anywhere yet. If, on the other hand, the daughter is on the spectrum, why did we end up hearing all about the boys? Once again, it feels like a conversation specifically designed to be about female experience was derailed in the predictable direction. If you’ve spent much time in the aspie blogosphere you will have come across some blogs by aspie women who have a kind of ‘mystical’ worldview. This chapter is an example of what I’m talking about. At one point she even writes, “I still believe in divine intervention, even though I also know the physiological aspects now”. (She’s talking about how she got pregnant.) This author does bring up a very good point though: When the “professionals” claimed that people on the spectrum needed to learn to mind-read, I began to doubt that I was on the spectrum. I have come to realize that we need to learn to “face-read”.
While every essay has something to offer, you’ll find contradictory philosophies (for balance?) and not much depth in this short and increasingly outdated book. It’s definitely time for The Complete Guide To Girls And Asperger’s. I don’t mind if Tony Attwood writes it but he would need to school himself up on modern feminism, I think. I’d rather see it written by a woman, and even better, a woman with Asperger’s herself.
Then again, since Asperger’s is no longer a category in the DSM, we’re unlikely to get that, exactly.
The litmus test for a non-fiction book might also be: Can I find equal or better information on the Internet quite easily? The answer in 2016 is yes, yes you can, and in fact you can find Tony Attwood’s entire chapter in this book on his own website. But you don’t hear from Tony Attwood again. You should know this in advance in case you buy this book wanting to hear more from him.
But do you really need to hear more from Tony Attwood on this particular topic? A neurotypical man?
My issue is entirely with language usage, which has a real world effect. When it comes to his descriptions of girls, my frustration with Attwood rests upon his constant use of the word ‘camouflage’ in relation to high-functioning girls on the spectrum. It is harder to pick high functioning autism in girls because girls ‘camouflage’ their behaviours, acting like ‘chamaleons’ in order to fit in:
"They can become quite adept at camouflaging their difficulties and clinical experience suggests that the passive personality is more common in girls."
"Some individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome can be quite ingenious in using imitation and modelling to camouflage their difficulties in social situations. One strategy that has been used by many girls and some boys is to observe people who are socially skilled and to copy their mannerisms, voice and persona."
He then explains that this is called ‘social echolalia’. That’s fine. But let’s consider the ‘camouflaging’ choice of language in the wider context of sexism, which affects everybody. For example, it is widely believed, even today, that women are basically liars. At one end you’ve got ‘women wear make up and feminine accoutrements as a form of deception’ (to lie about how ugly we really are underneath – an experience of ‘deception’ directed at the male-to-female transgender population in technicolour) and at the other end you’ve got ‘women lie about rape to cope with a regrettable sexual encounter’. But it’s absolutely everywhere. Women lie to you when you try to pick her up in a bar, telling you she has a boyfriend when she doesn’t at all. Women present at hospital emergency saying they’re in massive pain but actually we all know women exaggerate. She’s probably just on the rag. Women gossip. Women get themselves pregnant just so they can bludge off the public dime and take men’s money for the next 18 years. Hell, as far back as the 13th century Christian leaders were calling women liars. Saint Albertus Magnus said in the 13th century: “What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. One must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil.”
So here’s the thing about accusing aspie women of ‘camouflage’, which is not just an Attwood term, though I suspect he’s the driving force behind it: Saying that women camouflage our ‘natural’ behaviours is yet another accusation of female lying. Subtler, maybe. But not by much.
Doesn’t everyone ‘camouflage’? Isn’t the ability to seamlessly fit into societal norms the very definition of neurotypical?
But here’s the kicker: Very few aspie women make it to middle age without presenting to the medical/psychological profession with some sort of difficulty. Most often the misdiagnosis is depression/anxiety/BPD/bi-polar, or younger women may have been received a partial profiling for AD/HD. So when psychologists say that ‘women are harder to detect because women on the spectrum camouflage their behaviours’, what psychologists are failing to own up to is their very own professional failure to know what the fuck they should've been looking for.
Given the history of lying women, professionals need to reconsider their language. Yes, I know, autism is fraught with language difficulties and it would be easy to conclude that it would be safer not to say anything at all, and I know that Tony Attwood, overall, is doing a great job of helping everyone to understand neurodiversity. This is also true.
It’s actually quite easy to change the language on this camouflage point, however, and it’s done in a chapter by the lesser-known writer on autism (at least here in Australia) in a subsequent chapter. She writes:
“it is easier to identify boys as having autism because [their] behaviours are more obvious than [those in] girls who may experience inward or passive signs of aggression.”
That’s how to do it, folks. That’s how to write about ‘camouflage’.
Catherine Faherty’s chapter and Sheila Wagner’s chapter, along with Temple Grandin’s few pages at the back almost make this book worth reading, but they are so short I was left wanting more.
Lisa Iland gives ‘Advice On Friendship, Bullying And Fitting In’ which is completely at odds with Temple’s concern (on the final page) that “many parents and professionals fail to understand that emotional relatedness is not the major motivator of the lives of a certain subset of individuals with Asperger’s or high functioning autism. They try to make us something we are not.” Be very wary about taking advice from a young woman whose main claim to autism is having ‘friends who are autistic’ and a sister on the spectrum. ‘Fitting in’ is certainly one option for getting through high school and for some aspie girls it might even be possible and wished for. This isn’t the first young woman I’ve heard dish out such advice. (Such as it is – if they don’t know what some popular thing is girls are advised to look it up on Wikipedia. Groundbreaking insight, there.) But any attempt to fit in is certainly going to have psychological consequences at some point, probably further down the line. This chapter is hardly an advertisement for fitting in with the NT crowd. On the contrary, if I was a 12 year old aspie girl about to hit high school I’d make the decision to spend all my lunchtimes in the special needs quarters!
Better instead to absorb the wisdom in the chapter from Jennifer McIlwee Myers who is in a much better position to dish out advice.
The advice from Mary Wrobel is aimed at parents and caregivers of aspie girls and has some useful advice. But I really rail against her use of language, also, when she describes menstruation as 'dirty'. (Using that actual word, several times.) The last thing aspie girls -- or any girls -- need to be told is that their bodies are dirty.
The inclusion of the essay by Ruth Snyder is an interesting editorial choice. I suspect she was asked to write about what it’s like to be a mother on the spectrum, but she ends up writing mostly about her two autistic sons, ironically saying very little at all about her daughter, who I assume is neurotypical. Still, plenty has been written about boys on the spectrum elsewhere, so I feel it would have been better, in a book titled ‘Girls and Asperger’s’, for this mother to have gone further into her relationship with her daughter. An essay about having a neurotypical daughter while yourself being aspie mother is a dynamic I haven’t seen anywhere yet. If, on the other hand, the daughter is on the spectrum, why did we end up hearing all about the boys? Once again, it feels like a conversation specifically designed to be about female experience was derailed in the predictable direction. If you’ve spent much time in the aspie blogosphere you will have come across some blogs by aspie women who have a kind of ‘mystical’ worldview. This chapter is an example of what I’m talking about. At one point she even writes, “I still believe in divine intervention, even though I also know the physiological aspects now”. (She’s talking about how she got pregnant.) This author does bring up a very good point though: When the “professionals” claimed that people on the spectrum needed to learn to mind-read, I began to doubt that I was on the spectrum. I have come to realize that we need to learn to “face-read”.
While every essay has something to offer, you’ll find contradictory philosophies (for balance?) and not much depth in this short and increasingly outdated book. It’s definitely time for The Complete Guide To Girls And Asperger’s. I don’t mind if Tony Attwood writes it but he would need to school himself up on modern feminism, I think. I’d rather see it written by a woman, and even better, a woman with Asperger’s herself.
Then again, since Asperger’s is no longer a category in the DSM, we’re unlikely to get that, exactly.
informative
fast-paced