Chapter Ten: Asperger’s Syndrome and Gender Identity

So, as you may have inferred from my previous chapter and my experiences in high school, I’ve always been a little troubled by society’s tendency to divide everybody into two distinct gender groups and automatically expect me to slot into “female world.” For me, my gender identity—that is, how masculine or feminine a person feels on the inside—is ambiguous.

Yes, I’m physically and sexually female, and my body does come with that cocktail of unfortunate emotional hormones… you know what I’m referring to! But in many other regards—in the way I think, communicate, and relate to others, the way I approach tasks and make decisions, my logical outlook, and the way I like to joke and have fun—it’s clear to me that my mind is really much more like that of a male, and it’s frustrating that because I act and dress in a feminine way, people automatically want to lump me with the girls, where I don’t feel comfortable.

Back in high school, I think I was fortunate to discover that I clicked so well with the type that we all know as the “nerdy guys.” It gave me a place to fit in that I wouldn’t otherwise have had and a chance to have those good intellectual and technical conversations that I sometimes craved. At that point in my development, it was something I needed.

At the time, the girls at my school were busy making small talk and chatting about interests I wasn’t yet into. And they could get soooo tediously serious in their tone of conversation. So please don’t hate me for saying this, but at the time, it just led me to conclude that women are really boring on the whole! Whereas when I would wander over to the boys, they were often engaging in lighthearted ribbing and banter that was fun.

There was a sort of freedom that came with the way guys speak without fear of offending. Guys tease because they like and respect each other, so little of it is ever taken to heart, unlike with women, who can be quite bothered by a stray social faux pas. For me, it gave me a social safety net, so I wonder why others found it such a shocking and socially inexplicable thing that I should want to be around guys in preference to girls.

Anyway, coming back to the present, you can imagine how amused I was a few years ago when I first discovered Simon Baron-Cohen’s study on the extreme male brain theory of Autism. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or yell a big “I told you so” to all the people out there who insisted my wanting to hang with the boys was just out of place. It was validating in such a satisfying way.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the theory, it comes from a paper that first appeared in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Magazine in 1999. Simon Baron-Cohen presented a study in which he had devised a series of questions to determine male and female behavioral patterns. The idea was that males are stronger at “systemizing” behaviors and females “empathizing” behaviors (defined below). So one’s gender could be determined by where a person sits on the systemizing-empathizing scale.

	Systemizing is defined as “the drive to analyze or construct systems” that “follow rules.” It also involves being able to predict the behavior of a system (as opposed to predicting or understanding the behavior of other people). Males are, on average, more skilled at “systemizing” than females are. Think of mathematicians and engineers as good systemizers.
	Empathizing is defined as “the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts and to respond to these with appropriate emotion.” It also involves being able to predict the behavior of people. Females are, on average, more skilled at “empathizing” than males are. Think of therapists and teachers as good empathizers[17].

Interestingly, when Autistic people were tested, both sexes sat on average further toward the male (systemizing) side of the scale than typical males. Hence Baron-Cohen’s inference that Autism may be a form of “extreme maleness of the brain.”

So if you follow that logic the study implies, I should be somewhat like a girl, but with a male-brain mode of thinking. Ha, what a surprise!

Now, I should note that this theory was never proven or accepted as fact. In fact, reading around on the topic, I’ve seen a lot of criticism about how systemizing and empathizing is far too narrow a criterion to measure people on, and the common consensus seems to be that Autism and Asperger’s are a lot more complex than just extra “maleness.” So I guess this theory should be taken with a grain of salt.

But just my own two cents: If someday this study was expanded to show “maleness” in a wider variety of behaviors (or brain scans), I wouldn’t be arguing with the concept that my brain was more male than that of my peers. It explains my adolescence. And I wish more people would accept the concept that not everyone fits in the gender boxes a little more and get off my case, because it really has been a socially challenging thing!

Going out and about and trying to fit into female groups at school or in mums’ groups, I’ve encountered a lot of negativity because of my “non-female” way of thinking. Women expect a lot from other women. They expect us to be nurturing, empathetic, and compassionate and display it in all the right ways.

They expect us to pick up on subtle cues and know what social and emotional responses are required and when. When to get up and help with something. When to ask another heartfelt question. When to give someone a hug. They expect us to know when a friend potentially might be upset or want to talk about something and prompt them to open up by asking the right warm and gentle questions. They expect us to remember all the social details of each other’s lives—interesting and boring alike—and utilize them in conversation.

When a male makes a social blunder, he can be somewhat forgiven for being a “mere male” (which is misandry, I know). But if a female does it, it’s as if she’s committed an intentional act of harm, which is a severely offensive thing to do! Women will, of course, rarely tell you to your face what you’ve done wrong. They naturally expect that you know, even when you genuinely don’t. And when other women look at me, they see female, so they expect all of this from me.

I can think of many times where I’ve been silently “dissed” by one female in my life or another and left to wonder what on Earth I might have done wrong. It can be confusing and seemingly out of the blue when I suddenly feel that subtle coldness or distance that wasn’t there a minute ago. Over time, I’ve come to see that women like to always act sweet toward one another because it helps keep the peace. So when women do compete or “fight,” it’s usually passively, in a way that requires a high level of social savvy to follow. It is a complicated world that I can’t always make out.

Living in my own little world, I personally don’t react in those ways myself, and they’re lost on me. Perhaps I don’t have the perception skills to fully understand the messages being conveyed, but unfortunately, I’ve encountered them enough to make me wary of new women in my life—wary in the sense that I can like them but still fear they could suddenly dislike me or walk away from me tomorrow. Nowadays, I no longer just trust the words that people say. I need to take my time to look at people’s actions to confirm if they’re really sincere.

It’s sad that I’ve come to feel this way, but I think it’s a natural consequence of not reading people’s feelings and motives well in a society that can be sometimes covert and unkind, especially to those who don’t behave like the “norm.” The good news, however, is that I’m forever learning and growing as I go, and the older I get, the more I do seem to fit in and transition more toward female acceptance. And as I do, I’m slowly learning to be more trusting again. Maybe one day, I’ll even find myself fitting more with the women than the men. Who knows! It all seems to be a game of catch up.

But moving on…

Another major problem I’ve faced a little too frequently in my life is this idea society has about appropriate gender separation. If you fit in well with your own gender group, it may not be something you’ve ever noticed, but people do segregate the sexes naturally in many social environments. The girls move together to “talk,” and the guys congregate elsewhere, such as around the barbeque. If it’s just a casual social gathering, I usually buck the trend and go hang out with the guys anyway. Maybe this looks bad to the women. They assume it’s sexual or predatory behavior, but it’s just me moving to where I can feel comfortable.

And then there are times when there’s enforced separation—you are a girl, so you must go to the girls’ event. You are not welcome to join the guys. And this has become a major pet peeve.

I don’t think anyone likes being excluded from their social groups for any reason, let alone for being the wrong gender. It’s not something that I have control over, and it feels unfair. Yet it’s something that I’ve experienced on several occasions. It serves as a harsh reminder that I’m not really a valid part of the only groups that I feel welcome in.

I remember there have been times when I felt hurt and discouraged that no one ever spoke up on my behalf and said, “Hey, don’t cut Michelle out. She belongs here with us.” But often, I guess people don’t want to do that because it would seem out of place. Culture recognizes gender separation as a perfectly valid way to divide groups, and so I frequently found myself on the outside of what I thought was my own group. There’s nothing I can do but accept it.

In early 2011, I remember having a moment where I was feeling particularly frustrated about which group in society I really fit into and wrote a post on Facebook on the topic of gender ambiguity. It read, “I have concluded that I was born into a world of aliens. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and I’m not sure which planet I’m from but it is not one of these. I don’t know why I was put in this world full of such strange creatures.”

The thought first came from something my mother-in-law said to me many years ago. “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and Michelle is from Pluto.” At the time, I thought she was insulting me. Maybe she was. But it was also quite perceptive of her.

Surprisingly, quite a few people “liked” the status, which I found interesting to note. It says to me that the feeling of “not fitting with the norm” resonates with many people—not just me—and probably for many different reasons. You would think that for a culture to become so strong in its views on roles and gender that most people would fit neatly into the round slots provided, but I think there are a lot of square pegs out there, wandering and looking for their place to be accepted too.

And when it comes down to it, I think it’s a primal human need, to have a place where we’re wanted and accepted by the people around us. To find a community that we fit into. Our peeps. Where we can sit without fear of exclusion or rejection for factors beyond our control. But, of course, in real life, that’s so much easier said than done. Life is complicated. The world can unfortunately be a harsh place to live!

Though I should remember to be grateful that at least my mum let me be in that regard. Growing up, she allowed me a lot of freedom to explore who I was and hang out with whomever I saw fit, regardless of gender or the fact that I was often the only girl in the group. And thank heavens for that! I can only imagine how much worse my life could have been had I not been given that sort of leniency.