Awkward
By Phoebe MaltzThanks to ‘Top Model,’ awareness has been raised of Aspergers in girls and women. But of what, exactly, have we been made aware? As Rita points out, we’ve been led to believe this autism spectrum disorder manifests itself in females through symptoms–a love of books, a need to force one’s self to socialize–that could go undiagnosed for a lifetime. But–Rita asks, and I join her in asking–if girls with Aspergers learn to cope on their own, mimicking the behavior of those around them and seeming normal if not gregarious at the time of diagnosis, what good is diagnosing, let alone treating, this condition? I tend to agree with Rita–awkwardness successfully overcome need not be reclaimed in some attempt at finding our "authentic" personalities. Plus, how can we tell the difference between a middle-school girl who’s in the clique because she thought about how to get there, and one who’s just there? Is anyone really just there?
(Complicating matters is the distinct possibility that we all have Aspergers, as it’s been defined. Feeling a little bit different from the rest of humanity is the human condition, known colloquially as ‘looking out for Number One.’ With TV shows glorifying a friend-filled post-college existence, and sites like Facebook reminding us that a normal person has 700 "friends," it can be easy to look at one’s own social life, however fulfilling, and think, "Aspergers!" Every celebrity ever interviewed about her experiences in high school has announced with conviction that she was the geek, the loner, the one with the wrong jeans. Then, with time, alcohol, and deliberate attempts at social interaction, everyone comes around, just in time to enter an adult world of coworkers and fellow parents with whom you must get along. Who, stripped of both unconsciously and consciously learned social graces, would not be a total social mess?)
But, to advocate for the devil, one could also argue that unusually bright girls with this condition waste heaps of time, energy, and despair learning how to get shiny hair and talk enthusiastically about Miley Cyrus when they could be doing as their male counterparts do, obsessively hoarding obscure information, all of which could one day be channelled into a career, and to whichever contributions to humanity.
Tags: mental illness
November 20th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Are you for real???
Are you really so self centred and ignorant that you said what you did in this post - and meant it???
Aspergers is are serious condition - not to be made fun of. Male or female, people suffer it and it has been shown to have a very strong genetic component. It is NOT something ‘everyone’ suffers from. Saying THAT is like saying a cancer victim who is losing hair because of chemo is the same thing as a regular person getting some of their hair caught on a hairbrush… or saying a person crippled with arthritis in their spine is no different than a regular person, because we all get aches and pains!
It is a question of DEGREE!!! And, it is very serious to the people affected.
Aspergers is a condition which is characterized by very specific changes in the structure of the brain which lead to an inability to interpret many of the social cues that are required for daily human interactions. Many male Aspies get simply called ‘just boys’. The female Aspies are the ones who suffer very serious social ostricism and often end up as teen suicide statistics…because girls are expected to have social skills - regardless of who they are as individuals! But, these are details you could not possibly be bothered with!!!!
So, go ahead and make fun of us! Feel good about yourself by minimizing our condition, without bothering to actually learn about it! We don’t mind - we know this is the only way inadequate people like you can pump up your egos…
Go ahead! Feel good about yourself! I dare you to!!!!
November 20th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Where did I make fun of anybody? Or say that the entire population suffers from this disorder? My point was that the way the disease is presented in the media, it sounds less like a medical condition than like the everyday experience of 99% of the population.
And, please tone down the hate.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
As a mother of a daughter with Asperger’s syndrome (that I homeschool) I can attest that this is a very serious condition. To say a person with Asperger’s is socially awkward is correct, but also an extreme understatement.
A person with Asperger’s has a very limited ability to learn behavior from watching or being among their peers. They must learn social skills the way neurotypical people learn math. There are lists of rules that patient people must make for them. Simple things like how close she should stand to someone, not to hug a boy she just met. How to have a normal conversation outside the realm of their main interest. For instance my daughter can talk endlessly about the life cycle of the ruby throated humming bird and not recognize that the listener is uninterested. You may be on the side of the road changing a tire in the rain, and instead of helping, she’s going on about the various bacteria that may grow in your alimentary canal.
It can all seem pretty cute if Asperger’s was just an issue of a person being brainy and awkward, but that’s hardly the case. There are sensory issues that can cause extreme meltdowns (remember Rainman in the airport?). Often these kids have seizures. Impulse control can be a problem. Many in their teen years end up in hospitals for breakdowns and suicide attempts, or have co-morbid conditions like depression and anxiety, phobias, and a few are later diagnosed as bi-polar.
The most difficult thing about Asperger’s syndrome is that many of these people look perfectly neurotypical to the outside world. My daughter is bright and beautiful and people think she can just do anything, and they can’t seem to understand why “she just doesn’t know better”.
I could go on all day.
But I do agree with your last paragraph. You are right on with what I am doing with my child. She says Miley Cyrus is just a bunch of “blah blah blah” and “ha ha ha”. I’ve decided to skip trying to teach her to get along with her peers in a school situation since that is an unnatural social construct anyway. Where do you go in your adult life where you’re surrounded by people that are your same age? I’m homeschooling her so that she can learn how to fuction in the wider world in which the rest of us operate.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:40 am
Phoebe - Xan is a friend of mine. She doesn’t have to tone down the hate, and she’s not being socially awkward. She has Aspergers.
We’ll wait here for your apology.
November 21st, 2008 at 1:15 am
“My point was that the way the disease is presented in the media, it sounds less like a medical condition than like the everyday experience of 99% of the population.” Phoebe
TR: It’s possible you didn’t really make the difference clear enough in the initial blog post. I agree that “Asperger’s as presented in the media” sounds like simple nerdiness. It doesn’t sound unusual at all.
I think the media is doing some disservice in equating simple nerdiness to Asperger’s. Actual Asperger’s can be very very much more than that. Most “nerdy” people, including “nerdy girls”, do not have Asperger’s. Asperger’s can involve a tendency to have one-sided conversations and a tendency to find it difficult to understand the emotions people are trying to convey to you. In a fair amount of cases people with Asperger’s fixate on specific areas of information and have trouble understanding metaphors. It’s not too uncommon for people with Asperger’s to prefer to deal with objects or animals than people.
My nephew has Asperger’s. He felt that since a picture takes a freezed copy of you it may literally freeze you and therefore he screamed in terror about being photographed. He would deliver long rants about how people are going to die or things you might be doing that will kill you. He would read advanced medical instructions at age 8, and give you information on astronomy far beyond his years, but was unable or unwilling to be toilet trained. He might be more severe than normal, and it might be different for girls, but I think the “it’s just a mix of shyness and nerdiness” idea about Asperger’s is mostly further off to the reality and I can see complaining about it.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:21 am
Whoa. I didn’t get the impression anywhere in Phoebe’s post that she was mocking Atzberger’s disease, or making light of it, or making fun of anyone. She’s in fact doing the exact opposite: complaining about the negative consequences that could arise from the media making light of it. I don’t think she owes an apology to anyone …
I’ve heard more and more people say in the past few years, “I think I have atzberger’s” or “I think so and so does.” Direct result of how it’s presented in media, I think. Oh, you’re socially awkward? You feel nervous a lot? You’re smart, you like quirky things, and sometimes you have trouble relating emotionally? Atzberger’s! I’ve been known to think it about someone myself a time or two …
November 21st, 2008 at 9:37 am
Wendy,
You’ll be waiting a while, as I’m afraid I’m going to agree with Elizabeth that I didn’t insult anybody, and I certainly never called your friend, whom I’ve never met, “socially awkward.” Hateful, yes–I think it was the “Go ahead! Feel good about yourself! I dare you to!!!!” that did it.
Thomas R,
Perhaps you’re right, that I should have begun the post with a paragraph explaining that Aspergers is a serious disorder and that the media makes light of it. The reason I didn’t do that was that, from the little I know of the disorder, I have a (first-hand) sense of what it’s like in boys/men, but am, like apparently many people, mostly clueless as to what it looks like in girls/women. It could be the media, but maybe some cases in females really would be tough to diagnose. And by diagnose, I mean not only what’s relevant for doctors–how, in a social setting, do you know who’s acting inappropriately because they can’t help it, and who should just be told to get a grip? And, from the other side, given that there are apparently more and less serious forms of this disorder, how do you know if your own difficulties in childhood social interactions came from (mild) Aspergers or everyday awkwardness–if the coping mechanisms are not so different for one than for the other, and if, as Rita notes, similar, social-enough adult women result from either.
November 21st, 2008 at 11:46 am
I also don’t see how this post is offensive or derisive. The entire premise of the article is that Asperger’s in women flies under the radar because it looks so much like shyness and awkwardness. Phoebe certainly didn’t invent the comparison, and maybe, instead of demanding apologies for absent insults, it’s worthwhile to ask why there is such a disparity between what her commenters (and mine) portray as an obvious and visible disorder, and Newsweek’s profile of a woman whose Asperger’s went unnoticed for 30-some years, and whose daughter has adjusted so well that “if I introduced you to my three daughters today, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one has Asperger’s.”
November 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I do think the media is doing a disservice because Asperger’s comes in many varieties. There are people with AS who live in a fantasy world, some are fixated on rules, some are ruled by anxiety, some are fixated on objects. I’m not sure that there are gender differences across the board between males and females with Asperger’s. My daughter is not shy at all. When not under control by adjusting her environment, or diet, or medication, she can become more aggressive than most boys I’ve seen in the support groups. Maybe the girl in the article that was indistinguishable from her sisters was a very good actress. She was also willing to make the outward changes. Some kids just don’t see the point or are frightened of changing and refuse. I understand that too.
I think, as a whole, your assertions are correct, Pheobe. People with AS should spend less time trying to make it in environments that cause them to despair, and have the right to pursue happiness the way everyone else does. Why should I force my child to conform to a peer pressure world that I rejected when I left high school? I’m spending time fostering her interests and finding ways for her to interact with others through them. She’ll be the girl taking you on a tour of the reptile house at the zoo. Or classifying birds for a biologist in Borneo. She could do it today if she were old enough, but she’s only 10. She’ll find her place, but it’s not with Miley Cyrus, and I’m totally cool with that.
She’ll always need the patient support and understanding of others. But with so much Autism in America today, I see a great and positive shift coming in that direction.
November 21st, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Perhaps you weren’t trying to be contempuous of people with diagnosible Asperger’s. But equating the social travails of your average high schooler with someone who has a serious condition, well…
It’s like complaining about your bad knees to a double leg amputee.