Introduction:
Participants in multiple studies perceived autistic women more favorably than autistic men and are more willing to hang out with or talk to autistic women than autistic men. In fact, participants perceived NT women more favorably than NT men and were more willing to hang out with NT women than NT men, but preferred NT men over autistic women and autistic women over autistic men. They found this to be true even when controlling for masking which autistic women often are better at doing (which causes underdiagnosis). They concluded it's possible that being a woman made someone more socially desirable than lacking autism traits.
Study 1
20 autistic women (mean age=25.45, SD=7.9), 20 autistic men (mean age=25.85, SD=6.06), 20 NT women (mean age=27.75, SD=5.82) and 20 NT men (mean age=27.80, SD=5.94) were rated by participants.
RESULTS
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STUDY 2
10 autistic men and 10 autistic women (mean age=22.75, SD=3.7) and 10 NT men and 10 NT women (mean age=23.35, SD=4.61) were stimuli participants to be rated and observant participants were 167 women (81.5%), and 38 men (18.5%) with a mean age of 20.58 (SD=3.96). In the video modality, there were 89 females (81.7%) and 20 males (18.3%) with a mean age of 20.46 (SD = 3.61) years, and in the text modality, there were 78 females (81.3%) and 18 males (18.8%) with a mean age of 20.71 (SD = 4.32) years. Gender of observer was controlled for in all analyses. 28 participants (13.7%) reported that they had a family member with an autism diagnosis, and none had a diagnosis of autism themselves. It seems like text is an easy way to mask autism, so no differences are found in people's perceptions when it comes to text speech.
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STUDY 3
15 autistic girls (mean age=10.89, SD=2.3), 25 autistic boys (mean age=12.07, SD=3.27), 25 autistic girls (mean age=10.23, SD=2.7), and 28 autistic boys (mean age=9.44, SD=1.89) were matched on IQ. Participants completed a 5-minute “get-to- know-you” conversation with a new young adult acquaintance. Immediately after the conversation, confederates rated participants on a variety of dimensions. Our primary analysis compared conversation ratings between groups (ASD boys, ASD girls, NT boys, NT girls). The confederates were 18 college women and 3 college men.
Results: Autistic girls were rated more positively than autistic boys by novel conversation partners (better perceived social communication ability), despite comparable autism symptom severity as rated by expert clinicians (equivalent true social communication ability). Boys with ASD were rated more negatively than typical boys and typical girls by novel conversation partners as well as expert clinicians. There was no significant difference in the first impressions made by autistic girls compared to typical girls during conversations with a novel conversation partner, but autistic girls were rated lower than typical girls by expert clinicians.
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Notice how people rated NT women more positively than NT men and were more willing to hang out with NT women than NT men. They also rated autistic women better than autistic men, but didn't rate autist women as positively as NT men. Explained here:
"The current study makes a unique contribution in understanding how gender influences first impressions. Although autistic females were rated more favourably than autistic males across most traits, they were rated less favourably than non-autistic females and non-autistic males across numerous traits. While some prior research has reported no gender differences in camouflaging behaviour [Cage et al., 2018; Hull et al., 2017], Lai et al. [2017] argue that autistic females may camouflage with greater success than autistic males. However, the current findings do not necessarily support this hypothesis. Rather, they suggest that autistic females do have a differ- ent social presentation to autistic males, and because non-autistic females were also rated more positively than non-autistic males, there could be a “protective female effect” rather than camouflaging effect. This protective effect may relate to socialisation or biological differences [Hyde, 2014] that prompt the perceiver to view females more positively. Although males and females are more similar than they are different on psychological variables, Hyde [2005] discusses how assumptions are often made about gender which impacts on outcomes, from the workplace to relationships. Gendered expectations could bias the perceptions of the social abilities of autistic indi- viduals, which may further relate to camouflaging [Dean, Harwood, & Kasari, 2017]. Simply presenting as female could promote positive first impressions, but perceivers are still sensitive to autistic differences in social presentation. Interestingly, autistic females in our sample had higher RAADS scores than autistic males, indicative of more autistic characteristics. Despite this, the autistic females were perceived more positively than autistic males. Thus, we cannot rule out that autistic females were camouflaging their autistic characteristics to a greater extent. It should be noted, however, that the current study did not measure the camouflaging strategies of the stimuli participants, which future research should do to further test camouflaging efficacy. Since autistic females were still negatively judged in comparison to non-autistic females and males, any camouflaging strategies undertaken by autistic females do not necessarily translate into more positive first impressions. It may also be the case that autistic males camouflage but are not as skilled in doing so, which could contribute to more negative first impressions. Nonetheless, in terms of effect sizes, some of the biggest differences were noted between autistic females and non-autistic females, suggesting that negative first impressions of autistic females remain to be substantial."
CONCLUSION
It seems like even when controlling for masking, autistic women still are perceived more positively and people are more willing to hang out with them.
Lots of evidence shows that autistic women aren't particularly less likely than NT people to experience relationships and sex but autistic men are. When searching on Google, i found a good amount of anecdotal evidence that many autistic women prefer dating NT men. Although autistic women are more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence and unwanted sexual experiences, the perpetrators could be NT men.
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