Prof. Baron Cohen is looking for evidence to support his "autism=extreme male brain" hypothesis.
If the Prof was doing research he should be looking for evidence to disprove his hypothesis.
Lets say I come up with an hypothesis "all birds are black" then I go around the world looking only for blackbirds, my bias will be to find black birds while completely ignoring the white birds I just walked past.
But if I set out to disprove the hypothesis "all birds are black" and come across a white one it would give me the correct answer.
The same as, autism=extreme male brain and I find a female orietated brain, it disproves it. Case in point.
Hi,
I signed up for the site just to reply to this thread, I'm a M2F transsexual and a self diagnosed Aspie.
First, let me start by saying I think the majority are correct, there has been no evidence indicating it is possible for womb testosterone levels to cause an XX zygote to develop into a male bodied person.
I find little credence in the theory that abnormally high testosterone levels in utero exclusively cause aspergers, were that the case, then someone like me, a transgendered M2F aspie would be almost impossible, but a large percentage of Female Aspies would wind up somewhere on the tomboy/genderqueer/F2M spectrum. The second half of that is only kind of true. I've found a lot of lesbian butch identified and F2M aspies out there.
I will admit, M2F aspies don't appear to be as prominent as our F2M brothers, but we do exist. I've found at least 4-5 cruising through various Aspie forums.
Testosterone levels in the womb do affect brain development, and cat scans have shown that a large portion of transsexuals in both directions do indeed have brain hemisphere relational sizes comparible to their target genders.
Baron-Cohen's theory does explain the prevalance of masculine identified female bodied aspies, but it doesn't explain me. And the incidence of diagnosed GID in male born aspies is higher then in the general population.
I mention this only because I'd like to see a true community of transgender aspies develop somewhere. There's a Yahoo group, Transgender PDD, devoted to trans aspies, and I think it would be good to coordinate information and try to make some sense out of this.
I've measured my 2d:4d, and it's .99, which would indicate either elevated estrogen levels or decreased testosterone levels in utero.
Now, I am self diagnosed, maybe there's the crux of the situation. It's possible that suppression of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) causes Aspie like symptoms as you try to emulate a gender role that's foreign to your nature?
Perhaps also, the incidence of those with some level of GID in the general population is higher then expected or expressed, and aspies, because they don't conform to societal norms, and are more likely to be honest, are more likely to admit their GID rather then fake a gender role that doesn't conform to what they feel inside.
This topic has been somewhat of a fascination of mine for a while now, so I have been trolling the net looking for others to share experiences with.