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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The article makes no sense to me. There is clear diagnostic criteria and I don't understand how some people in the story with diagnoses like the cheerleader, for example, could be found to meet those criteria. While lots of people have  social communication issues it has to impact daily life function to be autism. They're also saying girls don't necessarily have narrow interests or repetitive behaviors, which are, again, what they use to diagnose this in the first place.
If they are not using the DSM criteria to diagnose how are they diagnosing?![/quote]

I agree with you.  If autism is "totally different" with girls and boys, how is it the same condition?  And this article makes a big deal about the differences between male and female brains, which is being readily debunked:  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds.

What I can believe is that our gender expectations frame what we perceive in girls and boys.  So, as the article notes, an girl's obsession with American Girl dolls may seem normal, whereas a boy's obsession with cars may not be.  Maybe parents and other caregivers make more of an effort to socialize with girls than boys, resulting in autistic girls having marginally better social skills.

I also wonder about all the brain imaging they are doing to come to their conclusions.  You generally can't give anesthesia to children as part of a research study because it is too risky.  So these MRIs must have been on older children, once *socially* imposed gender norms took effect.  [/quote]

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