Where have all the autistic women gone?

Professional autism "expert" Christopher Gillberg made an interesting claim last week - that autism is underdiagnosed in girls because they do not fit the classic symptom profile. I don't agree with everything Gillberg says but I think that he has a good point here, and it makes a refreshing change from Simon Baron-Cohen's suggestion that autism is an expression of extreme maleness. While not wishing to deny that I am the very embodiment of masculinity, I consider this idea to be a rather silly oversimplification.

Psychiatry is inherently misogynist (perhaps shrinks should think about their own relationships with their mothers) and one feature of this is the proliferation of diagnoses with the rather unpleasant label "personality disorders," most of which are applied primarily to women. I suspect that many women who have been told that they have such conditions should more accurately have been classified as being on the autistic spectrum. Then, instead of paying through the nose for Freudian psychoanalysis for their modern-day "hysteria", they may accept their quirks and encourage those around them to do the same.

There is another issue here, at a more personal level. Almost all of the women that I have had a near-relationship with have had, in my opinion, feminine but autism-like traits. Sadly, I missed my chances at the time and such women are hard to find. Whenever I attend events for neurodiverse people, it is always the case that most of the men are single but all of the women are already in relationships - a feature of the sex imbalance in diagnosis. If I could somehow find those women who have slipped through the diagnostic net then perhaps I could find a life partner. On the other hand, there is an obvious disadvantage in writing a lonely hearts advert that says "Autistic male, 30, seeks female with personality disorder".

I don't particularly buy the idea that disabled people should seek partners who share their impairments but it is a slightly different situation when it is the way of relating to people that is impaired. I don't click with all autistic people, by any means, but when there is a connection with someone, they can rarely be accurately described as neurotypical. I will doubtless meet someone in the future and, in the meantime, I will try to learn all that I can about flirting to ensure that I do not let the opportunity go past again.