stuff to say in class

(I used to be joking when I said that and now I'm not, which is an exciting change.)

of course more of an effort needs to be made to include girls with ASD in studies at an equal rate to boys and study differences in presentation and even do all-girls studies

however, I think this is not just because we need to study what ASD is like in girls, but because we need to question commonly accepted values about how to "treat" children with ASD.

the focus is generally not just on communication and other objective skills, but on normalization of behavior, but not a ton of analysis is done on why for example preventing neologisms, preventing stimming, and training eye contact are supposed to be inherently good. But when we think about the fact that (anecdotal but very consistent evidence from professionals, parents, and people with ASD) women and girls with ASD are much more likely to pass for non-disabled, or at least be less apparently/stereotypically ASD than their male counterparts...we actually already have a bunch of passing/semi-passing ASD people to study. We can actually look at these people and see what their quality of life is.

Again from anecdotal but consistent evidence, women with ASD are more likely than men with ASD to have severe anxiety problems. I think at least one study showed that we are less likely to be married. And when you actually think about this stuff logically and not from the standard "non-disabled people>>>>everyone else forever" perspective, it makes perfect sense. Behavior is not who you really are. Focusing super hard on behaving like someone else can cause anxiety and exhaustion. Being impaired and having other people not notice that/make allowances for it, because you pass so well, can also suck. If you are behaving like someone else, you may number one fall into the uncanny valley, and number two be unable to feel things very deeply/experience real connection.

I mean, to me this is common sense and people should already be questioning "non-disabled people>>>>everyone else forever," but if we really need a study to show that forced normalization in every area of life is really NOT SMART, studying women would be an easy way to do it.

Also, I have a question for people who are good at neuroscience

I'm interested in intense world syndrome, which is the theory that autism is caused not by being indifferent, but by having overly strong emotional reactions (especially fear reactions) and taking in more information than you're able to process. I'm really into this because it seems consistent with all facets of autism, whereas more socializing-focused concepts of autism seem to cut out large parts of what it is (see everything Simon Baron-Cohen's ever done).

Anyway, my understanding of neuroscience is really poor, but I have a question about cortisol. Isn't it the case that if you produce a lot of cortisol a lot of the time, you eventually become less able to produce it? The reason I'm curious about this is because I have been so fatigued in the past year (I thought I had anemia, but I just got back my blood tests and I don't), and I often find it really hard to get energetic about anything. Is it possible that having really strong reactions could eventually lead to having really dull reactions? All the stuff I'm experiencing now is, IIRC, the opposite of what I was like as a child.

Additionally: as a child I was extremely, unusually smart, and I think quite verbose; and although I'm not of below-average intelligence now, I am for example a pretty slow and dense thinker sometimes, often have to work hard to talk, and as I've mentioned before I often read very slowly especially compared to the way I read when I was younger (it's hard to remember when the change occurred; I remember having a lot of trouble at age 16 and being really quick at age 13, so it's somewhere in between them).