Published: Thu 04 January 2018
By Joseph Reagle
In social .
tags: social geek
In a 1993 Wired article, writer Steve Silberman
characterized autism as the “geek syndrome.” Given that autism is
partially hereditary, Silberman asked if the concentrations (and
eventual pairing, known as assortative mating) of geeky folk in places
like Silicon Valley meant that the “genes responsible for bestowing
certain special gifts on slightly autistic adults—the very abilities
that have made them dreamers and architects of our technological
future—are capable of bringing a plague down on the best minds of the
next generation.”[1] A few years later, neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen
and his colleagues tested if there was a link between profession,
heredity, and autism. Analyzing surveys from parents of children with
autism, they found that fathers of these children were twice as likely
to be in an engineering field than those of other children.[2]
Baron-Cohen would go on to posit gendered types of thinking
(female/empathizing vs male/systematizing) and argue that autism is
actually a type of extreme male brain.[3] He came to call this “The
Hyper-Systemizing, Assortative Mating Theory of Autism.”[4]
Baron-Cohen’s theory of gender and autism is controversial. On one
hand, gender essentialism, attributing fixed and innate psychological
attributes to men and women, is popular, as seen in the self-help
classic Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Yet, despite
small average differences and variance at the extremes, there is a lot
of overlap in the personality, cognition, and behavior of men and
women.[5] Cordelia Fine, a critic of gender essentialism, notes that
even Baron-Cohen concedes that only half of the women in his studies
have the “female” or “empathizing” sort of brain.[6] In related
literature, one study found a weak association between men and
systematic thinking, others found the inverse or no significant gender
pattern at all.[7] Physical indicators like height, waist-to-hip ratio,
and voice pitch are predictive of one another, but this is not the case
for behavior: gender is multi-dimensional rather than categorical and
scoring stereotypically in one behavior is not a good predictor of
others, which is also true of the underlying brain structures.[8]
Additionally, the literature on autism and profession is
inconclusive. With respect to parents, studies have found no association
and a slight association with mothers’, rather than fathers’,
professions. Among subjects themselves, a study of almost half a million
viewers of UK Channel 4 found a positive relationship between being
male, working in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematical), and having a high Autism-Spectrum Quotient.[9] In my
experiences with life hackers, in person and online, I encountered a lot
of men, many of whom had technical jobs, and some of whom may have been
somewhere on the autism spectrum. It is enough of an imbalance to be
noticeable, to invite research, and to affect the larger culture, but we
cannot yet declaim its causes.
All of this is complicated by the fact that our understanding of
autism is biased. On the gender front, autism’s initial formulations
were largely based on boys; autistic girls may have different behaviors
or topics of enthusiasm, and society’s expectations about appropriate
behavior likely affect girls’ socialization and diagnoses.[10] On the
question of parents’ professions, Silicon Valley parents may have been
more likely to push for diagnosis and treatment given their financial
resources and early networking online. Additionally, the literature
mentioned so far tends towards the medical view of autism, seeing it as
a disorder, whereas others see neurodiversity and seek understanding
rather than a cure.
The “geek syndrome” hypothesis is a contentious one, among
researchers and the public. It intersects with debates about gender
difference and essentialism, cognitive difference and disability, and
questions of identity and culture. In 2016, Silberman returned to the
topic in NeuroTribes: The Legacy Of Autism And The Future Of
Neurodiversity . Silberman describes the history of autism diagnosis
and treatment, of its likely association with early geek culture
(especially ham radio and the MIT Railroad Club), of its normalization
in popular media (by way of the film Rainman ), and the rise of
parent and autist advocacy.[11] In the intervening twenty-three years,
Silberman realized that the “geek syndrome” is more complex and
controversial than he originally conceived.
Steve Silberman, “The Geek Syndrome,” Wired , August 30,
1993, http://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/ .
Simon Baron-Cohen et al., “Is There a Link Between Engineering
and Autism?” Autism 1 (1997): 153–63, http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/1997_BCetal_Engineer.pdf .
Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: The Truth About
the Male and Female Brain (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
Simon Baron-Cohen, “The Hyper-Systemizing, Assortative Mating
Theory of Autism,” Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and
Biological Psychiatry 30, no. 5 (July 2006), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2006.01.010 .
Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences
Grow into Troublesome Gaps – and What We Can Do About It (Boston:
Marine or Books, 2009); Yanna J. Weisberg, Colin G. Deyoung, and Jacob
B. Hirsh, “Gender Differences in Personality Across the Ten Aspects of
the Big Five,” Ncbi, August 1, 2011, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/ .
Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society,
and Neurosexism Create Difference (New York: WW Norton & Co.,
2010),
Paul Norris and Seymour Epstein, “An Experiential Thinking Style:
Its Facets and Relations with Objective and Subjective Criterion
Measures,” Journal of Personality 79, no. 5 (September 26,
2011), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00718.x ;
Christopher Allinson and John Hayes, The Cognitive Style Index:
Technical Manual and User Guide (United Kingdom: Pearson Education,
2012); Sarah Moore, Donncha O’Maidin, and Annette Mcelligott, “Cognitive
Styles Among Computer Systems Students: Preliminary Findings,”
Journal of Computing in Higher Education 14, no. 2 (2002):
45–67, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02940938 ; Lilach Sagiv et al.,
“Not All Great Minds Think Alike: Systematic and Intuitive Cognitive
Styles,” Journal of Personality 82, no. 5 (October 21, 2013),
https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12071 .
Carothers and Reis, “Men and Women Are from Earth,” 12; Daphna
Joel et al., “Sex Beyond the Genitalia: The Human Brain Mosaic,”
PNAS , October 2015, 1, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1509654112 .
Rosa A. Hoekstra et al., “Heritability of Autistic Traits in the
General Population,” Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent
Medicine 161, no. 4 (2007): 372–77, http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2007_Hoekstra_etal_AQin_twins_APAM2007.pdf ;
Gayle C. Windham, Karen Fessel, and Judith K. Grether, “Autism Spectrum
Disorders in Relation to Parental Occupation in Technical Fields,”
Autism Research 2, no. 4 (2009): 183–91 page 186. STEM
professionals (m = 21.92, SD = 8.92) scored higher than those in
non-STEM careers (m = 18.92, SD = 8.48). Similarly, men (m = 21.55, SD =
8.82) scored higher than women (m = 18.95; SD = 8.52), Emily Ruzich et
al., “Sex and STEM Occupation Predict Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ)
Scores in Half a Million People,” ed. Masako Taniike, PLOS ONE
10, no. 10 (October 21, 2015): e0141229, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141229 .
Meng-Chuan Lai et al., “A Behavioral Comparison of Male and
Female Adults with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Conditions,”
ed. James Scott, PLoS ONE 6, no. 6 (June 13, 2011): e20835, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020835 ; Jordynn
Jack, Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer
Geeks (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2014), 151; Meng-Chuan Lai
et al., “Sex/Gender Differences and Autism: Setting the Scene for Future
Research,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry 54, no. 1 (January 2015): 11–24, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2014.10.003 .
Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the
Future of Neurodiversity (New York: Avery, 2016).
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