The debate on how autism affects men vs women in terms of their behaviours and characteristics, can be a divisive and complicated discussion to explore and fully understand. This can be significant especially for those who don’t have a full understanding about autism on a practical or living perspective. However, with supportive guidance and collaboration, the autism community can be influential in advocating for each other in various compassionate ways and celebrate our individualism respectfully, despite the adversities that we can relate to.

Note: As an autistic man, I can only speak for my own experiences and I cannot speak for autistic women and articulate their experiences fully, but I’ll try my best to put my fullest knowledge forward respectfully and in a supportive manner. The strength of the community doesn't come from having 100% identical journeys, it comes from listening to journeys that are different from our own. We can be united by our shared humanity, resilience, and determination to build a world where every autistic person feels seen, heard, and valued.

How does autism affect men and women differently?

Since the earliest years of autism research, which includes the works of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger in the 1940s, there’s been a historical bias that assumed that autism is found and effects boys far more than girls. Their research and diagnostic criteria were created and shaped by the autistic traits commonly found in boys and worked on the assumption that the ratio of the number of boys that have autism over girls is 3 boys in every 1 girl (2015). This gap reflects the number of autistic girls that haven’t been diagnosed or underdiagnosed, which has impacted their lives in many ways and commonly questioning themselves about why they are different from their neurotypical peers.

In my experiences as an autistic person, I’ve found that there’s just as many girls that are diagnosed with autism or other neurodiverse traits as boys are. There was a recent study done by the British Medical Journal (2026) that confirms my belief that girls are just as likely to be autistic as much as boys are and stated that girls get diagnosed more later on in life. When reflecting on the research done decades ago, it shows that their expertise is based on limiting medical, textbook learning of autism compared to the complex living experiences of being an autistic person.

1. Masking and camouflaging

Masking and social camouflaging are a common trait that occurs in both autistic men and women, however, women are often more effective of hiding their autistic traits through masking than boys do. This contributes towards autistic women being either misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, but also women often socialise more strongly to conform, which can make their autism less visible to others.

Masking can involve following certain habits and behaviours, like: observing and imitating social behaviours from others, rehearse conversations in their heads before speaking, suppressing their stimming acts so not to be seen to be struggling out of irrational fear of judgement, and forcing eye-to-eye contact when engaging with others even though it’s uncomfortable for the autistic person.

While masking might help autistic men and women navigate social environments and protect them from the risk of rejection or judgement, it can have negative side effects, that can range from mental exhaustion, confused about their autism identity and acceptance, and suffering with autistic burnout.

When reflecting on my experiences with masking, I spent many years trying to hide my autism from others, in the efforts of being seen as equal or the same as my neurotypical peers, alongside the denial I held for my autism. It wasn’t the case that I didn’t know I was different, but wanting to try and fit into society and be accepted; only I was wanting to be accepted by the wrong standards and those who wouldn’t give me the time or day.

2. Socialisation and communication

Even though autistic men and women struggle with socialisation and exhibit behaviours in their ways of coping, there’re sight differences of how men deal with socialising and communicating compared to women. Autistic men prefer talking about their special interests at great depth, may interrupt conversations unintentionally, can appear to be blunt, honest, and direct in their responses, struggles with reading facial expressions, preferences on spending time on their own, and sometimes might not be appear unaware of social expectations. An example of this is where an autistic man will happily spend lunchtime reading about their favourite subject inside and out instead of joining in sports activities.

On the other hand, autistic women do desire to have friendships, despite the struggles of maintaining them, try to observe social groups carefully and copy other people's behaviours, practice conversations beforehand in the efforts of fitting in, and often appear socially capable but feel mentally exhausted afterwards. An example of this is where an autistic woman might want to join a friendship group, laugh along at the right moments, yet spend hours afterwards replaying every interaction in her head and being self-critical. Hence, autistic women show their challenges that are more internalised (hidden) compared to autistic men who show their challenges more externalised.

Socialisation has been the thorn on my side throughout my life as an autistic person, as socialising doesn’t come natural to me, especially when surrounded by people that I don’t really relate to or they don’t show any interest in what I’ve got to say or ask anything about me. These feelings hurt so much especially when it’s family that ignore you at the best of times. Communication is something that I can do well and I always have my manners when greeting or addressing people. Earning my manners is a discipline that was distilled into me from being a young child at an autism specialist school.

3. Autistic friendships

Even though autistic men and women do strongly desire of have close friends and people they can rely on, the universe finds many ways to put challenges and obstacles in place from that feeling becoming a true reality. This reality can bring about various emotions and anxiety-induced thoughts and feelings that autistic men and women do struggle to manage and compartmentalise, as well as derail them from the routines and activities that they rely on to cope with day-to-day living. It’s a very common experience that both genders have to face friendship breakdowns at some point in their lives and how they deal with those situations can vary from one autistic person to another.

For autistic men, friendships can be seen as more activity and special interests based as this is influenced by their similarity and minds being alike and are less emotionally expressive in their nature. They do often prefer to be in smaller groups that is based around physical, online and collecting activities, like: sports, computers, model trains, in contrast to being in large groups of people and going to very busy environments. They do have the desire of wanting to build friendships with others, but often lack the understanding or skills of maintaining friendships outside of their special interests and do regularly prefer to be their own company.

For autistic women, they do desperately want friendships but it comes with various caveats in terms of the other people might be put off when they come across overly attached or clingy, imitate other people around them, struggle to identity healthy friendship boundaries, become exhausted with maintaining friendships, and can be vulnerable to abuse. This is mainly that autistic women feel more deeply than their neurotypical peers and want to put the effort into these friendships but don’t have the awareness or understanding of the social clues of maintaining such relationships.

Building on from my thoughts on socialisation, I’ve struggled with forming and maintaining friendships with others; this is mainly because I don’t fully understand the unspoken social clues and I’ve always been a bit of a ‘billy no mates’ kind of person, despite wanting to build friendships and relationships. Also, dealing with the fear of rejection when I’ve had one or two friendships in the past and those friendships drifted apart as time when on and I struggle to process it all. I suppose life goes on and you’ve got to evolve with it.

4. Special interests

For many years, autistic advocates, like myself, has massively defended the fact that special interests are a very important and fulfilling part of an autistic person’s wellbeing. Special interests can change or evolve as autistic people get older and develop more life experiences, whilst there can be special interests that can stay with us all lifelong and can differ from one autistic person to another. Even though society might see as ‘obsessive’, ‘repetitive’ or ‘intense’, us autistics don’t see it that way; we see special interests as a way of expressing our creativity, focus our minds in times of heighted anxiety, and navigate us through a neurotypical world whilst bringing sources of joy, knowledge, and even skills.

The differentiation between autistic men and women isn’t the subjects/topics themselves, but the intensity of how both genders experience and feeling them individually. It’s often found that autistic men’s interests may align with the stereotypical “autistic” topics, like: trains, technology, numbers, and science, whereas autistic women’s interests may appear more socially typical, like: books, animals, celebrities, and psychology. An autistic woman deeply analysing fictional characters or memorising social dynamics may be just as autistic as an autistic man memorising train schedules, but her behaviours are less likely to raise concern or show that they’re obviously on the autism spectrum.

Some of my special interests ranges from: obsessively watching all episodes of Mr. Bean, a British sitcom in the 1990’s starring Rowan Atkinson, as a child, to watching Top Gear, an automotive magazine motoring-themed television programme that ran from 2002 to 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, as a teenager, and being a huge fan of the James Bond 007 franchise and my love for Aston Martins. The journey of special interests is as unique as the individual who possesses them.

5. Emotional regulation and sensory processing

When it comes to regulating one’s emotions and processing their sensory inputs, autistic people find this a very challenging aspect of day-to-day living and often requires many steps of calming down and develop the skills to be aware of their thoughts and emotions and be able to process them accordingly. All autistic people have struggled with sensory overload and meltdowns that can be the result of their sensory inputs going into overdrive and too much for them cope.

Sensory overload happens when one or more of the ‘5’ senses become overwhelmed and the mind struggles to filter or process sensory information in a safe and manageable way, which can lead to discomfort, mental distortion or even physical pain. When the overwhelming feelings and thoughts gets too much, the autistic person is in a vulnerable state where they want to escape the situation or environment they’re overwhelmed about and into situations or environments that might not be safe, especially if they aren’t aware of their surroundings.

For autistic men, they express their emotions more outwardly in the forms of frustration, meltdowns, shouting, anger, meltdowns; to the point where others can visually see their distress. This is mainly down to the fact that boys and men aren’t taught how to process their emotions effectively and express them to others, out of fear of being judged or laughed at.

For autistic women, they keep their emotions more internally and can manifest through feelings of anxiety, depression, overthinking patterns, crying in private, exhaustion, and constant need for perfection. This mainly down to girls and women are more emotional beings and their emotions can often be influenced by social factors and difficulty to process their feelings.

Despite these differences, autistic men and women both experience sensory sensitivities in a variety of ways and can often be misunderstood or visually obvious to those who try to support them. Sensory sensitivities include: noises, bright lights, crowded places, clothing textures, and food textures. Girls and women may be more likely to endure discomfort silently before reaching overwhelm; whereas boys and men may be more likely to show distress in the moment at the time.

As an autistic person, my biggest sensory overload nightmare is loud and very busy public places, where there’s hordes of people in one place and can’t move around much or hear my own thoughts. Over time, I’ve managed to handle busy situations much better and be more aware of my surroundings to keep myself safe, even though there’s still a limit of how much I can manage before the distress signs show of when enough is enough and pull myself out the situation.

6. Mental health and identity

The relationship that mental health and identity have with people on the autism spectrum is deep routed and complex that it can affect any person on the spectrum in various ways that no two people have the exact same experiences, even though there’ll be many similarities. Autistic people are more than likely to suffer with mental health on a regular basis compared to neurotypical people. If you speak to a lot of autistic people about mental health, you will quickly realise that it is one of the many cornerstones of the autism spectrum and not to treat it as a separate diagnosis but as part of one’s autistic make-up.

For autistic men, their mental health journeys can spiral into various forms, like: frustration, anger, social rejection, disturbing behaviours, self-harm, and even suicide in severe circumstances. For autistic women, their mental health journeys go through many stages of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm, chronic stress, and even suicide in severe circumstances. Masking their autistic traits for both genders can have an influencing factor that contributes towards many of these feelings and states of mind, although the experiences vary from one autistic person to another.

Coming to terms with their autism identity is another hurdle that many autistic men and women face as they’re trying to understand why they’re different to the other children and to build acceptance for their autism; for all the good and the bad. Autistic men will know that they’re different and will embrace it, reject the societal expectations and focus on their special interests; whereas autistic women will spend years asking why they don’t fit in naturally, why making friends is difficult for them, and feeling exhausted after being in social situations. This is due to autistic women being misdiagnosed or receiving a diagnosis later in life, which can bring about mixed emotions of relief and grief.

As an autistic person, I’ve had a long relationship with mental health, where I’ve suffered with anxiety attacks and physical distress caused by intrusive thoughts and phobias, to the point where I didn’t want to leave the house. To overcome my mental health, I used mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help me establish a virtual toolbox of different methods and ideas that can help me massively to overcome my overall anxious state with sheer resilience and determination. I still use some of these methods even to this day as habits I’ve developed to self-regulate my wellbeing and safeguard myself from getting into the dark-cloud depths of anxiety again.

What are the shared characteristics that autistic boys and girls experience?

Despite the differences in terms of how presents itself uniquely in autistic men and women, both genders do share a lot of core characteristics that anyone who is experienced enough to be around autistic people or who are autistic themselves, will be able to notice. These core characteristics can range from:

• Sensory sensitivities

• Need for routines and certainty

• Deep focus and passion for their interests

• Challenges with handling social communication

• Tendency to get overwhelmed or suffer with burnout

• Demonstrates literal thinking

• Challenges with executive functioning

• Has strong sense of justice

• Difficulty with managing unexpected changes

• Honest communication styles

• Need for recovery after overstimulation

Autism is often framed as a deficit by societal norms, but that is so far away from the truth and does a disservice to autistic people. What society fails time and time again to recognise is that autism brings a lot of strengths and abilities that can shape the world into a better place, but they’re denied the right to exercise them in place of maintaining the status quo and the unconscious bias that arrogantly comes with it. Despite the biological differences between men and women, it’s very important to appreciate all autistic people for the unique and great individuals they are and to continue fighting for acceptance and positivity, whilst highlighting the important of proactively working on our own journeys of personal development.

Here’s some of the key strengths and abilities that autistic people can possess:

• Hyperfocus: ability to concentrate deeply on a task or topic for a long time, leading to high productivity and expert knowledge.

• Attention to detail: strong talent for noticing small errors, facts, or visual changes that other people often miss.

• Pattern recognition: natural skill for spotting trends, system rules, and hidden connections in data, math, or music.

• Exceptional memory: great long-term memory for recalling specific facts, rules, and details about areas of interest.

• Honesty and directness: clear, straightforward communication style with a strong sense of fairness and personal integrity.

• Loyalty and dedication: deep commitment and reliability in friendships, family bonds, and work duties.

• Creative problem-solving: original ways of thinking that looks past standard rules to find new solutions to hard problems.

How can autistic boys and girls support one another for greater unity in the autism community?

Autistic men and women will have different opinions about diagnosis, identity, masking, support needs, language, and advocacy. Unity doesn’t require everyone to think alike; it requires mutual respect and a willingness to learn from each other’s experiences and celebrate them with compassion and collaboration.

1. Recognise the different autistic experiences and listen with kindness and compassion

One of the biggest sources of division within the autism community is comparison and willingness to listen. Most autistic men and women wish that people recognised their struggles at all and not assume that they’re simply different or weird. The issue with this is that you’ll be practically talking to a brick wall; it goes in one ear and out the another ear. That’s how stubborn society has become and we need to stand up for ourselves and not allow society dictate on how we should live our autistic lives. Remember: we’re the makers of our own happiness and success.

The autism community can become stronger and supportive if we start replacing our comparisons for certain standards with curiosity for others and their perspectives. One of the greatest acts of acceptance is listening without assuming. As an autistic man, there will be aspects of being an autistic woman that you cannot fully understand. Likewise, autistic women cannot fully understand every experience associated with growing up as an autistic man. That doesn’t mean either perspective is incomplete or one is better than the other, it means both are valid and valuable to listen and support each other.

All of this is something that I’ve had to learn the long way round to be open minded to other autistic people’s perspectives and lose this ego that I thought I knew anything about autism when didn’t and it’s only when I started listening to other autistic people’s experience, I started to appreciate more and show respect when it was truly needed. It was only when I started showing affection towards my autism and not hating or questioning myself for, it that’s when my mind and soul became free and showed willing to learn and understand greater. It’s the art of growing up and maturing to think about others rather than focusing solely on ourselves.

2. Advocate for everyone on the autism spectrum and give the encouragement they need to grow and prosper

Advocating for everyone on the autism spectrum is a mission that everyone has to play their part in, if we want to achieve greater unity and collaboration within the autism community. Autism is not defined by gender, it’s shaped by individual experiences and sharing perspectives on a wide range of concerns that autistic people will have at any stage of life. It’s something that has to done continuously, not just a one-time thing; it becomes part of your existence as an autistic person, as you want to give other autistics the benefit for your experiences and intuition.

Men and women may walk slightly different paths and have biological differences that the opposite sex might not fully understand, despite their best intentions, but they do often face similar challenges, like: wanting to be understood, accepted, and belong somewhere that feels like home; that’s where real strength and compassion lies. Together, they provide a fuller picture of what autism is like as a human living experience and a purposeful way of life.

When I see other autistic people struggling and maybe don’t see or realise their full potential, it makes them understand how lucky I am to find and be able to use my voice for not only standing up for myself and my goals and dreams, but also for others, when they maybe don’t know how to; a feeling and thought process that I was once in myself. I’ve always been a person with huge determination and not wanting society to decide what’s best for me, ever since I was a child but just didn’t know on how I was going to achieve it.

3. Focus on becoming the best versions of yourselves that oozes confidence and independence that makes you unrecognisable

To become the best version of yourself, you need to invest into your journey of personal development, which is paramount to your success and building yourself into the person you want to become; a more confident, independent, positive thinking, resilient, and determined version of you. You can use a variety of different tools, like: journaling and mindfulness, to help and guide you into developing a positive mindset and change the negative affirmations you hold about yourself into routines of positivity and self-compassion.

Focus on pursuing the goals and dreams that brings joy and fulfilment to your life and seize the opportunities to grow and develop as an autistic person. These can be following your special interests that can guide you on a path of a certain career or creating your own business. By following your purpose and what you want out of life, you’ll become unrecognisable to others, those who put you down growing up as a child and made you feel insecure for just being your true self. This way is the best revenge you can get for proving those that discredited you wrong.

Working on building and developing the Aspergian Journal is something that I’m passionate about and hopefully will lead to greater things in the future. Initially, I wanted a high-flying career as a chartered accountant, but after a series of unseen circumstances and getting older, I lost all the buzz for it and the creation of the Aspergian Journal was formed on the back of one of my life’s missions. That mission is to be a leading and inspiring voice for the autistic community and be a living example of what autistic people can do when they put their minds, hearts and souls into something and see it flourish over time.

Conclusion:

Autism is a shared neurodevelopmental condition, yet it can present differently in autistic men and women. For many years, autism research and diagnostic criteria were largely based on how autistic boys presented, contributing to generations of autistic women being overlooked or diagnosed much later in life. Although both men and women share core autistic characteristics, including: sensory sensitivities, a need for routine, deep interests, and social communication differences, the ways these traits are expressed can vary considerably. Recognising these differences helps create a more accurate and compassionate understanding of autism, ensuring that every autistic person feels seen, heard, and valued.

While autistic men may be more likely to express their challenges outwardly through direct communication, visible distress, or intense focus on specific interests, autistic women often internalise their experiences by masking their traits, carefully observing social situations, and suppressing their struggles to fit in. This can leave many autistic women feeling mentally exhausted, misunderstood, or questioning their identity, while autistic men may also wrestle with loneliness, rejection, and difficulties navigating unspoken social expectations. Despite these contrasting experiences, both groups share common challenges with anxiety, burnout, friendships, emotional regulation, and the desire to belong. Their differences shouldn’t divide the autism community but instead deepen its understanding of the many ways autism can be experienced.

The greatest strength of the autism community lies in embracing both its similarities and its diversity. By listening to one another with empathy, celebrating individual strengths, and respecting different lived experiences, autistic men and women can build greater unity and mutual support. Investing in personal growth through self-awareness, mindfulness, journaling, and pursuing meaningful goals enables every autistic individual to develop confidence and live authentically. Autism isn’t defined by gender, it’s shaped by unique life experiences, resilience, and the remarkable strengths that each person brings. Together, these contrasting stories create a richer and more complete picture of what it truly means to be autistic.

Sources:

Simon Baron-Cohen, The Lancet (2015) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00337-2/fulltext

Time trends in the male to female ratio for autism incidence: population based, prospectively collected, birth cohort study | The BMJ (2026) https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-084164

As a normal house rule of the Aspergian Journal, I do not like talking about politics as I want the channel to be one that encourages positivity, community spirit and collaboration. On this occasion, especially when it is related to autism, I have made an exception.