This is a really, really, really beautiful story, thanks for sharing this.
I don't know exactly where Cynthia was at on which spectrums, but this reminds me a lot of the female-phenotype of autism (surprisingly different from male autism, one reason why it's under diagnosed). I say this as an autistic person with a combined type having some generally male exclusive and some female exclusive traits. I developed as nonbinary so it took me a while to realize I was autistic, even after learning I was nonbinary.
Before I knew I was nonbinary, I thought I was NT. Because "that's not autism'!
Anywho, interesting stuff. I've found the book "Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder" to shed a really helpful light on the subject, and would definitely recommend it if you have autistic female family members, are questioning but don't think it's right because "it doesn't fit me", or may be a combined type (oftentimes spectrum people don't develop according to standard gender binaries, ya see.)
Happy for any questions, this story was heartwarming and I didn't bob in the toilet but Ive had my oddities growing up! ;D
P.S.: I use "Pee Pee" all the time, and it made me so happy to see 'Starfish and Pee Pee' when I was skimming the article before figuring out the topic. I'm still giggling 30 minutes later. :) XD
Thanks for your detailed response and sharing your experiences.
>> I say this as an autistic person with a combined type having some generally male exclusive and some female exclusive traits.
Are you referring to non-exclusive "traits" when describing how you have both male and female traits? I was a bit confused about the "female phonotype" part of your response as it implies having traits through genetics at birth.
Or am I misunderstandings and such gender-specific traits are developed through environmental/societal conditions?
Hi! I've been checking back often and was happy to see a question! Thank you for asking, and thank you for the thank you! :)
It's a bit hard without going into explicit detail, but to set the stage, generally speaking, my brain tends to effectively operate in two different parts. There's still decent physical coordination and such, but there are a few external signs of that. One is that if I'm listening to music that sends shivers down my spine and gives me goosebumps, maybe 70% of the time it'll be exclusively on the right side of my body, while the left is completely normal.
Additionally, if I relax my face muscles from "social face" to "comfortable resting face", if you took a picture and looked at each half in isolation, you can see a variety of differences in my comfortable resting face that seems to have stayed consistent across a variety of conditions.
I once had a massage therapist, extremely confused, pause, then comment on how my left side seemed relaxed and normal, and on my right, the muscles were tenser, I apparently jumped when she touched me (I hadn't noticed it but believed her), and was shaking. That part of me had had some bad experiences when I was very young. But, stress aside, it was cool to me as a kind of confirmation of something I'd felt was too "weird" for me, to be true.
Now, the above is a setup for a comment on phenotypes. In this case, I'm using the definition of phenotype as "Phenotype...refers to the individual’s inherited physical characteristics, which are a combination of genetic and environmental influences", from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymaker-psychology/chapte... .
Whether or not autism as well as gender differentiation (a diversity common in autistic individuals) is genetic, I can't say. I'd personally lean towards early life developmental factors (especially neonatal) with genetically predisposing factors as well.
Now on to the combined factors. I was becoming more confident about having male autism, but when the other half of my brain had more of a say in things, in addition to a much more generally feminine identity, I saw a lot of prosocial and seemingly nonautistic traits. This I felt was baffling and uncomfortable, because autism tends to have a very strong physiological component, and maybe this would mean it was something else that looked like autism. How else could something like that be partitioned? I felt distressed.
Learning what feminine autism looks like was a breath of fresh air and relief to me, as so many oddly specific things apply to that side of me. It also answered a lot of questions and removed barriers to letting go of some shame that I didn't know was there. I've had problems with social things at times, but I can be very sociable and well-liked, similar to how the feminine autistic phenotype is (and how they fly under the radar). I'm finally able to start getting past my denial of having these intrinsic limitations that seemed to clash with what I thought was my capability. It's also a hole I felt was there but didn't know what the question was to get there.
I hope this answers your question, you can see this (among other things) is something I feel passionate about. You can check my post history or ask any follow-up questions if you're interested in more like this.
As a side note, most of my friends are girls or feminine/femme-leaning individuals, because the male side of me likes people but is content to be introverted and keep doing neural network stuff or voraciously studying some new or esoteric like I have for a while.
By the way, all of the above is a good example of a number of elements of the male autistic phenotype. In my first message, you can see hints of both.
If you're a fan of Prince or audio production and engineering, you want to watch that interview, or read the transcript (https://tapeop.com/interviews/117/susan-rogers/). Trust me on this. This is someone whose work and life/career stories deserve much wider attention.
(Edit: actually these are two different interviews, and I'm only familiar with the one in the transcript.)
I knew this song well when I was a teenager and I always imagined it was a story from Prince's own childhood and because I dont totally trust him as a narrator I always thought he had embellished it in some way. It seemed to have too much whimsy in it. e.g. maybe there was a quirky girl in his school but 'Cynthia Rose' was probably a made up name to rhyme with something. So its really quite startling to hear it was someone elses story and a real name.
I never really could make sense of this verse?
Cynthia wore the prettiest dress
With different color socks
Sometimes, I wondered
If the mates were in her lunch box
Me and Lucy opened it
When Cynthia wasn't around
Lucy cried, I almost died
You know what we found?
'mates' in her lunch box? What does that even mean?
I used to assume that the suprise in the lunch box was that it was empty. And the song was about a whimsical girl in difficult circumstances using her imagination to get around a shitty home life and not enough food.
But now I know its about a neurodivergent child. But in that case, what was in the lunch box?
“Mates” as in the other socks. Cynthia presumably has a pair of red socks and a pair of yellow socks or something, but instead of wearing two reds or two yellows, she is wearing one red and one yellow. Lucy and the narrator wonder if the other red and/or the other yellow are in the lunch box.
Ah that must be an American term, in the UK we would say 'matching sock' or similar.
Still it doesn't make much sense. If someone's wearing odd socks they obviously put them on at home. Why would they be in the lunchbox. And what was in the lunchbox that made Lucy cry?
Also thinking about it, coffee is a weird thing for a kid at school to wish for. I think that was another reason I suspected Prince had embellished it. Kids will make up yummy or fantastic things to eat but coffee is unlikely to be one.
Obviously if it was called Starfish and Pee Pee it would have been unlikely to be regarded as such a classic song. Prince knew what he was doing in the poetry sense but not in the 'realistic things for kids to talk about' sense.
I needed a lot more context for this. It’s apparently the creation story of a song that was released 35 years ago. The story on its own is pleasant but unfortunately meaningless not having ever heard of the song.
I’ve loved this song for as long as I can remember, and it’s by far the highlight for me of Prince’s work (and there’s a lot of it I hold in very high regard). I couldn’t even put into words why, it’s just an utterly magical song.
Hearing that Cynthia Rose was actually real is quite a surprise to me - so much of the lyrics border on nonsensical that I’d always assumed it was a work of fiction and surrealism.
I miss that era lots... The storytelling in music was magical and unwilling to conform to industry rules.
Prince inspired me to pick up a guitar many years ago, and to self produce music. I'm very thankful for that inspiration, it's the one thing keeping me sane in this crazy world.
Dorothy Parker is another great visual tune by them as well.
So many strange and beautiful rabbit holes. Wikipedia claims Prince wrote the song Nothing Compares 2 U (famously covered by Sinéad O'Connor) about the author, Susannah Melvoin.
Part of growing up in most modern North American and European cultures is learning to suppress 'childish' tendencies. Stop making noise, stop doing distracting things, stop saying silly things. Stop enjoying inappropriate things.
I'm not advocating for more childishness in public - it is genuinely distracting - or for more childishness in serious situations - or for being inappropriate in mean ways - but maybe it's OK to just have fun. Make a fart noise every once in a while. Sing in the shower, or while you vacuum, or whatever. Make motorcycle noises while you're riding your bike. Flap your arms when you run.
It seems to me that people often equate intelligence with seriousness, and stupidity with playfulness. These people also tend to overvalue a sort of stoic distance and lack of excitement and enthusiasm as somehow being a sign of wisdom and advanced thinking. An austere and somber attitude doesn’t make someone smarter or more intellectual. Sometimes people are overly serious because they’re afraid of looking unkempt, unimportant, uneducated — they fear they’ll “make a fool out of themselves” if they don’t remain dour and stiff. In my opinion, if more people aspired to the level of life-mastery and self-actualization that a true fool has attained, there’d be much less conflict in the world.
Doing childish things because I want to is one if the best parts of living in the big city. Nobody knows me, nobody cares. If someone’s annoyed, not like I’ll ever see them again.
Think that being able to understand and do childish things is important, because all the children are doing them, and sometimes they need to talk to someone who's older who can still connect that way. (Thus Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers.)
When I look at the coping skills of adults in the world en masse, I see different ... I certainly don't see better. Some of the good parts may be missing. The word 'childish' makes a very crappy pejorative. I'd even call it the 'C word'.
There are cultural differences - the congregation in many black churches vocalizes during the sermon. I think it's a universal tendency with cultural expression.
American black churches are part of American culture and there's plenty of non-black churches where the laity vocalizes. People even speak in made up languages. Plus, google up Shakers, Quakers or one of these:
I don't know exactly where Cynthia was at on which spectrums, but this reminds me a lot of the female-phenotype of autism (surprisingly different from male autism, one reason why it's under diagnosed). I say this as an autistic person with a combined type having some generally male exclusive and some female exclusive traits. I developed as nonbinary so it took me a while to realize I was autistic, even after learning I was nonbinary.
Before I knew I was nonbinary, I thought I was NT. Because "that's not autism'!
Anywho, interesting stuff. I've found the book "Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder" to shed a really helpful light on the subject, and would definitely recommend it if you have autistic female family members, are questioning but don't think it's right because "it doesn't fit me", or may be a combined type (oftentimes spectrum people don't develop according to standard gender binaries, ya see.)
Happy for any questions, this story was heartwarming and I didn't bob in the toilet but Ive had my oddities growing up! ;D
P.S.: I use "Pee Pee" all the time, and it made me so happy to see 'Starfish and Pee Pee' when I was skimming the article before figuring out the topic. I'm still giggling 30 minutes later. :) XD