The child psychiatrist Svenny Kopp noticed early on in her research that the interests of autistic girls differed from those of boys. “No girl was interested in explosives or airplanes,” she said. “But they had other interests. Often, there was a social connection. It could be animals or famous people. A great many of them painted and made things. There was a lot of arts and crafts.”
Which was one reason girls weren’t diagnosed with autism as often as boys—they were thought to lack special interests. Rather, for a long time, psychologists didn’t consider girls’ special interests to be “real,” which contributed to their inability to diagnose their autism. “If a girl collected My Little Ponies and had 75 of them, this wasn’t seen as a special interest,” said Dr. Kopp. “The male doctors didn’t ask about My Little Pony. They were looking for special interests they could identify with.”
Dr. Kopp believes girls have not been valued as highly as boys. “It’s been a taboo to recognize that [boys and girls] are different, that we have different interests and don’t quite function the same way,” she explains.
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