Female traffic light signals at pedestrian crossings

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Perhaps I'm reading more into it than was intended to be there, especially considering the site that thread was discussing. But I'm honestly confused by what you mean by "not genuine". Any way I slice it, it still winds up as "displaying things I don't feel" or "not actually feeling real feelings". I suppose it could be "feeling, but not displaying", which I guess could be an issue for some. But you are talking about all aspies, which includes me and people close to me. Hence why I'm a little miffed when you cast your aspersions quite that wide.

And I wasn't intending to "change X after the fact". I made the X-statement to demonstrate what I meant about your use of "preclude" in that thread, and then clarified what I meant by it in the context of that thread in this thread.

While there are many times when I do not convey emotion accurately, and some times when I do not show the expected emotion, I definitely have the ability to feel deep affection and convey it in a way that will make you melt. Just not on demand.

Well, sorry to offend; I can get a little hyperbolic.

What I was trying to get at with the "not genuine" comment was not that feelings are disingenuous, but rather that the connection is. It's hard for me to define because it is something lacking in me, but I know there's something going on between NTs that I am not experiencing. And I think that this "missing" thing is to do with autism.

I agree about the thing you describe, but I consider it important to note that NT people don't have certainty about that form of communication. They don't have complete certainty, and AS people don't have complete confusion. It's a spectrum.

There comes a point where hyperbole bleeds into inaccuracy.

I try my best not to be offended. I'm a strong beliver in freedom of speech, which must include the freedom to offend. But between that hate site and what you came across as saying, I got a bit fed up, and had to do some tounge-biting.




I think I get what you mean. But I'd suggest that the connection is not so much missing as it is lacking the proper outlet to plug into (sex-joke goes here). What I mean is this: aspies are what, 1 in 68 people now? Add onto that our generally decreased drive to meet new people, and the situation becomes that NTs on average meet and interact with orders of magnitudes more people in a lifetime than the average aspie does, and on top of that not all aspies are going to connect, just as not all NTs do. This produces the situation that NTs meet lots and lots of people who are "like them", and aspies don't to anywhere near the same degree. But I have experienced a very powerful connection between myself and other aspies, a very strong sense that I can only really describe as meeting a member (and in one particularly memorable case, a female) of my own species. I don't know if the strength of the connection is increased by how rare it is, but it seems probable.

Now, it's entirely possible that there are NTs with which as aspie could connect with on that level. I've met plenty of people off the spectrum that I found to be intriguing, and several on the spectrum that I still say are obviously misdiagnosed. But what I'm getting at is that the imbalance between the numbers of NTs vs. Aspies and the probability of a connection between either category of person, a functioning connection between aspie and NT cannot be ruled out.

TL;DR Aspies/NTs probably connect easier with other aspies/NTs, but that does not rule out aspies from connecting with NTs and vice versa.


Wow, that was convoluted.

I tend to think that the problem is not with the lack of a receptor, but rather a flawed output.

I think this comes down to Theory of Mind; that is, the lack of awareness of the other. It's not that autistic people don't care about others, it's that we are not aware of their experience (because we miss the signals, or whatever.)

While it is important to acknowledge that autistic people aren't psychopaths, when in a relationship the result for the partner could be a similar lack of a bond.

With regard to the Hateful Autistic site, I get where she is coming from. And I don't quite understand the anger that is generated by her view of autistic people. What she says is sometimes true. This doesn't make me angry, it just is the way it is.

Or to put it another way, if you can't have something, why waste time wanting it.

Putting a stick figure in a dress isn't more inclusive. I don't know any women who wear a dress on a daily basis. I never considered the pants-wearing stick figure to be male. I am female. I am a feminist.

If anything, I find the identification of places or things as female by the addition of a dress to be limiting and rather regressive.

I suppose that's a matter of perspective, but I'm not sure I agree. I think aspies tend to do things more deliberately than NTs do. So without the perception of a potential "receptor" ("This is someone of my species"/"someone I could get along with"/"I think like this person") there is no output to begin with. This was certainly my experience when I met the girl I mentioned before. Very deliberate. Planned out. Waited for an opportunity. A deliberate and specific message to someone I wanted to spend time with, rather than a passive and generalized signaling for someone to please spend time with me.


But as with so many other things related to autism, this is a spectrum. A continuum. It's not 0 or 1. We may sometimes be clueless, and caught off-guard, but if we're aware of this, we're already making progress. ToM may
be weaker in some individuals than in others, but even in people with weak ToM, it can be compensated for with other approaches, such as careful analysis.


This statement is incredibly flawed. While "psychopath" isn't a clinically accepted term, what it refers to is a combination of antisocial behaviour, impaired empathy, egotism and disinhibition. That is, a remorseless egomaniac that actively seeks out unacceptable social behaviours for kicks and cares nothing for who they hurt in the process.

In fact, I'd suggest that that's the opposite of what we're talking about. I can imagine an aspie spouse feeling they have an incredibly strong bond to their significant other, but the other person feeling like they have no bond at all because their spouse don't display it sufficiently. I'd consider the "neglected" spouse at fault here, because communication must be a two-way street, and only one of them felt there was a problem.

Meanwhile, a psychopath might display all the socially accepted tokens of love and seem to be incredibly charismatic and loving. Their spouse might feel they're loved eight ways from sunday, until one day their spouse comes home and stabs them for fun. But at least they didn't develop CADD, am I right?



You don't see why people might be upset that she's taken a condition that already makes things difficult socially for people, and then painted people with that condition as malicious villains to be avoided at all cost, lest their toxic presence inflict Seasonal Affective Disorder CASSANDRA Affective Deprivation Disorder. Personally, I particularly like the Kafka trap at the end of the "diagnostic criteria", where disbelief in this BS disorder is proof of its validity...




How incredibly defeatist. You are of course free to give up whenever you like, but some of us rather resent the idea that aspies and human affection have the same relationship as the sun and the moon. Or that the people we love be hurt by our affection.



(My apologies for any weird verbosity. I have had significant volumes of Zinfandel)

Just to beat this metaphor to death, I would say that the problem may be in the connection.


I don't think this compensates. I am a fan of careful analysis and constantly do so (to the point of agitation) and it does produce results. But what I am talking about does not need to be worked at.
Also, I believe this deficit is intrinsic to autism; it may vary in degree, but it is a defining characteristic.


To be clear I am drawing the comparison to the effect of both disorders on the partner. The cause and motive may be completely different, but the result can be the same.


So fault lies with the wronged person for not drawing attention to their wronging? This doesn't make sense. The person who commits the wrong is at fault regardless of whether the one harmed voices it.


Well I don't know about Cassandra or whatever it's called, but I can see how it could be difficult to not have your emotional needs met by your partner.
And she's entitled to express her experience.


Makes me feel like a lonely Medusa.

Yes they do. Courting isn't looking so bad now. Sure being single is fine for people who like being single but it doesn't suit everyone. They had arranged marriages in medieval Europe too.There may be hope for you yet!

I think people seeing a the crossing symbol and thinking we need more females. This makes me wonder how that is important and how this negatively affecting women?

In most electrical systems short-circuits only get worse, but in the brain they can get better.

Cassandra was fated to accurately prophesy, but no one believed her. I think she's the one who said, beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Gendered clothing is a pretty common metaphor, and you complainers will miss it if you don't have it. I waited for 5 minutes in a hallway in a traditional restaurant in Bavaria because they cleverly put the bathroom names in Bayerish, with no German and no standard icons. I had no idea which door to walk through, and I had to pee.

I can get a bathroom having gendered symbols, but traffic lights? Do gendered traffic lights really help anything? Does s gender neutral traffic light really hurt women? Is the symbol that masculine?

It's just another amusing thing to me. We're not talking about representation, but iconography.

I made that point earlier. Think about the Powerpuff Girls, or Samurai Jack. The characters aren't representations of people. They're icons of people. It's the difference between a caricature and a sketch of a person. The drawings are signifiers, not representations. It wouldn't matter if statistically men started wearing dresses as often as women; that icon will indicate a woman as long as we talk about dialing a number.

I agree that a dress represents a woman. How does this help anyone? The people I have seen are talking about representation. Some of the people behind the campaign want an equal number of signs. My main objection to this is it doesn't help anything. I am more bothered by this making mountain of mole hill.

Go to your city council meeting and make sure your property taxes don't get spent on it?

People care. The care about other weird stuff, too. If you have a magic spell to get them to make sense, okay. Lots of subliminal things affect the way people behave in unpredictable ways. Passing the ERA would make more of a difference, but I haven't been holding my breath for 50 years.