Easier being friends with males than females.

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Well said.

You're so right. I grew up not fitting into the medias image of how women should be, not even fitting into the image of what a person should be, and I always knew that pressure was wrong, but lashed against other girls trapped in it too instead of the thing spewing that image and forcing women to conform to it. I grew out of that and realized what was really going on.

It is alright to not feel at home in arbitrary gender-constructions, but if someone feels validated by men liking the same things, and place more value on those activities just for that reason, please think about what they're saying.

http://claudiagray.com/blog/?p=297
This should be required reading, but I'm going to post pieces of it and hope the author doesn't take offense, because it seriously needs to be in this thread.

And that thing about different forms of socializing: It is a lie.
Yes, there are different expectations on how women should do it, different things that are being taught, perpetuated by even you posting in this thread, and often people do not match up with their gender-assigned interests etc.
Do you think this means it is an actual biological truth? "All women are this, all men are that"? No.
I've known sneaky, gossipy men. I've known sneaky, gossipy women. I've known wonderful men. I've known wonderful women. And I know I am not the only one in a world where women are over half of the population.

Can't you see? You're all women posting in this thread, agreeing you can only be friends with men. Maybe you should befriend each other?

And also about "stupid social games": they're ALL stupid, whatever gender the person playing them has as long as they're NT because we're aspies ffs. And if you need proof of some really stupid social games played by men, take a look at the pickup-artist-culture.

Yes! This! I hesitate to say something when a woman says her interests are different than most othet women, then lists things loads of women are interested in. Even in this thread I wonder where people live that so few women have these things in common with them.

Men and women are equally capable of both negative and positive traits, after stepping back and really looking at it I realized I didn't see more or less manipulation and negative behavior etc in either gender.

I don't believe the stereotypes are very accurate or useful.

Yes, exactly! And it doesn't even matter where someone lives as long as they have an internet-connection to see that. It's almost as misguided as "nice guys" http://niceguysofokc.tumblr.com/

Somehow that lead to me reading some article that mentioned Jamie Kilstein and I started listening to his podcast and wrote to him on Facebook. He did this really amazing bit and it's on YouTube "rape culture and Glenn Beck doesn't like me" where he talks about men's attitudes about women and it's just
.. he's one of my favorite comedians and he admittedly gets a lot of s**t for being a feminist and talking about rape culture and anyway I'm babbling but he wrote back to me in less than an hour, and not just a single line. He was really encouraging, and it was nice to get that message.

It's good just to be able to talk about attitudes in society about gender.

hallelujah on this, and hallelujah on what meems also posted. if all of these women on the thread and elsewhere are agreeing that they don't like a certain kind of women, surely they can see that there are like-minded women out there. if there are tons of exceptions to how women supposedly are, then perhaps... all women aren't actually like that stereotype!

i think that it reinforces our misogynistic culture to say that women are harder to get along with - i.e. men are the ideal people and therefore the ideal friends in our society. in this thread and elsewhere, some women are upholding this idea that men are better than women. after all, women are just catty backstabbing b*****s, right? women aren't just saying they get along better with men, they are also simultaneously putting down women.

it isn't any different from choosing not to have black or gay friends, because of some culturally-reinforced phobia. some black or gay people may be like _X_, but that doesn't excuse the exclusion of all people of that group based on a negative stereotype. would it be ok to call gay people catty? would it be ok to say that black people engage in pointless social mind games? there is no evidence that women actually engage in those things more than men do (evidence points to a very small gap between the sexes, or no gap at all), yet somehow it's ok for women to throw those words at each other.

here is a very good test for people to see their levels of both blatant and ambivalent sexism. it's very telling.
http://www.lawrence.edu/fast/glickp/asi.html

I certainly concur with the critical thinking espoused in the last few posts.
None of us want to hear 'x people all do this' or 'y people are all incapable of', etc. because we're all intelligent enough to know those are never 100% accurate.

But, I really think the main point of this thread is that we're sharing and becoming a part of a community by posting our experiences. "I grew up not really fitting in with the girls around me." This is a perfectly valid feeling to have, and sharing that feeling with others who have experienced it is the point of this discussion, imho.
In fact, sharing that feeling IRL is how I've cemented my friendships with other women in my industry who have experienced the same thing.

Hyperlexian, your post just rocked my socks off. ^_^

I think this kind of thread and this thread itself can be a good starting point for talking about why we haven't gotten along or fit in with other women. I think the point of this thread could easily become figuring out the why, it seems like a good step to take after identifying that we do feel this way.

meems and MissDorkess, that makes sense.

from my own past, i've had the 'benefit' of being bullied by both females and males, so i didn't have the experience of seeing one gender as more welcoming than the other. i still alienate people quite easily and don't blend very well, i.e. at a party, people will close into circles, with me excluded from all of them. i end up standing awkwardly on the outside, wondering whether to edge my way in (if i do, the group will disperse) or stand aside and pretend to look at my phone. but that's not a gender-specific issue.

Agreed, to most of what have been said here.

I have a few very good girl friends, and they are all pretty weird (or differently wired?). I have some very good male friends as well, and often prefer to talk to men as I don´t like all the silly girls. The only annoying thing about being friends with men is that many of them find me interesting (no, I do not find myself especially pretty) so most of my male friends have tried to score me one time or another.

Ooooh, if I had a dime for every time...

It's nice if there's friendly pets or toddlers around... I occupy myself with them.

I find this a lot, although it could be partly because I was bullied a lot by my peers (girls) growing up, so I'm more wary.

I think it's quite dependent. I know I only get along with people really well - male or female - if they have stepped out of the sexist ideals first.
Otherwise the probablity is that I am not going to get along with them, or at least never be close to them. For that reason I have equal numbers of friends who are male and female.
But then when you get to the acquaintneces, suddenly 75% of them are men. Interestingly I was bullied by women growing up, but not by men. I blieve those reflect how sexism works in society more than it does men or women.

Don't forget that many people still subscribe to sexism, even subconsciously and judge others by it accordingly. The fact is that most people still do, whether they want to or not.
I think the women being talked about in this thread are simply reinenforcing sexism in their own way - while many in this thread are reinforcing sexism as well, only in a different way.
Both are simply reinforcing sexism in a way that suits them the most.

As long as people in general continue to enforce sexism, I am not going to fit in. And under the circumstances, I don't think that it is an entirely bad thing.

Never heard of him but sounds like a really cool guy, so awesome he wrote back! I'll look that youtube-clip up asap.