Aspie Girls: More Nerdy than NT Girls?

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Not sure if I'm nerdy so much as just plain eccentric! Have to say most of my friends are either men or alternative women though - many of my interests - hiking, sea swimming, jazz and blues, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones - seem to be pretty male dominated, have to say I like that though as there isn't much in the way of mind games and instead people just want to enjoy the activity and have a fun time. I'm not at all nerdy in the scientific/technology way though unless playing computer games counts for anything. I remember eating my lunch at breaktime as a treat in order to endure two hours of science lessons and today if something technical goes wrong at work I nearly always end up asking someone to help me with it...

I've had some people tell me that I'm not a nerd but I've always identified with the word itself since it generally refers to people who are misfits for whatever reason, even though I don't personally have many of the traditional interests and hobbies considered to be nerd-like.

I am hopeless with numbers so anything related to them can never be an interest of mine since I lack the knowledge to pursue it. I personally believe that I have dyscalculia which is the numerical equivalent of dyslexia and greatly affects an individuals ability to learn and remember mathematics. Perhaps if I wasn't dyscalculic, I'd have more an interest in numbers.

I do like science a lot even though I don't understand it fully. I always enjoyed science classes at school that didn't involve having to do a lot of complicated calculations in order to understand something. Making a decisive decision about where I stood on religion inspired me to learn more about evolution and the universe and now it's a definitive interest of mine although I do have to seek out sources that are willing to explain science in a way that people uneducated in science can understand.

I do like video games but tend to only play ones that are open ended where I can create something (like The Sims) or related to something I'm already interested in.

What I am really is a word nerd. I love to read and I'll read just about anything although of course, I have genres and authors that I enjoy more than others. I also dabble in creative writing but I'm not sure that it counts as a hobby since I have no intentions of publishing any of my work anywhere. It's one of my two creative outlets (the other being photography) and I want to keep it private. I'm also attempting to seriously learn a foreign language for the first time and doing well.

I studied the social sciences at university (mainly development theory, anthropology, sociology, legal studies, gender studies, history and literature with a little bit of philosophy and politics thrown in) and I still have a keen interest in those disciplines. If that counts as a nerdy past time, than I guess I'm a social science nerd too.

I can't sing or play any instruments but I do love listening to music. I can find something that I like in most genres (a few I just can't get into, no matter how hard I try) but rock is and will probably always be my favourite. I do believe that it's a male dominated genre but I've met quite a few female identifying fans over the course of my life.

I don't dance either but love watching dance performances, particularly ballet and contemporary. Some might consider dance to be a girly pursuit but I don't. It's just human movement which most of us do on a daily basis and how can that be intrinsically feminine or masculine?

I'm not into Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Wars or any of the other movies / tv shows mentioned in this thread but I am a huge Harry Potter fan if that counts for anything. I watched the Half Blood Prince today.

Although I have a female body, I don't see anything I do or like as being feminine or masculine in nature, only in perception. So, while I may do or like things that appear feminine or masculine to others, I chalk that up to their own ideas about gender rather than an accurate reflection of what I'm doing or liking.

Do I find it difficult to connect with other women? Somewhat although less so as I get older. My best friend in the world is a female and we get on spectacularly (most of the time).

I went to a high school where the overwhelming majority of the female students seemed to be the human embodiment of Barbie and I couldn't seem to find anything in common with. There were a few girls that I managed to connect with and form some kind of friendship with in my last two years of high school but they naturally fizzled out after high school because our company was based more on "well, nobody else seems to much like us" rather than "we genuinely like each others company". I definitely had more male friends in high school and only one ever got the wrong idea about what was going on. I encountered more problems with other people being convinced that we were secretly dating rather that the guys themselves.

It was easier for me to connect with other girls in the early years of primary school. They weren't quite as stereotypically feminine then and boys were gross, obviously. I found it easiest to connect with other women at university simply because I found the atmosphere so much less restricting than the K-12 schooling program and people didn't seem so hung up on ensuring that they had a particular reputation and felt more able to be themselves. I like realness in people, male or female. I hate dishonesty, manipulation and general mind games when dealing with people.

I'd like to note that all of these statements I'm making about my experiences with women are all within the context of my own age group (teens/early twenties). I've always found in much easier to connect with people who are vastly older than me, both men and women.

I'm slightly concerned that I find it hard to connect with other women in the workplace, if I ever manage to get in there. I am childfree (which means that I never want children) and anti-marriage (don't care if other people want it, just don't want it for myself) and many adult women seem to define themselves by their spouse and children. I think it may cause the issues I've been experiencing to resurface.

Sometimes, I do wish that I were a bit less shy, reserved and introverted as the extroverted receive many advantages in life. I've never been diagnosed with AS so I'm not entirely convinced that I have it myself, I only suspect it, so I'm not really sure how much of my difficulty connecting to other women is just me being introverted or genuine social difficulties, arousing from AS.

I love Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and medieval fantasy in general. I also enjoy studying math and reading about history.