Is it common for women with AS to get taken advantage of?

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And to suffer their retaliation. At least, it isn't socially acceptable to beat a woman, as it would undoubtedly be if you were a man.

Yes, I suppose I must be prepared for negative reactions even when I do the right thing.

Retaliation, I'm not sure about. I do worry about retaliation at times. I'm very small, but very strong. I would try to do some a**-kicking if absolutely necessary.

I tend to be very naive with both men and women. I have never been assaulted, but I was always taught to be friendly to everyone and that has been taken advantage of. The pattern seems to be that, in general, men misinterpret friendliness as sexual interest; and that women seem to view naive friendliness as weakness and it brings out the mean girl in them.

I have difficulty with setting boundaries. My hubby has told me it is always better to set your boundaries strictly--you can always relax them later when someone earns your trust. That mindset has helped me.

Some people can afford to be essentially friendly to everyone and don't get taken advantage of, but it seems to require massive amounts of very neurotypical abilities.

Yep, this.

The problem I have with setting boundaries is I just tend to believe everyone else already has all the same boundaries that I have. I continually forget that other people have different moral values and interests and so on.

It's too complicated and mentally exhausting trying to figure out specific boundaries in every situation. So I figured out the simplest thing is to just be less friendly with people in general.

I have been told repeatedly that I'm too friendly. Men do interpret my friendliness as sexual interest or maybe the ability to be taken advantage of?

Women just generally dislike me, friendly or not. I do not do the appropriate things apparently to fit into the cliques that continue to exist among women into adulthood. And overweight women often hate me, as do older women. This is a problem, considering that I was very young when I became a mom, and the mothers of my child's peers are 10-15 years older than me on average.

Bullied by girls in high school too.

So yeah, if I'm friendly, I'm apparently too friendly, but if I'm reserved, people think I'm a b****.

People have no idea what they really want. Courting that kind of attention sounds exhausting too. I like to keep conflict from cropping up, so I try to treat people well. In the past, people have been a huge drain because they can't just let someone be; they always have to push boundaries or start trouble.

I think Krav Maga is a great martial art to look into, it isn't glamorous but its all about disabling someone so you can escape. Practicing it might help you feel less timid too. They call it fight or flight, but I've "froze" in the past. If you manage to stay active, you'll be less likely freeze when things get out of control.

That's interesting, I haven't yet heard of it. For a long while I really wanted to learn jiujitsu. I'm naturally very strong and flexible (but very small) and figured it was the perfect martial art for me. But the closest place to learn was 40 minutes or so away and expensive

Martial arts have always appealed to me so perhaps I should look into it again.

One of these days I should also try to make at least one friend.

Sometimes you have to get rude to get them to leave you alone, that happens to normal women too. In that situation it's okay to be rude if a man isn't respecting your boundaries and isn't taking no for an answer. The man doesn't deserve your respect if they are not giving you respect. Also sometimes men are predators (I am not saying all of them are) so they will hit up on a woman and use anything as an excuse to justify their actions. I even wonder if some of them are really that dumb. A decent guy will back off when he sees you are not interested or sees you are not picking up on his signals or when you tell him no but a creeper will ignore the signals and not take no for an answer so that is when you can get rude with them.

Is it really an AS thing for these things to happen? Maybe but maybe not because these things have happened to normal women too and even it used to happen to my mother when she was young so she would get rude with them. And don't worry about hurting their feelings or insulting them, you won't hurt their feelings because they won't care. I think the problem is we don't get taught about when it's okay to be rude so we end up being too polite and that is a problem when we come across a creep who won't take the hint or even take no for an answer. I was an adult when I was finally told this.

Beware of the manipulation, I was in high school when I refused to post nudes of myself to someone in Australia so he said I was mean so I blocked him because it had upset me. Because I was upset about it, I told my therapist what had happened and he told me what the person was doing was called manipulation. They will try and do it positively by saying how much it means to them and how much they love you and when you still don't give them what they want, they then try and do it in a negative way by trying to make you feel bad so you will give in and do it because they made you think you were in the wrong. So people will get pissed but it's most likely them being manipulative so I see it as them throwing a tantrum because they didn't get their way. Like how a small child does when they don't get their way so they call you mean or a bad mom and will even act up and do naughty things until they get it. But when I see that in a grown person, I just want to tell them to grow up and I see them as having a tantrum because they are acting so immature like a little five year old or a four year old or a three year old. Some get really nasty when they don't get it. There is also a subreddit on reddit called CreepyPMs where both men and women post screen shots of messages or IMs they get from someone and they post it there to show it to everyone. Some people in the screen shots have gotten really nasty because they were rejected or didn't get what they wanted or because the person took too long to respond.

While I don't think it's strictly am AS only thing to happen, I do think my social difficulties/misunderstandings/naivete, whatever you want to call it, made it easier for me to be targeted.

As a young teen, I wanted to be accepted, I didn't know how to become accepted, and I thought that boys and men giving me attention meant something positive, even if I was doing things I was not comfortable with. I didn't realize I was being taken advantage of.

As I got older, I had the problem of being too nice, and not realizing when people were lying to me or using me. I didn't know how to stand up for myself.

At the age I am now, I continue to have problems, because I ignore or misread danger signs from men, or signals that they are interested in me. And in the past, I was raped by an acquaintance and just froze because I wasn't sure how to react at first to his advances. By the time I did react, it was too late and I could not stop him.

Recently I was assaulted because I was naive enough to take a stranger at his word.

If I understood socializing better, I think I would have had much less difficulty. But I learn social skills at a snail's pace (or not at all) if I rely on just "picking up" on things naturally like people normally do. It took years for me to learn things that come naturally to most twelve year olds. When it comes to social skills, I often have to have people (or books) tell me things outright before I understand or notice them. Even now, unfortunately.

But I think there are other women that have these issues, maybe because of low self esteem or shyness.

But surely we autistic ladies know how lucky we are that men are willing to pay attention to us, even rape-y predatory men--because we all know autistic men have it so much worse because women won't pay attention to them at all and being perpetually lonely and dateless is way harder to deal with than being raped. amirite?

Honestly, I don't think either situation is easy to deal with. I wouldn't want to have constant difficulty finding a date that would even give me a chance because I was socially awkward, or whatever the case may be.

Neither situation is ideal, so I think that the experiences men on the spectrum have getting dates, etc, shouldn't be minimized either.

There is a key difference. A constantly harassed woman needs to defend herself and learn to command respect, but there's distinct evidence that she is desirable. She doesn't have to worry that maybe she has no business dating. On the other hand, a man no woman gives the time of the day can't legitimately say what he undergoes is a problem. He may try to better himself, but this doesn't entitle him to anything, and there are no guarantees. If no woman desires him, they have every right not to want anything to do with him, and, eventually, it will sink in that he simply isn't anywhere near good enough to be desirable.

I think that's really sad, and I think it would make me feel awful about myself if I were a man with that problem. I do regard it as a legitimate problem.

Just because a man is a man, it doesn't mean that his problems in finding/dating a woman aren't real or important. Especially for Aspie men, because the problems may have nothing to do with who they are as a person, how attractive they are, how interesting they are, but only with the inability to socialize or "play the game". They may be perfectly nice, intelligent, and interesting, but can't get the message across so that others can see those positive traits.

But if someone can't get dates because they are a truly horrible, mean person, then I can't say I feel sorry for them. Although many women seem to like jerks for whatever reason.

I relate to many things spoken of, in this thread, and, over the past few years, I have learned much about people, and, more importantly, myself and the part that my naivety has played in situations, scenarios and how I have become the stronger, wiser person (with an abundance of awareness, not fear) I am today. I have never been physically raped/abused, however, I was duped and deceived by someone who managed to take everything from me. My career, my mind, my heart and even my soul, temporarily. He left me an empty shell of myself, and yesterday was exactly five years since the incident ended. I have been healing from it, ever since, on some level, although, I've been almost entirely healed for approx the past 10 months. The relationship was both business and personal and it only lasted for a total of 9 months, yet, that is how good predators can be at their craft. It took no time for him to almost destroy me.

With the help of both, my ASD therapist and a personality disorder specialist (to teach me the ways in which toxic people operate, accept what happened, and move on from it), I have healed and have so much gratitude for reclaiming all of the parts of me that I had lost. I don't have the same career, but, I don't care about that. I am just so glad to know that I didn't lose my mind and my heart forever, and that, I have returned to the person I was, prior to the incident, with the abundance of knowledge and awareness.

I could go on, but, I basically just had an impulse to comment, as I happened upon this thread/read your post and the comments and have never publicly expressed myself and what I've experienced. I think it is so vital for these conversations to take place. I think there is so much to be learned and awareness to be gained, and these types of conversation/interactions are as helpful or even more so, than the literature, available.

My lack of ability to pick up on cues causes issues with potential, positive opportunities, such as, developing friendships/relationships, etc. I nearly always realize, AFTER the fact, that a decent, lovely, good man had, perhaps, attempted to be my friend, but I had been clueless. The lack of ability to pick up cues can affect those opportunities, which are positive In nature. This is where I am putting my focus, presently. How to make friends. How to read when a good person is interacting with me in a playful, healthy, positive way. I am clueless with subtleties and hidden meanings. Hopefully I will improve my abilities with time and practice. Onward and upward!

Last edited by Britte on 29 Dec 2015, 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.