Have you felt alienated/discounted by the autistic men here?

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Thanks

My husband helps runs a Aspie support group. The ages run from 18-70, and there are a core group of women who filter through.

I started "helping out" (setting up cookies/coffeee, lurking in the back doing work for my business via the smartphone), and it made the women feel more comfortable. I don't really want to be there, as I think the meeting should be an NT free zone, even if I say nothing.

There has only twice in the last 5 years I had to back down a 19 year old knucklehead, who was stirring up s**t with the women in the group. He was being an obnoxious turd, and I seriously doubt how much the ASD contributed to the s**t stirring.

What this group reads before any meeting...

This is not a mate to date group, or for hook ups. Any private information must be exchanged OUTSIDE the building. It is strongly encouraged not to exchange private information. (so people don't feel bullied because you are trapped in enclosed space)

*even if it is all men. There are gay/bi Aspies

The group does not discuss relationship issues between members unless the topic is broadly defined and can include everyone's experiences. (so the group doesn't during into couple's therapy).

Before you jump into an argument think...

Does this need to be said?
Does this need to he said by me?
Does this need to be said by me right now?

Men do discuss things different from women. It's just a different give and take. Guys can be screaming at each other, then go out to eat afterwards for burgers and sodas. Women don't roll like that. We personalize everything.

I think the men in this group do scale back the arguing when women are present. Also, the the the statement "men wanting to get down my pants" is a horrible generalization. What if a guy said, "all women who have sex, just want to get pregnant and collect an 18 year pay check. They are all thieving money grabbing soul suckers". There the random idiots who do at that way in both camps, but if someone feels threatened just sitting with a group of men, to me it says way more about their issues than the men being pigs.

The problem with a women's group in our area, there isn't enough women. The Aspie women I know have Aspie kids. They gravitate to the ASD children's groups. It's like a two for one deal. Talk about kid issues, and take about your own.

The support group where my husband helps out is strictly adults. They don't talk about IEPs, ABA etc. It is a true adult group. It isn't kid friendly (no children allowed under 18), so it's a dilemma for an Aspie women. If I am single, amd with no kids...do I join the kid group, which will probably have more ASD women, but a good chunk of the topics have nothing to do with me, OR the adult only group where there will be more men (how comfortable am I with that), but the topics are closer to what I am dealing with?

The group tried to have women's only night, and even with heavy promotion, only 3 women showed up. This is not a college town, so less single women with Asper gers (diagnosed anyway) to show up.

I think this board is one of the least aggressive I've been on. Yeah, there are men who write their wall of screed, but who cares? It's an opinion from a faceless stranger. I don't go into the relationship sub forums much, so I don't know what mayhem would be there.

If you are on a board which most of the people there have issues with social skills, there are toes that will get stomped. Not because (usually) they are asshats, but dealing and engaging with people is hard. And the saying goes, once you've seen one Autistic, you've only seen one. It's a spectrum.

Some people have an agenda, but I never felt threatened on wrongplanet.

I honestly haven't felt threatened either. Some of the ignorant comments I find amusing. I don't really take a lot of it seriously. Someone mentioned the threads having to do with playing with boobs or something, as being insulting. I just find it ridiculous that someone would even ask such a question. So why should I care?

But if enough women think they want a women's only forum and will feel more comfortable, then I say let them have it. I would probably not participate in such a forum myself. I think it's possible that it could become an anti-men forum, which I would be uncomfortable with.

If you want to retain your sanity, I suggest you avoid relying on any large group of anonymous strangers (such as this forum) for understanding, especially a group made up primarily of men. This is part of the reason I don't participate on WP anymore aside from one-off posts such as this.

The behavior you describe plays out all over the Internet; contrary to what others have suggested, it isn't an autistic issue, an immaturity issue, or a bitterness issue: it is a guy issue. For example:

Is an unrealistic assessment. As a lesbian, I was once young; I am still relatively sexually and romantically inexperienced, but even when I had no experience, I did not and would not have talked about womyn the way men do. Try and find young womyn, inexperienced womyn, extremely socially unaware womyn, autistic womyn, bitter and lonely womyn, etc. who talk about other human beings in this fashion (try it on this forum, in fact) and you will see that overwhelmingly, it is male behavior.

As a group, they tend to not give a s**t about your experiences as a womon unless those experiences match up with the mythology they have built up amongst themselves about womyn. There's actually been psychological research about their tendency to prioritize abstract ideas over concrete experience.

You can never expect them to respect a womyn-only discussion in this forum or anywhere else; they will appeal to abstract rules of the forum and their "right" to post anywhere, overlooking if not outright ignoring issues like the need for marginalized groups to talk amongst themselves without the constant threat of their marginalizers calling BS on all of their experiences and telling them that they shouldn't feel angry and hurt about being mistreated and oh, EVERYONE experiences that, stop being so divisive!

At least half the time anyone brings up problems that are specific to womyn, they will attempt to derail the discussion and steer it back to some tiny group of men who sometimes experience something similar, but far less severely, sometimes pretending that they are being "gender-neutral," when in fact they just want the discussion to be implicitly male-centric.

Based on what you've posted in this thread, I think it would be wise to avoid that support group you mentioned. Ultimately, there is a psychological cost to putting up with men's BS, or the BS of any group of people who doesn't care about or cannot accommodate you and your concerns.

Hi Starkid, I don't get why its an unrealistic assessment, its not the older guys talking in disrespectful/dehumanising ways about women, but your post did make me consider the similarities with the site for the partners of AS people, where they get together and vent and the attitude that is tolerated from some of the younger guys here.

Yep I agree and glad you pointed this out. I have seen it on other websites and in real life for that matter. It's not any different here.



Well said.

I wonder why young "inexperienced" men get a pass. I don't see the correlation between inexperience and insensitive language. Unless it's that the inexperience of young males is so burdensome that they are allowed to take out their frustrations on a particular group.

They should not get a pass in any shape or form. They need educating but it seems that the 'I can say whatever I like on the internet and get away with it, even if I would never dare say it to someone in real life' attitude prevails.

[MODERATOR]

I realize tensions are running high in this thread, but it's not acceptable to make negative generalizations about the opposite sex.

I'm going to start cracking down on such comments in the future.

[/MODERATOR]

I haven't felt threatened here either. Nor have I experienced any people saying that I can't be autistic because I'm female. That said I am gay so some of my attitudes fit better with a male world-view and some with a female world-view I think (I find this stuff difficult to sort out in my head). I find I'm more relaxed in the company of men generally because I'm not attracted to them and if they know I'm gay all is well because no-one trys to be my boyfriend.

In fact thinking more about the OP's question I'd say that I've found the men here really supportive. That's my experience anyway.

Cool. Lucky you. It has not been the experience of every woman here, though. You are making me wish I was gay, if that makes it so much easier to be around men without them treating you like a walking life support system for holes they can put their dick in, or a "princess who doesn't know how good she has it being female as life is so much easier when you're female because guys want to f**k you". Must be nice. I used to be more comfortable hanging around guys (mostly NT guys) when I was younger. That changed when I realised how many of them had no respect for me as a human being and thought I was an anomaly because I "wasn't like the other girls" (very overtly feminine is I think what they meant) which I thought meant I was cool, but what it really meant was that I didn't fit the very limited stereotype in their mind about women and women's limited minds and irrational feelings. Now I have mixed feelings about male company--I used to think it was easier if there was no sexual tension/attraction, but it turns out guys who are straight that you aren't attracted to will eventually resent you for not being attracted to them, no matter how good you think your friendship is. So now I am afraid of befriending men I am not attracted to sexually because I think they will not value me as a person or a friend and will grow to resent me for not wanting to f**k them. It makes me sad, but I don't know what else to do. I am tired of not being valued and being tossed aside because I'm not a candidate for f*****g.

When I first joined WP, I worked to hide the fact that I'm a woman (starting by choosing a gender-neutral login). Things went really well for a while, but gradually people started to visit my profile, and gradually I started to share personal experiences that indicated that I wasn't as male as everyone had assumed. A few people couldn't get over that fact, and for a while every single post I tried to make (especially in the PPR forum) was turned into some sort of sexual innuendo and my mere presence in a thread was enough to derail the whole thing; if the instigators weren't around, what I said was often discounted (only after someone figured out I was female) as a 'biased' or 'emotional' point of view. I quit for about a year, and things seem to have settled down since then.

Kenobi, That's because you are a nice person and not sexist, and therefore you don't seek for false assumptions about most men's posts to get offended (unless they post something really offensive and sexist).

But sexist women of course are gonna project their sexism and will take everything in that perspective, for example if a man criticizes something they said in PPR or whatever, they would take it as "Mansplaining" (man patronizing to a woman) even if this man criticizes other men with the same tone - and this is something I have seen it a lot here.

Stating that the only reason a woman might feel exluded here is because she is sexist does not contribute anything valid to this discussion. This thread is in the Women's Discussion forum and the rules are a bit different here than elsewhere. You may want to check them out before posting to avoid this in the future.

I appreciate the language and tone Boo used wasn't the best for this forum, but if you look back there at what you quoted, you'll find at no point did he state that the only reason a woman might feel excluded is because she is sexist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Anyways just being pedantic. It's a shame that there are women that feel alienated or excluded on WP. I was under the impression this board would at least act as a haven against it, and that the main perpetrators of the alienation stem from ever bitter singles from the mens camp and over zealous types from the women camp. I believe these two extreme subsets of users are toxic and breed toxic thinking for both genders.

I think it's an internet thing. It seems like the "men only use the internet" myth still happens and they tend to disrespect women. It's not everywhere, but it's annoying when it happens.