Can't connect with other women.

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Yeah its hard for me to connect with other women. I can, but the connections are rather sparse. I went though a female phobia thing for like a year and half where women made me sick. I'm getting over it, Im not so bothered by things anymore. I have a huge gripe mostly with the female role. And I'm not a terribly emotionally expressive person. It seems to be a bit off putting to people when a women has a flat voice and antisocial. I observe the other women rapidly connecting and getting absorbed within conversation with each other and that doesnt really come naturally. I've learned gradually over years how to connect better with women. With men, we can just jump into having a lively conversation about work, electronics, politics, science, etc. I perfer socializing with men and they tend to scare me less socially. If I can sense a catty, gossipy, bitchy women, I get scared real quick.

As for girly stuff, I do have some girly interest however I'm very low maintenance. I rarely wear makeup, dont wear skirts that often, walk around in comfy running shoes. I can have some style if I feel like it, other times I'm just walking around in T-shirt and shorts/or pants.

I can totally relate to what you wrote here (I just posted something similar actually) - and I have tried so hard to relate to women for the same reasons. One time, one of my guy friends (we're no longer friends because he became interested in me sexually) set me up on a "play date" or whatever with 4 of his female friends. He sympathized with my "issue" and insisted that if I just "try" to be a girl I would like it. I tried SO HARD and I thought these women were soooooo dumb and awkward to be around. I mean, they were full grown adults sitting in a room full of stuffed giraffes reading Cosmo magazine and taking quizzes about boys and eating snacks and giggling while sitting in their PJ's. I pretty much wanted to drop dead haha. I tried though, and I took the quizzes and "giggled" and told them how cute their stuffed animals are, but I hated every minute of it and they knew it. None of them ever even really spoke to me again!

My brethren!! !

Seriously it's so hard! I'm just thankful I don't work with more women. I work in analytical chemistry and my group is 6 guys and me. I don't really fit in GREAT with them, they're all guys and 6'2" (seriously, they are all 6'2") and I'm 4'10" and I think they get a little weirded out by the fact that I like guy stuff and don't mind them talking about guy stuff. I think they think it's odd so ultimately I'm STILL the odd man out, BUT it is way better than if it were a clique of chicks. It is so much more obvious to me and everyone else when I don't fit in with women.

It's wrong to hate on women, as a group, as much as it's wrong to hate on men. If you don't get on with the women you're with, that's because of what they're like, not because what women as an homogeneous mass are like. Otherwise you'd not be here talking to other females about how you all feel the same way

Seriously, don't perpetuate this myth that females are all crappy and men are wonderful - that's as wrong as saying the opposite would be. It's better to evaluate people as individuals, but note the context within which they operate. If females weren't subject to the stupid conditioning that society inculcates in them that their worth is determined by their appearance, attractiveness and youthfulness, and that it isn't some zero-sum game whereby another female's success means less opportunity for them, then they would be a whole lot more relaxed and easy to get along with. There's still the biological competiveness blah blah but I think having worth in what ideas you have, your creativity & work, gives an individual self-worth and the confidence to let others also be themselves.

I do understand the sentiments being expressed here, but I don't pin the blame on the half the planet marked 'women' for that - the whole group-think within any culture (ie society) tells men & women what acceptable roles are and punishes to various degrees those who step outside the box. On an individual level you have those who accept you or not, but for those of us with 'male' type brains (interesting term in itself suggesting the female is failing somehow to be sufficiently female) we're not going to fit inside that space because it's not designed for us - it's designed for social control & conditioning. Well, stuff that!

It's just that you can't disengage yourself, if you are female, by saying how all the rest of 'them' are this or that, because you are talking about YOU if you're one of that group. You don't become an honorary boy for knowing machine code or genome sequencing or triple volume integration. If males are your friends, great, you have friends !

However, remember there are plenty of other females who feel, like you, that the shoebox marked 'female' is just too damned small to fit them, they are the ones reading this or posting to say 'yes I understand', and if we understand then there's plenty of more out there that also get it.

Meh. I didn't intend to post this. I just feel strongly we are wasting a lot of talent & resource & human happiness by locking up people in shoeboxes until they grow into constrained & deformed versions of what they could be.
I might just be a hopeless idealist though... oh life, thou fickle teacher...

I don't hate women either, not as a group or even idividuals. I understand where Nier was coming from though; I'm sure there are women out there who do "perpetuate this myth that females are all crappy", but I have not seen a reply that seems to have been written by such a person. Just keep in mind that when I wrote this and when people replied to me, they were most likely frustrated with some of the females they had been in contact with recently, and therefor some of that frustration showed. I do appreciated all the replies though, even Nier's. It helps me see this issues from all different angles, something I need and enjoy.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, ever since someone pointed me to a video of John Gray talking about his latest book and how hormones and stress are different in men and women. Men need testosterone to be less stressed. Women need oxytocin. Men get testosterone by achieving things. Women get more oxytocin by being in tend-and-befriend environments.

So I'm looking at this, and apart from the obvious question: would having a dog help? (yes, if I could afford one), I'm wondering how I'm supposed to find this supportive network of women when in today's world, people do not have to include everyone to have a support group. I spent summers at the cottage, where if I wanted to play with someone, I had to make do with my three siblings. So we had to find a way of playing together even though we were all different. Weekends we had 7-8 kids total, and it was the same thing, find a way to be inclusive.

People who spent all their free time in cities, on the other hand, mostly had the luxury of socializing only with people like them. I find with many women that they act very friendly up front, but sooner or later they figure out I'm not like them, and they quietly drop me. The ones who don't are clueless and inconsiderate or just clueless. I think having PTSD doesn't help - it does create a gulf. But still.

In the original paleolithic lifestyle, if they didn't kill you, they had to include you because they couldn't afford to be choosy, but today, people can be very choosy about who they hang with, so we get edged out.

The friends that I have had have tended to be other female outsiders, including women of colour and geeks, though I've gotten along with some male geeks, too, but having been sexually abused makes it harder to get close to men. Right now I don't have any friends, just acquaintances in other cities, and it's been like that for a couple of years. Hard. But that's what I get for wanting authentic relationships.

I find it very difficult to maintain friendships with women. As a child I had a lot of friends because my quirks were endearing, but when adolescence hit my quirks made my "friends" ostracize me. I was the odd girl who was at the top of the class, awkward, clumsy, and eccentric. Girls play social games that I don't understand. It is confusing and exhausting. The only good female friends I've had were very quirky, and one I strongly suspect is on the spectrum.

I think my lack of connection with women is due to an in-built lack of trust of women. I was bullied by women a lot as a child, so I tend to be more suspicious of them than men, and I think this impacts on my capacity to build relationships with women.

I know this is (slightly / very ??) irrational, (some women are bullies DOS NOT EQUAL all women are bullies) but it is one of those deeply ingrained things I'm still trying to get shot of.

I also do not like 'girly' things - e.g. make-up, fashion, celebrity - so finding common ground in conversation with some women is difficult; I am reconciled that I am unlikely to have much connection with people who's interests do not match mine in some way, and often find I have more interests in common with men than women.

That said, when I do find women who have interests I relate to, I can get on with them very well.

ShamelessGit; I'm not sure of the proper etiquette of a man posting on womans forum, but I, for one, welcome it. Guys bring in a whole new angle for me to look into, so thank you for speaking up.
I should point out that every girl is different, and if a guy they trusted as a simple friend suddenly displays sexual interest, they might drop them right then and there. But with me, and most other women, its continued sexual interest after we have already said no that makes it hard to. If a guy friend were to ask me out and simply accept the first no, I would have no problem with things going back to the way they were. In fact, I would be so, so happy.
But some guys just ignore women the first dozen times or so. I once turned a guy friend down three times, and then one day, out of the blue, he announced he could'nt stop thinking about me and wanted to see me... unclothed and in a severely humiliating position Needless to say, I severed the friendship, because for me, that was pushing past bounderies I had made clear and just generally creeping me out.

Its not that you have aspergers. Guys are more straightfoward, they say what they mean more then girls, and they can be better friends.

I'm sorry they end up wanting to be more then just friends. But if they are just having sexy talk and they aren't seeking a relationship, I'd say your more then fine getting close to them or being sexy back if you want to.

I don't like girls cause they have continually betrayed me (in my eyes if nobody elses) and I frankly dislike them as people more then with boys. Then again I've only like a couple people from the moment I've met them so I don't know. (Then again the ones that weren't relatives have all been boys).

My point is that if you don't want to deal with girls then more power to you. One may become inexplicably attached to you for a given length of time no matter how you are or what you do. I don't know what to tell you if that happens.

If you feel the need to do something girly or just go clothes shopping you have your mom. And if you don't have your mom make friends with a gay guy.

P.S Hardly anyone is entirely male or female so that is why not every male or female likes entirely male or female things.

I have a problem connecting to other aspies women, but not women in general.