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

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Could change the name or description of PPR to 'Arguing the Toss from Entrenched Positions'. Not quite such a grand title, but more accurate.

I wasn't talking about politics, though (although feminism is inherently part of the issue, because it's about accepting autistic women's perspectives here and giving them validity as we do with men with autism). I just want to be able to come here and talk about how autism effects my life and share those experiences with other men and women who are experiencing similar challenges, without being told that my experiences are either somehow a lie or not real because someone already has a preconceived idea about what life is like for women and my described experiences don't match their preconceptions. Is that a political discussion or is it just a personal desire for acceptance?

Exactly! This is a description of my experience time and time again when trying to engage in any L&D threads and share my challenges with relationships. It's so disheartening to struggle one's whole life with romantic relationships, with relationships of any kind but especially the romantic variety, and when one finally finds a place to talk about those challenges they are invalidated because "it's easy for any girl to get laid if she wants".

I accept both autistic and non autistic females.

I think autistic women are cooler than autistic men though.

Shots fired. Nukes dropped. Lava erupted!!

dianthus,

I just feel that everyone should be able to state their opinion, regardless of who's forum it is. Otherwise it's excluding people. And I wouldn't want to be excluded from a man's forum, or any forum.

It may be a place to discuss women's issues, but men might be interested in women's issues for various reasons. And I feel maybe it's better to try to educate men that have the wrong idea so that they understand. If they understand and don't feel excluded, they may care more about women's issues and change their minds about certain things.

And maybe they won't change their minds, but that's ok. And I think many of the men who seem ignorant when it comes to women, are ignorant because they are young, or inexperienced, or maybe they don't even really know any women.

If we want men to understand us, it would be helpful to at least give them a chance. And yeah, some men are just jerks. And yes, women shouldn't have to take the high road and be the tolerant ones, but I'd rather be the better person if I think it's going to make things better.

Nobody has to agree with me on this, it's just my opinion, and why I've said what I've said in the past.

I think it’s disrespectful and downright abusive to insist on framing me as an abuser by systematically distorting my words. I am that guy, in case anyone isn’t aware of it already, and I never talked about your feelings or experiences, or any other woman’s, in that thread. What I said is still there if anyone wants to read it.

My apologies. What I wrote was a tangential take-off from what Dox47 said, and some of the responses to him. I think the notion that, somehow feminists might find a better reception if they were less 'strident' is mistaken.

I think your personal desire for acceptance becomes a political matter on this forum. It absolutely should not, yet it does. And I think that such a thing can happen is a failure of management/moderation.

For what it's worth, you have my full backing on the matter.

To save them the trouble of going looking for it I'll quote it right here:




You weren't talking about women's experiences and perceptions in that bolded part? Whose experiences are you talking about?

To be fair people often speculate or generalize about what other people experience in conversation. But there's always the possibility that someone might have personal experience with what you are talking about, and might disagree with your assessments.

Other posters responded to let you know that women do not experience it in the way you described, but you continued talking about it as if you know better than we do what we experience and feel about such things.

Again, I don't feel it's my responsibility to educate men who express really misguided viewpoints. I don't feel that it's my job to get them to understand where they are going wrong, or feel included, or get a chance or whatever else you are suggesting. I also don't think that it makes you the better person if you want to do those things.

You wander into a thread in the Women's discussion forum, the thread itself asking if it is common for AS women to be taken advantage of. And you say this:



Now, we all have various problems here in terms of social appropriateness and the like. But - that is inappropriate. Don't do that. Just don't. If you don't understand why not, I will try to explain. If you still do not understand, simply accept.

What I see: so intent on having it worse than anyone, you try and turn the thread into a pity party for yourself. Someone who can't only have a bad lot amongst other people's bad lots, but whose lot has to be the worst. To keep it thread appropriate, you go so far as to say that being constantly harassed is actually indicative of desirability. The implication being that it should in some way be welcomed. In an attempt to make it look like you know harassment isn't a barrel of laughs, you throw in a nice bit of victim-blaming (which at least recognises there is a victim), about how women need to learn to command respect.

(And then any number of women point out that you're wrong, and you don't accept it.)

And, of course, you switch to your problem. You can't get a date. And you posit that as worse than being harassed. That is what you say. There's no need to distort it - it's all there. The condensed version of what you say is: "You know how bad harassment is? Like, women have to learn how to command respect and s**t. Well, guess what: I can't get a date. So who is the real victim here?"

Don't do things like that.

Thank you for clarifying, and I appreciate your support.

I know what you think. I never said you had to agree with me. I was explaining my position on the matter. I think it does make me the better person, if we are comparing myself to a man who comes to the women's forum and makes insensitive comments. No one has to agree with me or do any of the things I suggest.

I am making no more comments on the matter because the basic points I am making are being misunderstood and I feel it's not worth arguing about.

I've got some long posts and a PM to respond to, which may take me a bit, so I'll drop this as sort of a placeholder.

If you haven't seen it, the heart of this long running issue goes something like this; a guy is upset about his lack of success in the dating world, and angrily posts about it, perhaps using some unfortunately sexist language; women on the site see it and naturally object, but do so by attacking the guy personally with comments like 'well if that's how you feel about women no wonder they won't go out with you' and so on, which provokes a defensive reaction, more people show up and start arguing either side, and eventually the whole s**tshow gets locked, until the next angry guy posts... Alex decided at some point that this was an inevitable feature of the demographics of AS, and instructed the mod team to essentially let natural selection work, i.e. let people say bitter sexist things, but then reap the reaction they get. This makes a lot of people unhappy, and has been a bone of contention for years, leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, to say nothing of the occasional open hostilities when new people show up and run face first into this without knowing the background.

Ideally of course the bitter men who can't get dates wouldn't blame women and make angry posts on the board about how horrible they are, but since we don't live in that ideal world, recognizing that forming a shame mob to rain opprobrium on disabled people who are venting probably isn't the most constructive action either might be helpful. I'm not a bitter guy who can't get a date, nor am I a woman who's probably tired of seeing bitter dateless guys blame my gender for their problems, so I can't speak firsthand of either experience, but I do know a pointless pissing contest when I see one. I happen to agree with Alex that this is sort of demographic destiny considering the population we're dealing with, but I also understand that it's an extra burden on the women who come here and not exactly fair; I just haven't thought of a good solution, and clearly no one else has either.

Yes, that makes sense, thank you. I am not personally offended by the comments, for the most part, so I don't entirely understand why people are angry. I honestly wasn't offended by the comments made in that thread. I don't know why, it just didn't make me feel invalidated as it did the other women. Perhaps it's because I haven't been here long and experienced what they have from some of the men.

But the arguing itself does upset me. I just think it's all unnecessary. Maybe I've just had enough of the anger and fighting in real life. I do get genuinely distressed by it. I get upset by it in real life too, so maybe it's just my personality.

I will have to learn to ignore it and just hope that it will get better.

With so much poo flinging around, it's hard to decide where to start replying at this point, and I won't have the time to keep up with it. Good work, I suppose.

Noöne's. As the text itself says, I was talking about evidence and facts. Evidence is evidence no matter what you feel about it.



Yes, and, what little speculation I did, I explicitly marked as such, like when I said that maybe you don't register the evidence that you're attractive because you take it for granted. Maybe. Saying maybe is incompatible with claiming certainty or trying to impose my speculation as more valid than your true feelings, which only you know, as you insist that I'm doing.

And the reason I speculated is that I experience clearly the other side of the coin: people have bullied me aplenty and have been mean to me in many different ways, but it never implied seriously that anyone found me sexually attractive. In particular, no woman or girl has ever found it even funny to suggest she'd like to do anything sexual with me. Most likely, it wouldn't work as a way to bully me, because she'd feel like the real victim if she had to do it. Even if we were actually getting along well, rather than she bullying me, it'd be a disgusting experience to her. Even if I were as nice as possible to her and tried to please her in every way---it'd be rape to her, period. I've read how prostitutes consider customers who kiss, hug and caress them particularly revolting, and it'd be no better in this case; possibly worse, because I wouldn't even pay her, and she'd know I don't even make the money to afford it.

This is just about the polar opposite to being sexually harassed, which women systematically experience, as you yourselves claim and is patently visible to all. The stark contrast between your experience and mine is far from being an isolated case, and the trend can therefore be summarized by saying women are attractive by default, while men aren't. Wanting serious relationships, where you don't abuse your partner in the first place, is a different matter, because it takes more than just physical attraction.



Therefore missing the point at best, and putting words in my mouth at worst, because I didn't make any claims about how you experience anything, as explained above.



No, I didn't accept the objections because they weren't based on my actual words, but on a straw man.

How about what was hopefully my answer to a post of yours. Can you relate to that one better?