Emoal6 wrote:
I dont want to come off as the person who says the way we are is right(prejudice,etc.). What I do want to bring to the table is extreme similarities aspie males have with females traumatized by men.
Please take a moment to step back and see this for what it means and not as what you think it says. Aspie males are generally known to be fairly bad with females when it comes to romance. Part of the reason is because we're so different, we have our own little world we escape to when things aren't going our way.
But most of us would love to be the class president and prom king. We just know thats not gonna happen BASED ON OUR PRIOR EXPERIENCES. We know we dont fit in and we aren't the coolest people in the world when it comes to social norms(although I myself believe we are DEFINITLY the coolest people in the world, male and female aspie alike!).
We have been in otherwords "traumatized" by society. We no longer feel safe or comfortable around the other sex, let alone people in general. It has been "proven" to us that we dont belong, that we dont deserve proper treatment and normal reltaionships.
Now you look at females who have been raped or abused, in essence traumatized by men(usually). Its eerily similar. They no longer feel safe or comfortable around men(or women, depending on who traumatized them).
Remember, Im not trying to defend people who prejudize, but it is something that has been taught and learned. Like racism taught from father to son, except, this is taught by society to us. We learn growing up that we "aren't good enough" or we need to "get a life", that we're "ret*d".
So While I apologize for my fellow man being unable to escape the lessons we learned in childhood, I do ask for understanding in our faults, and some help with our reprogramming.
Actually, I think you are pretty dead on. The whole male/female thing exists even outside of Aspies, the difference is that Aspies, unlike NT men, aren't wired to lie to you about what they want and feel. I've spent most of my life surrounded by male relatives and friends, so I have no illusions about what men really think. I'm also pretty emotionless and have no maternal or domestic instincts whatsoever, so I probably relate to them better than I do most women just because I don't have that much in common with most women (they pretty much look at me like an alien).
So, having said that, I think what you are seeing is probably their perception of women (and I would hazard a guess that these are NT women) who they feel tax them because they can't relate to them in any way. I can't read most women (99.9999% of them) which I find very frustrating and I don't even want to bed them or marry them (because I'm a woman not into women), so I can't even imagine how much more frustrating that is for them. Personally, I had the same issues with NT men. They put me in almost immediate emotional overload with their neediness and I would just get up and walk off. Either that or they would try to talk to me about sports or something else I didn't find interesting and I would walk out. They could just as easily see that as prejudice and I can tell you that I had plenty of negative encounters when I was single over it. Basically, it came from my understanding that men date because they think it is going somewhere...mainly to bed and if it wasn't going to go there for me, I wasn't going to waste my time or theirs. THAT could be interpreted as prejudicial, but it was based on what I knew about men having been around so many. Anytime I've asked men about this point blank, they've agreed with it. They still think I'm atypical for a woman, but they've agreed with it.
I think a lot of books talk about this (as opposed to the problem for women) and they tend to generalize, but I think for the most part, their observations in regards to men trying to get to know women for romance or sex with NTs is probably spot on. If they can't read the social clues and don't know what to do with a woman to get her to respond, it has to be very frustrating and enough to make them give up on the whole mess. I can't read social clues, body language or any other subtle sign. I'm literal and they have to be as well for me to understand them. That isn't just rare, it's almost unheard of in the dating world. That entire world is made up of all these unspoken behaviors that baffle me and I'm sure them as well. While you may be more sensitive to what they are saying here about women, I would hazard a guess that they don't understand most NT men either. They just don't care about that from a romantic/sexual sense unless that is their preference. In other words, I think they probably generalize just as much about NT men.
As to how they treat women? From a purely personal experience, I have no problem with them at all. I've always gotten along great with them. Maybe that's because we're both clueless socially and blunt to the point of rudeness. I don't know. I just know that I have no issues with them. I've had far greater problems with women in general than men (and frankly that is my experience and I don't care if it sounds prejudicial). Women do not deal well with women like me in my experience which has been pretty vast. They don't understand me, nor, to be frank, do they want to. They most certainly do not want to look at any alternative to the choices they have made. I've done better with Aspie women as a whole and in fact my best friend is one (although neither one of us knew it at the time), but she and I even have our issues because I don't understand her "normal" female need to get married and have children (her words and not mine). And actually, now that I think about it, she would probably identify with this poster except that she would say that applies to all men. That kind of makes me laugh. She thinks she is much more normal than I am and now that I read this, she's probably right.
28 Jan 2007, 7:59 pm
