Girls, Aspergers, and ... horses?

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Wooden horses on a rotating platform = Carousel


Interests of horses, rotating objects and fairground machinery occurring all together.

Just a thought.

$150-200/month + plus vet bills, farrier, equip... that's actually out of reach of most of the urban families I know, not to mention transportation, lessons, etc... it might be easy for people in your area, but not in mine. I guess growing up in a crowded urban environment also put me in contact with a lot more girls who were obsessed with horses because of the very few venues where we could meet up and not be the lone weirdo for being obsessed with them.

also, I don't personally know anyone who can afford one or two expensive cars, although I did encounter a few when I had a horse because the families had money (they were also pretty awful to be around). most people I know, a couple of hundred dollars is most of their family food budget. growing up, a few of the girls were like me, they could have a horse if they could earn the money for board and bills themselves, so mostly the horse obsession was a reality for kids of rich parents and in my area the demographic split is still firmly in place.

animals are just animals. i prefer humans instead. it's more efficient to spend time with humans than animals. animals are dirty and disgusting. im an aspie girl by the way. cars and other transits are better obsession than wild animals.

this makes me think that even though aspieness is a guy thing, aspie girls can't be masculine because they like these kind of things instead of mechanical things. i heard girls are better in biology then physics and vice versa for guys. i guess it's because girls are more emotional, so they have more sympathy for living things. guys' minds work mechanically, so i guess this is why they like something that works like their minds.

I've never heard that before, and I did get an official diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome when I was 28. I never had an obsession with horses, but I have ridden them a few times in my life. Even if I liked horses, the expense of taking care of one was too much for my parents as both of them had to work in order to live in a decent neighborhood with good schools for my brother and I. They even let a cat die after it got into a fight and lost a lot of blood because they decided that the thousands of dollars in vet bills was too much.

I tried to like horses before, since my mom loves horses and has one. I think she was actually trying to encourage me to like horses, but in the end that didn't work well. I think I was only trying to like horses because I though my mom would like me better if we had a common interest. I was even going to try to train one of my cousin's horses so I could ride it at one point, but that never actually happened. Horses just don't seem to like me and I have trouble being able to trust something that big with my life, since they could easily throw the rider off and kill them. And barns smell horrible (shoveling horse manure is NOT my idea of a good time. I'd rather just play a video game or something). A lot of girls where I live do like horses though, I've noticed.

yeah no horses here lol

i have a very strong interest in trains but thats only due to the fact that i work with them lol

I don't know.

Biology is the mechanics of living things.

Maybe it's just that more girls have the opportunity to study biology now and that the course requirements have changed.

In lots of courses, animal dissection isn't compulsory any more because of safety issues. Now, it's mostly fiddling about with plants, book reading and working in groups cooperating on Ecology field trips. There's also now usually a large coursework component.

Any animals that are studied are usually studied live or from a distance, there's no shooting, dissecting or stuffing involved any more. On the courses, people are told to have respect for living organisms and look after the planet. So there is a kind of "caring" ethos that's recently been introduced which girls might find appealing.

Diseases and pathogens were discussed, but these were usually talked about with reference to helping and treating people.


Most Biology courses I've been on, classes were 75% female.
Some were trying to study to become veterinary nurses, doctors/nurses, work with animals or ecology.

There were also guys who studied biology, but they were considerably outnumbered by females. Most teachers were male also.


In Physics classes, I've heard that the ratio was even more extreme. Often these classes were over 80% male. I've heard that it's not uncommon to have just one or no females in a class.

I'm pretty obsesses with horses. Not so much the sporting part but training and interacting with them. My horse is so easy to understand, as opposed to people I love training her in ways that make both of us happy.

I was born with the horse gene too. My parents don't like horses at all but they told me I wanted to stop whatever we were doing to pet any horse in any pasture anywhere since I was two or three years old. Other than that I had te horse posters above my bed, instead of the latest popstar. I drew all day, and I drew nothing but horses. I must have drew thousands over the years. I owned more barbie horses that barbie dolls, and don't forget my my little ponies. Of course I wanted my own horse so I put down 'horse' whenever I'd gotten a hold of my moms grocery list I even had a saddle before I had the horse to go with it. I guess it must be in my blood since my maiden name means 'rider' in German. Anyhow.

Wow... I filled out that I didn't know whether I have aspergers or not... writing this down like this is pretty confronting...

Desmond Morris (in 'the naked ape') says liking horses has something to do with having a high libido. This might be true

bwahahaaha that's awesome

milk, eggs, horse hahhaha


i did something kinda similar one christmas, i gave my mom a christmas list and started adding groceries to it
she actually bought all the groceries and christmas morning was like look in the fridge i was like damn mom thanks for the whipped cream and steakumms!

No- my obsession was cartoons (specifically classic ones from Disney and Warner Bros). I don't think I was really into animals that much (I like dogs, though). One of my friends is obsessed with horses to the point where she actually gets withdrawal symptoms from not being with them. Seriously.

IIRC a lot of girls are obsessed with horses not just aspergers ones. I personally have never had time for them.

I have never been interested in horses.

I am not sure i have AS. I didn't have much interest in horses, but obsessed over unicorns. From early elementary til possibly just out of h.s. I read somewhere that Aspie girls are more into mythical characters like unicorns?

I talked to the doc about my childhood horse obsession and she pointed out it's not the object of the obsession but the depth of the interest to the exclusion of other interests... so, even though a girl loving horses or unicorns is considered a "normal" interest, if the love leaves little room for other interests it falls into the realm of "special interest" for AS?ASD. I supposed normal girls can love horses or anything else like that, too, but that's only one criteria for dx.

horses, pillows, math, chemistry, miniatures... makes no real difference in the end.

I find almost all animals fascinating, but since I was raised in a large city I saw them rarely (only rode twice) and instead ended up getting obsessed with stray cats and owned but neglected dogs (which were plentiful). I used to fantasize about being the next Jane Goodall as a child, only for cats, and used to try various communication/body language experiments on them.

I still have periods where I indulge my various "animal crushes"...hours of watching capybara, frog, turtle, lion, etc. videos, researching, etc. when I am stressed.

I'm planning on launching a labor intensive daily updated website about animals sometime next year and have scooped up the appropriate domain names in advance.

Last edited by LinnaeusCat on 20 Nov 2009, 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

I thought many girls were obsessed with horses.
My HFA best friend loves them and has one, but I have no interest in them that exceeds other animals.