Female Aspies? Social behavior?

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This. Although in some situations I am genuinely shy, as well. The article that made me much more sure I am on the spectrum was about Aspie girls, and it mentioned that many find a special female friend who looks after them, and that happened to me. I got along with other children at first by being very submissive, playing up some of my strange and 'stupid' traits for laughs, and not expressing anger, because that was how you got along with adults so I suppose I just used the same principle, and it worked until everyone hit puberty and people started wanting more well-rounded friends, not just a human doormat who played the clown all the time.

It also mentioned that many girls on the spectrum are obsessed with animals and philosophical questions rather than inanimate objects and scientific questions, and that was me too.

My interests now are still more feminine than the interests typically associated with autism, although often just as nerdy. For example I like language, not maths. I also develop extremely strong obsessions with famous people, which are different to stalkerish obsessions because I have no desire to meet them and am not motivated by sexual attraction, so they're quite safe from me. I didn't fit in with the other fans when I'd visit fansites, even though we had a common interest.

It might depend upon gender expression. While male gender nonconformity (boys seeming feminine) is generally much more looked down upon than female gender nonconformity (tomboys), studies have found that people are also more likely to be tolerant of gender nonconformity in the opposite sex than in people of their own sex. So if you're a tomboy, you won't get as much crap as a feminine boy overall, but the relatively mild crap you DO get will come mainly from other girls. If you're a feminine boy, first of all you have my sympathies, second of all, it will be other boys who are the most hostile to you.

This COULD account for the different experiences here. Personally, I was never visibly gender nonconforming enough to be targeted for gender-related behaviour (I was less feminine than average, but as a girl, I could get away with quite a lot of that before being thought to have 'too far'), and perhaps because of this I can't say boys and girls differed in their tendency to accept or reject me. I've seen research that suggests there's an extremely disproportionate number of autistic people in the transgendered community, suggesting some kind of link between autism and nontraditional gender expression.

I know autistic women who had other girls take them under their wing in childhood. But I had something terrible instead. Girl bullies would pretend to take me under their wing and then use me to bully and laught at while claiming to be my friend.

I was about twenty when I realized how messed up this was. I had made a couple real friends, or rather they made friends with me since I can't initiate friendships. And... I would feel in a weak or vulnerable state and I would brace myself for the inevitable twisting of the knife... and it never came. I would show my trouble with language and wait to be laughed at, wait for them to fluorish their skills to show they were better than me... and it didn't happen. After that it finally clicked and I dropped the false friends instantly.