Were The Feminists Aspies?

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Duh, I'm so socially inept. lol. I, too, wanted to say thanks for a great thread.

Agreed. I was just pointing out the distinction in the definitions involved, i.e., that good communication is not equivalent to deceit.



That's right. That's why I used the word usually, to take exceptions into account.



Sorry I wasn't clear on that. I used the abbreviation non-verbals for non-verbal communiation, i.e., body language.



I meant that ideally people would do things more in the way Callista outlined, treating issues as broader human rights ones, for example. However, in reality, groups do not do this, but form their own categories and biases (e.g. the sometimes seen reverse bias against men).



No. I agree with Callista that, ideally, the problems should be dealt with under human rights. However, I'm aware that movements such as feminism are needed in reality to highlight the issues of a particular group and that they usually have to make use of reverse bias, especially near the beginning, to get off the ground. I'm just saying I wouldn't be able to start a movement or participate in one to the extent I could be given a group label, due to various aspects of my nature preventing me. I cannot think in terms of reverse bias, for example. So an AS person like me, at least, would not have started feminism .



I'm just using reality in the everyday sense, to highlight the difference between ideals/theories and what's done in practise.



Same here. I often feel the impetus to do something, and sometimes do it. I'm sensitive to social justice. I just cannot participate in movements to the extent I could be labelled "[something] activist" or "feminist", or start such movements.

Last edited by outlier on 10 Mar 2009, 5:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

as a kid i felt like i was a boy's brain in a girl's body.
as i grew i felt like i was a boy's brain in a woman's body.
as i write i feel like i am a man's brain in an ageing woman's body.

i feel half man and half woman but look feminine.

i do not think in terms of sexuality and gender much.


on the issue of the original feminists being aspies?
i do not know.
we coul dig them up and ask them?

^ Very similar to me.

^ oh good. someone relates.
and catweasel was one of the best tv programs to ever hit Australia in kid's viewing time.

^ Yes. I watched it again yesterday!

I see a rightful deconstruction of culture. Culture being old habits taken for granted, that might have once had some meaning.

Some common vision is needed, or it loses culture status, but we have some deeper problems.

I know it from the French which I could never spell, but Milue being all the people, and Milie being a group of people gathering to fight without side or reason, all against all, just to see who is the last standing.

This does seem to carry into our mass culture, often labled freedom, but in fact, a people without goals.

We have never been in agreement about such basics as education, public health, human rights.

Civil Rights Era is a fine example, protesting being denied equal treatment brought fire hoses and attack dogs, burning a few cities brought full recognition of rights.

All of our claims of being new and improved moden apes are doubted, we have done a lot of dumb things since then.

Common cultural goals do take the fun out of it for some, lawyers come to mind, everything must make work for lawyers. The war on drugs could also be called the surplus lawyer relief act.

Top Bankers and Brokers seeking bailouts to cover their bonuses is another example. Those who played the economy against all, demanded a free market, lost other people's money, now want welfare to cover them, because every one else losing is the system, not them. They want a few trilion in Rich People Stamps, yet do not want to disclose income or assets.

The purpose of Government is to regulate the Courts, the Markets, and the Money. I say three strikes and you are out.

So AS, people who ask, how does that work?, are subversives.

We ask basic questions with no wiggle room.

Keeping everything confused and constantly unresolved does favor some, but not most. I see the purpose of the present in raising, educating, the next generation. Most cultures are based on this.

Education is the greatest predicter of the future, and we have a fragmented and fee based system mostly run for Teacher Unions. In all of Europe, education continues as long as you can make the grades, without tution and student loans.

Our taxes are as high as Europe, but they get free healthcare, education, and we get to pay interest to banks on top of taxes. I do business in Europe, there is a simple no fee bank account to bank account transfer, that makes credit cards, Paypal, useless.

Their overall cultural values are not up for being privatized. After the crash of 29 we knew enough to regulate markets, the Glass Segal Act of 1933, and it worked till deregulation, which crashed the market in less than a decade.

I also see that Europe is a nice place to visit, well kept towns, green space, without the land killing urban sprawl we produce.

These are the cultural values of Europe.

China has a one child policy and a plan to educated more Phd's than America has population.

Most new technology, the majority of patents, are now coming out of Asia.

America has focused on fighting communists, the ChiCom, Korea and Viet Nam, Then Narco terrorists, then Islamic terrorists, and is losing on all fronts.

This fear fighting has turned the most productive country on earth into Great Depression II.

Government is our ultimate welfare class.

People in bread lines will be looking for new ideas,

Those Euro Socialists do pay less taxes and get more.

The economy of China is still growing.

I do not see a New World Order plot, it is the wealthy who will lose the most.

It was all caused by a lack of a cultural center, something that most, nearly all, will agree is a good goal for the next generation.

So my fellow Wrong Planeteers, I say defineing that new center, that everyone can support, to be a job we are most fit for, for we are too dumb to lie!

Millie: I also relate to feeling like a "man" trapped in a woman's body. I was starting to really feel paranoid about it, but maybe it's not such a bad thing. Duality can be an interesting and crazy force to reckon with.

outlier: I understand now. I stopped talking about the ideal world so long ago that I forgot there were optimists. lol

Inventor: I agree with most of what you say here again. A couple of exceptions: see a rightful deconstruction of culture. Culture being old habits taken for granted, that might have once had some meaning.

One can never fully deconstruct culture because we are inside of culture, and that makes us players in it respectively.
It's sort of like math, you can't be inside and outside of the [ set ]. Off topic, I finally get to use my one good math analogy-Not a math person here. Besides, culture is constantly evolving, and true change is glacially slow. It's just that we're beginning to see the culmination of a lot of bad practices that we've been doing for a Very long time. And in our lifetimes it seems rapid and threatening.

Your point about freedom was good and is a rarely noted one. In my own life, I have found the most freedom through limitations. When I speak of limitations, I don't mean such things as cruelty and intolerance. But I think we have an over-abundance of choice and also of feelings of entitlement in not only this society, but the world.
There are theories that sociologists are formulating now which state that the most pressing social problem/ phenomena of the 21st century will be the multiplicity of choice and the ever increasing and dangerous trend of customization.

I just saw on the news yesterday that doctors are finding ways to let people customize their child as a fetus. When does this go from picking hair and eye color, to stamping out socially and supposedly medically "undesirable" traits.
I was disgusted at the headline: "Designer Babies." Human beings are not dolls. And I'm afraid of people's basic misunderstanding of genetics....eye color, for instance, a supposedly minor trait in many minds, is related to an entire host of things. When will people realize that all is intertwined? And that if you tug on a string the whole ball of yarn unravels. This is just eugenics repackaged.

And I'm particularly disgusted with the people who want to cure every disease on the planet. I don't like seeing people's lives being affected by sometimes horrible, chronic, and fatal illnesses, any more than most. But people have to die sometimes. Imagine a planet where no one died. We don't have the resources to sustain that, both physically and socially. No one promised people a rose garden.

The purpose of Government is to regulate the Courts, the Markets, and the Money. I say three strikes and you are out.

This assertion is only partially true. Libertarians have been claiming for ages that government is not just ineffective, but too big. That we don't need any social programs, down to police and fire for some who follow that philosophy. They claim that charities, private industry, just good ol' people will step up to the plate. In my naive teen days, I thought it was a wonderful philosophy of personal responsibility. It's a load of crap.
What's stopping people now from lending a helping hand? In a world with as many people as this one has, in societies that are as dysfunctional as the ones that exist now, it doesn't work. It's the same reason anarchy doesn't work. Libertarians and others like them are just a bunch of adults acting like petulant children, whining about the unfairness of actually having to live in the world and be responsible.
And they are the first to call the fire department when their houses burn down on private non-county owned roads outside of the public jurisdiction.

Government exists because most people are incapable of taking care of themselves responsibly, let alone securing the future of their society/culture. I am no fan of government, particularly how it's construed now. And there are many ways to govern. But that doesn't mean that we have come up with anything much more effective than some form of it, for living in a large society.

It's true that businesses are asking for undeserved for bailouts. What's new? The world is run by for profits. The problem has rarely been resources, but the allocation of such. One of the most pressing problems in the world is the distribution of existing wealth.
And our money has no intrinsic value anymore, anyway. How can we, as a nation, be broke, but come up with unfanthomable amounts of money on a whim. Our money isn't backed by the gold standard, and hasn't been for a long time now. The government itself isn't supposed to be able to print money....at least not in the executive branch certainly. I think a law against that was passed or maybe repealled after the Great Depression. Basic common sense, if I'm broke, I can't just make more money. How do you have a negative of what, a trillion? And have nearly $800 billion the next day. Anyhow, the federal reserve repealled the law against basically counterfeiting our money ages ago....I can't remember how and where our money was printed originally, but basically our entire economy is unconstitutional. Money was initially supposed to be handled separately...in case of a national crisis. And our money is in all sorts of hands, spread everywhere. Without the gold standard, we might as well rename the U.S.A. Monopolyland.

You mentioned education. Education in the real sense of the world is a revelation. What we have instead is schooling and indoctrination. It's not merely a fragmented system with payoffs that's the problem, it's leaving the molding of minds to institutions fueled on greed and a government content with turning out obedient citizens.
Yes, other countries do appear to produce better minds than we do. And no doubt, they do a better job with some of the basics....well many of the basics and other things, but they have their own agendas as well.
I, personally, blame the industrial revolution. Agriculture may have had it's own problems, but the moment that the physically body was entirely disposable, people were devalued in ways that were unlikely, if not inconceivable before. Essentially it was a move from physical slavery, which always has its limits, to the social and psychological slaver of capitalism. I don't care what other "ism's" have cropped up, claiming to counteract capitalism....they weren't truly different. Just totalitarianism repackaged, and noticeable these "socialist" countries had their own factories, etc.......so how is a support of industrialization not a support of capitalism. You can't opt out of this system.

One doesn't have to be beaten with a whip anymore, one merely has to quit, be fired, or refuse to work again and slowly starve to death if a person doesn't have enough of a social support network. At some point, if you don't die, most people get tired of homelessness/poverty and return to some kind of employment. Even government programs pay people a pittance, really, in a world where rent in most cities is insane, even on the low end, unless you're middle class, and even then, actually upper class. I remember when you could still use cash and opt out of having credit cards. Try buying anything today without one. I've seen signs in stores saying "Cash not accepted." In what kind of world is money, the exchange of a symbol of value, for a real object of value, in order to produce/acquire more things of value not accepted......that the ultimate social control.

Europe has it's own problems, including that of xenophobia...and other issues surrounding freedom. But I am starting to wonder if there is anything redeemable about the U.S.

Your point on a lack of a cultural center in the U.S. is also worth noting. The very thing that people celebrate about us, the so-called melting pot, may be our downfall. I don't mean that cultures shouldn't interact and reproduce. I don't mean that people from another part of the planet shouldn't come here. But what is American culture? When everything that we do is based on money and is filtered through the homogenizing lens of assimilation, is there anything to fall back on, any real tradition to anchor us when people need a center. I think we became too powerful too quickly for such a young nation. Even old people here think that a 100 years is ancient. A house is historic if it's been somewhere for 75 years, etc. Other nations, other "distinct" peoples know that historic is a 1000 years. It's like we have no history, or not enough of one, at least.

I would love to define a new cultural center. But history is a numbers game...the statistics and probability are against us. So much depends on the zeitgeist, as they say. History is written by the victors. And change is always slow. We wouldn't be fighting something as simple as culture, but something that most people consider "human nature" itself. And people see "human nature" as largely immutable, whether it really is or not.

So, I´ve been reading this book called "The Red Queen" (mentioned earlier on this thread). I just finished a chapter about sex differences; the author explains how men and women have evolved, for various reasons, to be different from each other. Just like with every other book I´ve read, I don´t seem to be much like a biological "woman" at all! I can´t say I´m like a man in a woman´s body either, because he described men as being aggressive (or violent), competitive, polygamous/opportunist and highly status-oriented. It´s as if I am a different gender all my own! Does anyone else feel like this? By the way, it is a great book- (I was describing it only very simplistically and superficially just now). It is written scientifically, so it´s easy to understand. What I like about that kind of book is that it helps me to understand other people better, and what makes them tick, though it doesn´t seem to describe me.

With all of these social books, I just seem to be so not-a-woman. He was writing about how romance novels and women´s magazines are geared to women´s tastes...guess that explains why I could never relate to these things at all...(although I did have a phase as a teenager when I read romance novels as comedy- they are pretty funny sometimes- and wrote my own comedy versions of them, pitting 2 teachers together or something). Well....anyway....

When I read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", I did not relate to being a woman AT ALL. In some ways I was more like a man- (needing my space, liking to be alone when I´m upset); or, if I wasn´t like a man in other ways, at least the author explained men in a rational way which I could understand because the author is a man. But the way he described women, they just sounded like totally irrational creatures. I guess I would just feel more comfortable if there were a lightening up of gender roles. I think the feminist revolution was basically a good thing, but, as someone mentioned earlier, there needs to also be a changing of the male stereotype.

I have forgotten the name of the clinic/research centre, but there is study being run in the UK right now about connections between AS and gender.

Gender is as artificial/"unreal", limited and limiting, oppressive/socially controlling a category as autism/aspergers. It is a social construct, like AS.

People don't naturally come in one or the other gender. Society provides the stereotype, and people fit themselves into one or the other as well as they can. They are supposed to pick the gender that "matches" their sex. If they don't they will be discriminated against.

Most people seem to learn the socially-approved gender behaviours for their sex without too much difficulty/protest, ( though neither the psychological damage to the individual involved, nor to society as a whole, has ever been measured ), but many people labelled AS also experience "gender-dysphoria", ( another medical term for not doing things the same way as everybody else ).

I agree about feeling like neither. Or a mixture of both.

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Interesting that you write about this, ouinon, because I have always believed that gender is a social construct. However, now there seem to be many theories, supported by scientific fact, that it is "biological". Men and women do seem to have differently wired brains. Of course, the AS brain is a different wiring anyway; so it would be interesting to know how much of this is an innate, "brain wiring" difference, or how much is social. Once again, it brings up questions like whether or not a group of feminists are likely disproportionally AS or borderline.

And I am sure we are not the only group of humans with non-average/different "brain-wiring", different/non-standard metabolic processes causing our brain to function differently.

If the argument for "real"/innate gender is differences in brain-wiring then society needs to prepare for the emergence of several different genders, which is something that the "queer" movement campaigns for recognition of.

But even if gender(s) could be correlated with brain-wiring, that does not change the fact that it is a social construct, and brain-wiring would just be part of why certain people feel happier performing one gender rather than another.

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First off, I do not have a problem with feminism...it is more that i do not relate to classic notions of being a woman, so a woman's movement as such, just doesn't sit with me.

I like my body - i love my body in fact, and i have no wish to change it or change my sex...but like some AS people i live with a very blurred notion of male and female operating within me.

Growing up, this was a hard thing. These days I am mature enough to embrace it and actually enjoy it.

i have viewed this thread for days and i love Morgana's posts and threads....

But i really do not think in these terms. at the purest level i think in terms of individuals and minds. this extends into sexual preference as well. i think in temrs of bodies too - but find objects easier to contend with.

And i cannot seem to adhere to any organised groupings per se. even in 12 step programs I have been the perpetual individual who never really fits in...the one who gives an opinion against the current. i know i am not alone here with that.

Now, in saying that, i have a healthy respect for feminism and am fairly glad others really did make strides for women's rights from early on through to now, (and i think GLoria Steinem is totally f**k -able .... whoops...maybe that is the bloke in me...and i am telling the truth there. )

You know, when i was a small kid, when Germaine Greer was writing THe Female Eunuch - she came to our house and interviewed my mum. My mum said she was used in the data and was treated as if she was an example of "the downtrodden woman" - the Catholic mum with 6 kids - workin gher way up to having eight. Now that is interesting to me.

My mum is clearly undiagnosed AS and she puts her hand up to MANY traits but cannot quite say she has AS like i do. BUt she is releived about autism in our family as it explains so much that mystified her. I actually know the way my mum lived as a woman back then had more to do with her wanting controllable and clearly defined connection with humans - and so she would pop out babies as they made sense to her and became like a special interest....she popped them out like a machine and when they hit communicable age she discarded us for the next googling gurgler ushering forth from her loins. she was a walking dictionary on babies. still is.

My point is you never quite know peoples' motivations for carving out the life they carve. and my mum - who is brilliant - and probably has AS - had her reasons that were i suspect, a far cry from Germaine's assumptions in the end.

still i am glad the feminists at least educated women about choices.
But it just never really applied to me much at all.

and if Gloria Steinem was younger, i would still like to f**k her.

Last edited by millie on 11 Mar 2009, 6:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Wow, millie, that was pretty interesting about your mum and Germaine Greer....I read that book. I remember I thought it was a little far fetched in a few parts.

Actually, the reason I started this thread was because I had seen another thread in the Women´s Forum where women wrote about gender issues, and so many said that they did not feel "womanly". They were mostly younger women, and I tried to analyze why I did not have this problem much when I was younger, but it got progressively worse as I became an adult. I realized it could be one of two things: either feminism made it easier for me to feel like a woman because there was a group of women calling for different ways of seeing women and their roles in society, or, as I got older, I may have become more aware of the social "role" and stereotypes for women- (it may have been a combination of both, of course).

In addition to that, all my life I tried to analyze why I tended to have difficult relationships with people, or why people seemed easily irritated by me. Before I discovered the possibility of being on the spectrum, I had many different theories and "logical" explanations for these problems. For the longest time, I thought many of my problems were caused by the fact that I was a woman, I was somehow "threatening", and "unenlightened" people might be reacting to my way of being. I went through a phase of reading a lot of books written by (sometimes) angry feminists, and some of their experiences seemed to be similar to mine. So, I assumed this was how it was. At some point, however, I become tired of feeling angry, and I knew I had to resolve my problems in another way. So, I guess feminism has been a pretty big part of my life and my development somehow...although I never did more than just read about it and think about it.

But, I like what you say about just being individual and seeing people as individuals. This is the best way to be, I think.

Aside from the minor problems, the body we are stuck with, the brain wirings, I only have two problems, everyone, an impossible group to please, and sub groups who make claims of ownership of some traits, like they stood alone.

Through my work in education I have been told it is a female thing, which does not compute to me, being like the Spanish, La Mesa, for table, and I never knew they were all girls.

Could this be the boundry thing mentioned in AS? Is my work bench with tool racks a butch mesa?

I measure human progress through good times and bad by feeding and educating the children, the quickest and most effective path to the future, which seems to make me female.

I try, but find it impossible to base a future on football and war, proper male subjects.

I am very male brained with machines, but then I use them for fine art Giclee printing.

The Physics of the perception of color. I am not sure if this is a male, science, or a female, fashion, issue.

I have a hard time with feminists, I just read the book and thought the writer made some good points.

Perhaps I am biased, I did read it at a female table, in a female chair, and I think books are also la.

Others, who I do not think read the book, are the Grand Klegal of Femminism, a known hate group.

Much is cultural. Three guys were sitting in a bar in New Orleans, having a very long and detailed discussion about cooking, none of them were gay. The world over the great Chefs are hetro males, with a minority of females, who can also manage the books, and yet cooking is claimed as a female role.

I have met these women chefs, very male brained, and some of them did have girl friends. I ask odd questions, a lack of boundries, but they answered, they were not just attracted to women, they were talking to me, but it came out that what they needed was a wife, it fit their life.

The basic was they liked coming home to a clean house, and kept a girl because they could. When they read about exploiting women, they thought it unfair that males got it all, they wanted their fair share. All of the rich and powerful women in history kept fair young maids, and they were not just for some light dusting.

It may just be me, but I have a hard time assigning gender to great thought. I am a bi-thoughtist thinker and proud of it.

Our failure at social role playing, may be because of the assigned gender ideas that come with it.

We are mostly male and female, but species thought has to include both. Here at the AS end of the world it does.

The most common response from society is gender sterotyping, they view the world from between their legs.

Readers and thinkers are not sex defined, they are a minority, less than 10%, groups called IN, EN, AS, and as the truth of thought is universal, pan-sexual thinkers.

I think this Uni-sexual thinking might have something to do with the reactions we get from the sexualy defined world.

In the Tantric school of thought trancending sex is needed to reach the godhead which is both male and female. This does not have to do with sex on the physical plane, but with understanding that both come from one. Trancending life's roles, seeing all as one, changes everything.

Wrong Planet is well on the way to enlightenment.

Yes. And growing up with these feelings (and not knowing what they meant) made me even more of an outsider.