Were The Feminists Aspies?

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Bloody great to read your post, Morgana.
Bloody great to read your post, Inventor.
Bloody great to read your post above, Outlier.

And my personal view these days accords with the tantric notion of transcendence that Inventor closes on in the post above.

For me, what was a great puzzle and trial in the first half of my life, has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of my AS....The ability and capacity to understand both male and female ways of being and thinking.

I have always identified with my father more than my mother. He was the stronger of the two, he projected strength, my mother projected weakness. He was also the more nurturing of the two. His strength, I am talking about mental, psychological strength, had nothing to do with his maleness and his nurturing came naturally and not attached to a particular gender. Someone had to nurture us and the job fell naturally to him. I chose to model myself after my father because, of course, I admire strength over weakness. It could easily have been the other way around, with my mother being the stronger more nurturing parent, and then I would have grown up modeling myself after her. My father was not a macho type, but he wasn't a wimp either. My mother was purely feminine, I think, without a trace of maleness in her composition. Yet, I knew that not all females were weak and lacking nurturing skills because there were other females in the family with the kind of strength and independence I admired that didn't detract from their femininity but gave it a greater, extra dimension. What I came to understand was that the people, adults, I admired most seemed to be well balanced and in touch with both their masculine and feminine sides. I think that a child would be extremely fortunate to have two such well balanced parents and that such a child would have a much easier time finding their place in the world, whether it was a neurotypical place or an autistic place, than a child having only one well balanced parent, or, even less fortunate, a child with a completely macho type father and a completely fem type mother. There would be so much freedom, so much to pick and choose from, and it would all be good. There would be nothing to prove. I do think that we, as autistics, have more going for us than against us, thanks to our beautiful well balanced, magnificently wired brains, it just needs to be realized and recognized. Sex is so much more than sexual. So much more than who is screwing who. or who is aggressive and who is submissive.

millie: I hope I didn't come across as thinking that you have a problem with feminism. I didn't/ don't think you do.
I've been thinking a lot about my own body, sex, gender, etc. over the past 3 years or so. I've always felt, blurred, as you put it, which is a good way to say it, growing up, but didn't really know what to do about it as I was older, as an adult, as a person who had sex, identified as a lesbian and didn't want to lose this community of women and feels/ felt invested, more than in other groups, and yet, not feeling like a classic woman, either.
So, I understand your point about a traditional women's movement, I think.

I also didn't associate any of my feelings about my body to AS. As I am still learning about AS/Autism, seeking a correct diagnosis--though I think I'm getting closer, and not until this site, found other people who felt differently about their bodies/minds with respect to sex and gender differences, without the talk on the internet, and offline as well, of being transgendered or transexual.

To me everything starts and exists on an individual level, first and foremost. I've never liked groups, even ones not dedicated towards activism. And I've been the odd one out as well, when trying to join or sustain myself in a group.

"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. "

I just realized today, that a friendship that ended with someone several months ago was due in part to my relating to that person as an object, in many ways. A light bulb went off, a lot of things made sense for me, and not just for that one person.

I've invested much of my adult life in one sexual preference/ identity, for myself, although not one view of such for everyone, in general. In the past years that I've been rethinking things.....I don't know what any of it means for me anymore, if the old rules apply for me, so to speak. I'm not quite sure how to proceed. And I know that I would lose the few people in my life that don't seem to be completely fake or dishonest, if I seemed to them to be reinventing myself or comfortable with a more fluid identity. They shouldn't matter.....I'm just not sure if I have the energy to go down that road.

I like Gloria Steinem...I had a signed copy, although not autographed to me, I bought it at a used book store, of her book, "Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions." I used to think that Camille Paglia was the more f**Kable one, for my own taste, but then some of views got over the top...and after she stopped being a columnist on Salon.com, I lost track.

Very interesting point about Germaine Greer and your mother. I haven't read The Female Eunuch, but sometimes I think some women, feminists, look down on motherhood. It's one thing to make a choice for oneself, but another, to condemn others. Also interesting because of wanting to have a connection with humans through having children. What better way to connect than to make people......although it doesn't always pan out that way in reality.

Morgana: I think your statement about feeling like a different gender is spot on.

ounion: "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."

I'm in agreement here.

Morgana: "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."

Much of my own experiences echoes your post. Having spent a lot of time over the years primarily socializing with women, I noticed how much of things that women do, are things that all humans do. I met a lot of women claiming to be better or more evolved than men, and doing some of the same things they accused men of, both in and out of the queer community.

Inventor: "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. "

I couldn't have said it better myself. I also think I have issues with boundaries. It seems like someone keeps moving the line, and I keep crossing it, and people get upset, and no one tells me where the line is and why it's not apparent.

Point taken about chef's......I've never understood why cooking was seen as female. Why men aren't seen as more nuturing. For myself, I grew up with a single mother, who was both strong-support and stability wise, and physically, and nuturing in some ways. But I didn't see men as these monsters, despite that my father wasn't in my life--mainly because he couldn't be due to his own issues.

I think, too, that some women wanted "equality" purportedly, so they could exploit people the way they felt men had done.

Transcending gender, sex, like you said. I often wish I could transcend my entire body....form itself is limiting.