Aspie dating success stories

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This is an autism forum, we shouldn't concern ourselves with bigotry that might impact members experiences here unless it's anti-autism bigotry. Complaining about other forms of bigotry being expressed is actually anti-autistic bigotry against the poster expressing the bigotry. Expecting posters to not express bigotry is setting unreasonable minimum expectations.

An aside...
■ "Aspie dating success stories" sounds, to me, like a request to read about specific events that actually happened
■ Reading in deeper meanings, by reporter or reader, seems unnecessary
■ Speculative extrapolations to groups of people might be off-topic...especially w/o solid supporting data

Might some of this discussion be off-topic???

Afaik, it's both common and within the rules for discussions to go fairly off-topic here.

Some other forums I use are much stricter about a lot of things that we just accept here.

And this is my concern from "over-policing". there are specific sections of WP where members seek support. there are others where they want to share their experiences. Creating a safe space where a person shouldn't have to be pilloried for saying one thing that triggers. I don't have stats, but it's my observation that the diversity of people posting on WP dsicussion boards between 2011 - 2024 has decreased, its always the same few people who post here. there may be multiple reasons for this, one obvious one is the regulars here are older generation and younger folk may have kept their membership but migrated to other platforms for friends/networking/chatting.

For this reason lets not make WP more uncomfortable by continually reporting certain members for merely making observations.

Are they being reported for 'merely making observations' or for making sexist generalizations?

If one's 'mere observations' are consistently synonymous with sexist generalizations ones should anticipate those observations being treated as sexist generalizations.

It seems like it’s perfectly understandable for people to choose to make reports when and if they feel like rules are being broken in some way. In any case, they will continue to do so, and moderators can decide whether a comment, post, or thread was acceptable or not. If it is deemed acceptable, then nothing will happen.

Should we also allow other problematic posts to occur here? What about generalizations (etc.) based on race, sexual identity, or religion? I realize that people may be uncomfortable when their sexist posts are called out, but an easy solution to that is to stop making them. Based on the rationales and justifications some folks make around here, it seems like a lot of them are capable of modifying their behavior. Perhaps the primary issue is that they don’t want to.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 01 Oct 2024, 5:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It does happen, bee. There are lots of threads where women have offered support and advice to men even despite any generalisations that might occur. I even made a thread about autistic males’ mental health and encouraged men to talk about their feelings being stereotyped as Incels in the media. I’ve been friends / friendly with lots of men who self-describe as involuntarily celibate. That’s never been the problem imo. The problem imo is that this is not reciprocal and when women need or request relationship or mental health support there’s just crickets, or in some cases the woman is mocked and teased for her posts.

there is a difference between sharing published statistics and making interpretations. In that instance Sure! qualifiers and appropriate use of critical thinking should apply and we all can jump in. I do this regularly.

However, what is wrong with sharing perceptions? we all carry some level of personal bias. Let's not pretend some people here aren't seeing the world shaped by their past bad experiences.

Let's get back to the topic - sharing success stories (or another thread sharing pitfalls) might involve sharing how we think. It may be deep held personal beliefs, or situational thoughts arising due to having a lucky streak, a period of success or hitting a wall. I think toning down the recriminations would be help make this a less caustic place.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing perceptions unless they involve sexism, other forms of bigotry, or break WP rules in some other way. If they break the rules (like by expressing bigotry), reports and other forms of pushback seem reasonable.

We already discussed how to share perceptions here without engaging in sexism. People might want to think about some of those methods moving forward, especially if they regularly have posts and threads edited or removed.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 01 Oct 2024, 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll make one small correction. there is a parent section of WP where there are family, parents, guardians who are members and many post regularly here. WP is also a safe space for many members who are nuerodivergent and not necessarily autistic.

That has nothing to do with anything that’s been said in this thread. Besides that, they aren’t the folks who are typically causing problems.

the pushback is about where the boundaries are and what is puported to trigger other members. Its funny when uni students complain about something to a lecturer they often use the phrase "many of my friends or many of the class also found this to be a problem". Over time, you treat this qualifier with caution, not saying other students aren't affected but when you ask who are the others invariably there is nobody.

Wow, so you are allowed to make generalisations but absolutely nobody else is allowed...right, got it....

I’m quite confident men wouldn’t accept us generalising about (all) men in negative ways, even if we provided stats from misandrists about violence against women and sex crimes, unless we used multiple qualifiers. Even those of us who have experienced significant trauma don’t tread into those waters, partly because it’s not true or the fault of all men but also because it would be sexist and hurtful to the good men of WP. Besides, it’s against the rules.

I personally would not care twighlight, if your thoughts are coming from personal feelings and you tell us this is how you feel.

A good rule of thumb would be to consider whether making a similar generalization about another demographic such as a racial minority would be offensive in some way. I think the problem is that many are desensitized to sexism since it’s normalized in society and has largely been normalized on WP over the years. That doesn’t make it any less harmful or problematic.