This "nice guys vs jerks" nonsense has to stop.

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I think that many straight women feel that way too. You see, men and women really just dont have much in common. But the fact that they are wired to want something from the opposite sex is what leads to all this confusion, misunderstanding, and resentment on behalf of men and women towards each other. I'd love to find a woman who is basically *man* on the inside and *woman* on the outside. That is, a woman who has a girly_girl/feminine(and occasionally sexxxay) appearance but thinks and talks more like a guy.

Oh. Whoops!



Yes, you do write in a girly way, but I'm not sure how I can tell. It may be your avatar subconsciously influencing my decision, or the way you phrase your thoughts.

If you were a guy, there would be more lewd posts from you in the adult forum.



Leif Erikson was a famous Viking. That's pretty manly. Just saying...



Yes, we should get back on topic.

I've been thinking, and I think part of the whole nice guys vs. jerks thing is a mislabeling. For one, a lot of the 'nice guys' overestimate their niceness. I also don't think that 'jerk' is the correct label for a lot of the guys that go to clubs and have success with women.

There is a sticky in this forum started by DataSage about how to pick up women. For guys that have the tools to actually do what the guide says I think it might be successful with some women. I also think that his guide largely describes what people are calling 'jerks.' But I do not think that 'jerk' is the correct term. What DataSage described was not being malicious to others, which is more of what a jerk is to me. (There are some jerks that have success, but the numbers are overblown).

However, DataSage's guide was basically a guide for how to be a douche.

Douches are not necessarily jerks, although they can be annoying, which is probably why they are labeled as jerks. Douches are frequently douches because of the way they dress. They might actually be decent people. But some people (jerks maybe?) are so annoyed by douches that they harangue douches for their douchebaggery even if their only problem with them is just that they find them annoying by a flash impression, maybe because of jealousy of the success douches have with women.

There is a site devoted to this. http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com/

Now what is evident to me is that this site bases what a douchebag is primarily on the way he looks. Basically judging a book by it's cover.

Maybe women like these guys because they'd have to be pretty confident to go out in public dressed like that.

Food for thought.

Mea culpa: I did not read the sticky about how to be a douche-bag.

And I make myself unpopular in these men-women threads.

But here I go anyway....

Has anyone tried just being people meeting people? There seems to be so much categorizing of people as jerks or douches, and gross generalizations such as men are like this, women like that. Maybe some of you are not recovered high schoolers yet -I am too old to even remember high school so its harder for me to empathise with this angst. In high school people are sorted into cliques, but that deminishes with time. Its like trying to date cartoons of real people by being a cartoon. A lot of comedies thrive on this sort of thing too.

In reality we are first and formost, uniquely human.

I hope I can get this across the way I mean it.

It is long...



I've gone to college for the past three years and have made several hundred attempts over that period.



There generally are some differences between men and women. For example: notice how the most attractive AS guy thread is very long, and the most attractive AS girl thread died. This is because of gender differences.



Now I'm not going to lie. I did intend that post for people in my generation who tend to have the word 'douche' in their lexicon. I'd imagine the dating game changes with age, so I have a hard time empathizing too far out of my range.

But I did not intend for that post to convey angst. 'Douche' is a pretty flexible term. Like 'jerk' it is largely up to the person's definition. Most commonly I hear the word 'douche' used to describe club goers or men that people who call people douches find irritating for no rational reason on their first impression of said douche. I'm not really using the term douche in a derogatory way to generalize. I'm just telling the guys that maybe they should superficially act more like what they consider a douche to be instead of having the attitude the creator(s) of http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com/ seem to have. One of the most constant complaints about douches is their seemingly inprobable success with the opposite sex, despite their 'douchiness'. So maybe the douchebags are on to something. If you think about what an actual douchebag is, that term does seem to imply that a guy who is called a douchebag will (how can I put this in a non rated R way?) come into physical contact with women.

So guys. Be a douche.

Well pardon me for a minute dears, I think I WILL go find that sticky.... [she trembled]

Testify: I couldn't agree more (and I like your username).

Zornslemma: I also agree, and in elaboration I would like to add that I think that's part of the cause of so much androgyny, gender confusion, and preferring friends of the opposite sex in AS people - NT Men and Women are fundamentally different, and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out (all you need to do is observe and watch movies to know).

But for some reason people with AS seem to either have characteristics of both, or seem to lack that strong identity or those set of identifying personality traits, which results in gender confusion, and even more confusion in the dating world.

Although NT men and women are oppositional, they know that and understand the ways in which they differ (due to popular culture and the media) so they have a series of relationship rituals to follow that dictate how they need to interact; the NT man compliments the NT woman and buys her pretty things and gives her status among her other NT women friends, the NT woman makes allowance for the NT man to look (but not touch) at other women in the street and watch sports and drink beer when he's hanging out with NT men friends. etc. I know these are stereotypes and generalizations, and obviously people vary, but generally speaking there is an overall tendency to gender specific interest in these sorts of activities.

AS guys and girls seem to have difficulty understanding these allowance rituals because the allowances don't appeal to us, we don't have that same strong sense of gender identity. So this can often result in confusion, which leads to resentment - and two classic cases of gender preference resentful are being discussed in this thread (calling NT guys "jerks" because they have what NT women want, and calling NT women all sorts of names (generally related to "shallowness") because of their innate personality characteristics that Aspies can't relate to, and therefore have difficulty understanding.

NOW - before I go on, I just want to explain that this does not mean that women will just marry a man for money (status is a complex multilayered thing anyway, and income is only a part of what consists of overall "status"), or a man will marry a woman for appearance. These are just traits that will make the individual more desirable to the opposite sex, and personality still plays the predominant role in mate selection.

Gaining an understanding of how NT people think can lead to acceptance and cut the hatred and sexism at its source. There are both positives and negatives about the way they think and perceive things, just like there are both positives and negatives about the way AS people perceive things. Trying to rationalize everything women do with AS logic, then hating women because they don't work according to AS logic, is an entirely pointless and destructive way to think. What we need to do is to first accept that their mind works in a different way to ours, then love and accept them for who they are (with both positives and negatives included) in the same way we want them to love and accept us for who we are.

GoatOnFire: you're onto something with the "douchebag" theory and I think it ties in with the male "status" attraction I was talking about above.

Well, there was nothing r rated about that...but there were some good points made

So are we all dreaming about hooking up with Prince Charming and cheerleaders and getting shot down? Maybe its our priorities and shallowness that's the problem. This is not an attack since I don't know any of you. First of all, based on our collective "Qualitative impairment in social interaction" its not a dating thing, its an aspie thing. We first need to learn how to relate to others and be friends before we can date successfully. I think sterotyping each other and perpetuating the sterotypes of ourselves is a barrier to getting to know people. Being good listeners and thinking about what is being communicated to us is a first step. Approaching with DATE flashing on our foreheads communicates an ulterior motive (e.g. a need to get laid). The person you are approaching will recognise it and unless that person views themseves as a piece of meat trying to get the best market price, they will resent it. Slow is faster.



This can also be called being authentic. And people do like it. Women are so socialized to want power and men to want a 'hot' body they freqently forget neither are actual human beings just symbols of aquisition. An authentic person brings humanity into the picture. They see the other as a person. It is refreshing!! And we get to meet a lot of great people along the way even if we don't date all of them.

I agree. Men and women are different, and this is the cause of a lot of problems between the two genders. For instance, a women's idea of a nice guy is completely different than a guy's idea of a nice guy. Women always keep saying they want a nice guy, so the guys try to be nice, according to what they think women want, and get rejected, then wonder what went wrong.

I agree with you about people with AS sharing masucilne and feminine traits. I don't know if this learned behavior, through their upbringing, or environmental factors (like echolia), or what. I have talked to girls that have lots of masuline traits (tomboys), and guys that have feminine traits. It's like our wiring is backwards, or something.

All people are different and unique, male & female. Stereotyping them, treating them with prejudice, and attempting to squeeze our unique selves into caricatures of the pre-judged stereotypes being discussed here is what causes problems between the sexes.

My five kids (three boys/two girls) range from 15 - 30 year of age and they don't seem to worry much about gender identity. Of course I know they don't tell me everything, but my home is a gathering place for them. They have friends, male & female and they date some, but not that that much. Even when they are dating they still have their opposite gender friends. This is very healthy!!
Only my 26 year old daughter is in a serious relationship. She didn’t rush into anything, but waited for the right guy. She recognized him because she was looking for the right individual not the right stereotype. My kids are more NT than I am, but they all have aspie overtones.

My kids seem to realize (nagging from mom?) that we are first and foremost people. Our biology is far more alike than different, The few organs that are not common to both genders are analogous. we share needs, and wants. There is a statistical tendency for women to share similar tendencies on various continuums and men to do the same, but that does not say anything about individuals.

While stereotypes simplify how we look at things, we rob ourselves of accurate info. To say women are one way and men another is to grab on to the inanimate characteristics we feel more comfortable with and blind ourselves to actual people in their complexity. Blockbuster movies produced for the masses promote this stereotyping, but we are not supposed to believe it as fact. The intelligent movies made to explore complex human nature never resort to stereotypes.

I was your age in the early 70s, and things must have really gone downhill since then in male-female relationships with all the stuff I am hearing. We were the ones who threw all this gender stereotyping out the window - I didn't realize the cat came back (hey did you guys leave food out for him...?)

Something about the next generation rebelling against their parents?

Oh wait, that's another stereotype...

Still a convenient explanation. Maybe that's why some stereotypes die hard.

Yes, I am anti-stereotypes myself, but sometimes it's hard to explain things without invoking stereotypes. What I was trying to get at when I said "I know these are stereotypes and generalizations, and obviously people vary" was that men and women seem to have different thought processes, which causes some of the differences and similarities you see in society. But obviously, every single person is an individual.

SilverStar - I agree with your second paragraph, but not so much with the first - it's not exactly what I was trying to get at. Using the whole "nice guy" categorizing is what causes all these problems in the first place, and the whole purpose of my thread is to try and get rid of this labeling. What I am trying to say is that people first and foremost go after people whose personalities they are attracted to, and the personality is an infinitely complex thing and can in no way be categorized as "nice" or not nice. On the side, say 20% of attractive, there are innate qualities that men and women are more attracted to, but these are also complex and cannot be simply catagorized as "attractive" (for men) or "wealthy" (for women) - but there is some slight favoritism of certain qualities.

And non-verbal communication is essential. You cannot blame "nice guys vs. jerks" for aspie guys not being in relationships, because it is a gross stereotype and over-generalization, doesn't actually even exist as a phenomenon (if you were going to use a stereotype/over generalization (which is wrong anyway), you'd be closer to the mark saying it was unconfident vs confident).

It is my personal opinion that most of the disadvantage AS guys seem to have (note I said "disadvantage" - I'm saying AS guys can't get girls or anything like that) is because of illiteracy in non-verbal communication.

But the thing is that non-verbal communication can actually be learned, at least to some extent.

I am interested in hearing you say this about Nonverbal Communication (NVC). I currently am thinking that NVC is foundational for all kinds of relationships, casual, professional, and intimate. But my theory was shot down on other threads. I have read (and I will need to search for the citation - sorry) that up to 60% of a conversation is NVC. That's like trying to read a book with 30 - 60% of each page randomly cut out. Of couse we are fumbling around in the dark!

I went to a conference this spring and one of the presenters was Jeanette McAfee (pediatrition & mom of HFA daughter). She worked with a professional acting coach (formally of the Missula Childrens Theater) to develop activities to teach NVC through teaching acting skills.

Then just recently, I was watching a BBC made for NT production movie (Under the Greenwood Tree) and I could actually see how the actors were using very slight movement of face and body to communicate (it must have been exagerated for me to see, but still the movie was made for NTs). I was all hyped up, but I am not sure how to get this off the ground. Jeanette McAfee seemed to be willing to give me advise and suggestions but she lives far away.

Last edited by JanetFAP on 29 Jun 2009, 12:22 am, edited 2 times in total.

Well, I don't know about that. I do know some women that consistently pick guys that hit them (it is a stereotype, but it does match some). If that isn't liking jerks I don't know what is. I wouldn't say it doesn't exist.



*ding* *ding* *ding*

We have a winner!

I know that this is the one thing that gives me the most difficulty.

Now my question is, do you need someone else to help teach it and evaluate or is there a way to learn it on your own? (In which case I'm on the right track by spending 20 straight hours posing into a mirror. Ha!)

It is my understanding that people tend to stick with what they know. If smacking around or verbal abuse is what their subconscious feels is "normal" they have an uncanny way of sensing it in a potential mate (and as MaggieDoll pointed out yesterday, either gender can be the agressor).

The trick seems to be in bringing these memories into your consciousness so you can deal with the slippery things and conciously make good choices. I don't think liking jerks or enjoying a beating is really whats happening. Growing whorled peas is probably the answer.



I think you skipped right over my post but I am convinced you could achieve anything with your mirror given enough time with it, but it might be way faster to work with someone. I think that b/c NTs pick NVC up intuitively, most have never analysed what it is they do (except the obvious eye contact - our nemisis). Mix that up with the typical aspie tendency to anosoagnosia and you may need to carefully choose someone to qualified to teach you. Or take acting classes.

Last edited by JanetFAP on 29 Jun 2009, 12:31 am, edited 2 times in total.

I don't get that analogy.