Do you lack gender bias because of AS?

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Absolutely. How else should I get my cold beer out of the fridge? ^^

"He" and "She" are biased, not because of things about one being better than the other, but because of saying that there are only two genders. It's not saying "males are better than females" its about saying "those who meet the gender norm, are better than those who don't".

There are people who are male, there are people who are female. There are people who are male who were FAAB, similarly females who were MAAB. But there are also people who are both female and male, and who are neither female nor male, and who are sometimes female and sometimes male, and who's gender can't be described in terms of female-ness and male-ness, and various other things like that.

By insisting that its "he" (the male pronoun) or "she" (the female pronoun), all those who aren't male or female, are left out or made lessor.

So, there might be differences between males and females. But what about those who are bigender? What about those who are agender? What about those who are gender-fluid? What about all the other types of genderqueer?

Being genderqueer exists.

(I personally use whatever pronoun the person uses themselves, or use a singular they if forced into a pronoun, but attempt to avoid pronouns - and this isn't active, this is just how I automatically speak.)

As for if any of the proposed gender-neutral pronouns are better. That I don't know. There just is bias against people in the current language.

I mostly lack gender bias.

Online I don't even know the gender of many of the people I interact with. How could I be biased when I don't know which way to be biased?

I have no gender bias. Gender bias is simply awful. Both genders should be treated equally.

A gender neutral pronoun just got introduced to the swedish language- "hen" (hon=she, han=he). I like it.

Maybe I'm biased against myself, but no matter how male or female I feel at any given moment, I fully expect people to refer to me as "he" or "him" or some form of "male" because that's how life works. Sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by idiots, but I'm not going to start obligating people to address me as "Professor".

I think so, or at least that was my understanding. I guess it's just one more way for us to be deceived.


In response to the other comments, an important problem is that people in our society traditionally use "he" and only "he" to refer to people when we are not sure of gender. This is because of the history of male dominance in our society--the male version of the word was considered better and more appropriate. People did not want to risk calling a man woman, but they were OK calling a woman or transgender person a man. Out of context, finding offense in the general use of he or she could be a result of one's own prejudice towards men or women, but our cultural history and the fact that people virtually never use a general "she" in place of the general "he" makes it otherwise.

The general use of "he" devalues both women and transgenders. The use of he/she devalues transgender people if it is assumed to mean he or she. The general use of such a term implies ambiguity, however, and this can be interpreted as not being gender specific if transgender is considered as somewhere in between male and female. This interpretation does not eliminate bias if transgender is to be considered a different gender entirely.

Honestly, the only logical way about it is to create a gender-neutral word that replaces the general "he". Using he/she places emphasis on the importance of gender in a context where gender is not otherwise important, and it disrupts the flow of language. It seems absurd that the English language does not have a word for this, and the only explanations are the prevalence of gender bias and the emphasis we place on gender in our society.

I think men and women are equal but not the same. There's physiological differences between male and female brains, as well as the more obvious different hormonal effects, that make men and women at least slightly different in terms of mental processing and preferences. This isn't an absolute thing, and there's always the outlier exceptions, but in general there's some fairly clear distinctions, such as...
- Males tend to be more physically competitive with each other, while females are more socially competitive
- Males tend to do better at focused thought, where females tend to be better at multitasking
- Males tend towards activities that involve hunter-type activities (physical or mental challenges, combat simulation, etc.), while females tend towards more nesting-type activities (decorating, home organization, etc.)
- Males are more visually focused in terms of attraction to a romantic partner, where as females tend to be focused on more underlying but equally instrumental traits, such as wealth and status of their partner.

Those are just a few examples of how men and women are generally different, but again I'm going to say there's outliers that are going to be exceptions to each of those generalities. So I'm not arguing that there's some females who have the masculine traits and some males who have feminine traits, I'm just saying there's a general pattern that's generally true most of the time, and means that males and females just aren't the same (but also neither is better or worse than the other).

I just use the word "they" when refering to someone if I don't know their gender. It may not be 100% literally correct to use it, since I know that it's technically a plural form... but I think it's a generally accepted method of making a gender-neutral reference even when refering to only one person.

Example:
I noticed a person enter the bar wearing a hat and a trenchcoat. I couldn't tell if they were a man or a woman. I watched as they walked up to the bartender.

That doesn't seem weird at all to me.

Not at all, being the credulous and incredibly naive boy that I was, and in some ways still am - I've always had a very inchoate view on gender, people and so on...

I used to think that men were only capable of being truly evil - because in the films I watched as a child the villain was usually male. But later experiences in life have challenged my views. I actually think that my credulity and need to simplify, compartmentalize and order the world around me makes me more susceptible to stereotyping people.

I have a distaste for bullying, but that has nothing to do with autism. Nor does a sense of fairness either.

Last edited by Acedia on 24 Oct 2013, 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thank You.

Women do pretty much everything better than men, except driving, killing, and maybe composing music.

Absolutely agreed. I loathe gender bias and think it is related to everything that's wrong in our society.

I was waiting for someone to explicitly express gender bias, and here we go.

Asperger96, if people point out that "he" and "she" are biased (using "he" as gender indeterminate pronoun, thus enshrining the notion of "men are the default, women are the other" within English grammar), that does not mean that they think one is inherently better than the other. That means that people are capable of thinking critically and determining that one is treated as better than the other, regardless of reality.

Further, "political correctness" as a term is an insincere and dishonest objection to the notion that it is desirable to treat people with respect. It only exists to shout down and shoot down people who object to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, etc. It has no coherent meaning beyond being used to insist that treating people like garbage because of who and what they are is perfectly fine.

Anyway, this forum has many aspie men who are sexist to an almost toxic degree. There's nothing about being autistic that makes one less likely to hold prejudices or express bigotry. I've also seen a lot of racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, fat hatred, and classism expressed on this forum. I think that autism impacts how one expresses these ideas, but I would hesitate to consider the notion that autistic people are less likely to hold biases.

People like to take online tests here, so this is one to try: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/

This is the implicit awareness test. It measures one's responses to race.

Is there now? Only if people with AS are taught to believe in gender bias, which is now decreasing.

The ONLY differences between the two genders is that one gender gives birth and the other doesn't. Besides that, there are two COMPLETELY equal genders in every way. Attraction still happens (mostly) between opposite genders, but that doesn't make the genders unequal. No gender is actually better at anything compared to the other gender, it's just (diminishing) social standards that tell us this. This is what I have to say.

I forget people's genders sometimes, especially online. I wish people stopped assuming things about me because I'm female.

I don't think it's a lack of bias; it's more like being unaware of gender stereotypes.

If I were more autistic I might not even know gender existed, but as it is I am stuck in the unfortunate situation of knowing only partially what people expect of me based on my gender, and being both unable and unwilling to constantly monitor myself in order to fit my behavior and interests into that mold.

Most people do not fit gender stereotypes 100%. Some people deliberately go against them. I just kind of ignore them.

It's only recently, the last year or so, that I've started paying attention to gender at all--I was somewhat bemused to discover that I am agendered. I'm not neutrois, because I have no dysphoria related to my female body; I just don't really have a gender and don't care that I don't. So it doesn't bother me that people call me female (or occasionally male if they see me from the back), because it's not a huge part of who I am. It's about as unremarkable as someone mistaking my blue eyes for green ones. Apparently, some people are really offended when you mistake them for the opposite gender. I can't imagine what that's like. I can respect it, because I know gender is really important to some people, but it just seems arbitrary to me.

I don't really take much trouble to create an androgynous appearance; it's too much bother. But I have decided ahead of time that if I get breast cancer, which runs strongly in my family, I will get rid of my breasts and not get implants. It's way more drastic than the usually recommended options, especially early stage, but in my family, you get breast cancer eventually and that's a good argument to the average doctor. Having my annoying boobs out of the way will at least be partial consolation for having to deal with the scariness of my family's genes catching up with me.

I took the religious one, and after I finished all religions were dead center. Does that mean I have absolutely no religious bias, or I'm just really bad at sorting anything with that task?