Female Aspies? a different presentation?

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This is interesting, this cognitive echolalia...I think I read recently about a man with AS who could do this too?
I´ve done something like that too, but not on the same level, and when I do it I try to "understand" the personality and the background of the person- i.e., what could be influencing their emotions- then I use psychology as a tool to try to figure that person out...something sort of similar, but in my case it´s less intuitive, more intellectual. (But, again, it is a way of trying to perceive the thoughtspace of another)...whereas my flashes of intuition about people are something else, they just come to me when they choose to. I find this whole subject fascinating, by the way!

I would totally recommend hanging out with guys rather than hanging out with NT girls. NT guys are more like Asperger females than NT girls are.

I can do "male bonding" better than some male geeks I know. "Male bonding" is basically just doing stuff. (Regular) guys at a girly party will sit around bored but if something breaks down like the barbeque breaks or something, then some guys will jump up, start fixing it and only then start feeling comfortable with each other. When you do interesting stuff with someone, like fixing something, you learn more about that person than if you sit around clutching cocktails feeling vapid. Male bonding is just getting to know each other while doing stuff together. So the focus is on the thing to do rather than staring in each others eyes and making small talk. Hanging out with guys is perfect for Asperger girls, if they like fixing things, doing sports or going to see things like architecture, etc.

It's not that easy to insult NT male guys' masculinity. They give each other a harder time and compete with each other much worse than any Asperger girl can. Truly, NT guys can be really rough on each other. If you can unintentionally insult an NT male's masculinity the guy has BIG issues (or a small something else).

I'm afraid of girls. They are so easy to offend and I have such a big mouth. I just say things all the time that offend people. Girls have always found me to be over the edge. I had some girlfriends, mainly through a great social networker who adopted me three years ago. She still keeps me in a circle and emails occasionally, inviting me out. But I have no idea what to do with them. They talk about nothing -- not just for small talk, but all the time. But this "nothing" is really important because information is embedded in the chatter, only I seem tone deaf to the subtle messages. And I'm bored with what they do. At first I thought going to get makeup, shopping for this or that, running to get lunch, was all just errand running and someday we'd get together and do something meaningful like go mountain climbing or some downtown art gallery opening. But all that errand running wasn't a means to an end, it WAS the socializing.

I go fly fishing with the guys in my husband's family or others we go fly fishing with. At hotels and lodges, if the rooms are communal, I sleep the room with all the guys, because no one strips down to sleep anyways. I feel totally comfortable with them, because everything is about what we are doing... got to unpack the rods, put on the reels, build the leaders, organize the fly boxes, etc. You never sit around chatting each other up to pass the time.

If you do things that you like to do, you can meet people there who are doing the same things. Then you can do things with those people. A couple of years ago I got a big thing about sailing and found a local sailing club. You join for a tiny, tiny fee and then experienced sailors have free sailing outings, where they take inexperienced people along and teach them what to do so long as you help clean the boat, handle the lines and do all those chores (which is how you learn). I met a lot of guy friends doing that. I spent a few weekends on one guy's boat, and he taught me a lot. None of them ever made any advances toward me. If you make guy friends through doing some activity, they know you are about that activity.

If you meet guys in bars and parties, etc, the only way for them to get closer to you is hustle you for romance and sex. So if you don't like social interaction or can't really navigate parties and bars, like me, you never see the nice side of guys. Only the front they put on for girls.

Actually, I DO hang out with NT men; the problem is, they are all gay, so that doesn´t help me with relationships! But, almost all my friends are guys. (And the women friends I have don´t fit the stereotype for women at all. Like me, they are involved in theater, so we go to dance performances, shows, and talk about theater! NO shopping or smalltalk....By the way, I tend to find NT women easier socially than straight men, mainly because I can "read them" better; women tend to show their expressions much more than men).

As for hanging out with straight men, it´s not that I don´t want to....it´s that they don´t seem to want me to! I feel generally pretty much avoided by men, there is always a wall or a distance there; (there have been a few exceptions, of course). As we´ve brought up this "witch" archetype, this is very much how I feel in my life! (You may notice that very often those who persecute witches the most- or at least feel very threatened by them- are mostly men). When a man IS interested in me, it is always sexual; and, in that case, he WANTS to sit around "clutching cocktails, while I feel vapid"- (good word by the way, that´s exactly how I feel when I do that!) For me, the whole guy thing is a vicious circle...

I have a theory about why you feel you "say the wrong thing" and offend women, while I feel that way around men. I think, because you say you are a tomboy, you have learned how to socially interact with men. I´m not a tomboy, and I have been in more situations where I´ve had to interact with women. There are different dynamics with different groups of people, as well as different types of social situations. I figure this is one of the things NTs probably do intuitively, but we have to learn how to "act" and what to say in every situation, as that fluctuates. Therefore, you feel more comfortable with men (and have a better success rate), because that is the group you are used to and have had the most practice with. At least, in my case, I feel that I am much better and more "versed" in some social situations than in others- where I may totally flounder!....a process of a lifetime, I guess...

I havnt actaully been diagnosed with AS just autism so officially i would be classed as HFA. AS and HFA are near enough to the same thing so i just say i am aspie.
When i am NOT in a relationship I find i drink alot. When i have a bf i dont and we just have sex all the time, even after a year it is still full on. Its like i become addicted to them and they become addicted to me. I dont really think it is healthy because it is nearly like we dont have a relationship we just have sex and every bf i have been with it has been like that.
I think i am very mystical and spiritual person too. My bfs will say i am like a cat.

Oh, that sounds very cool. I'd love to find someone to do art & culture things with! The kind of guys I hang out with (outdoorsmen, engineers) won't do stuff like that.



Yeah, that's a problem that exists separate and apart from anything else. Guys automatically go on the prowl, and hard to shake them out of that habit to befriend them. It's a thing. Hard to get around that. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever had a relationship with a man I met in a purely social setting.



I think you're right in this. The social skills won't develop naturally but have to be explicitly instilled and developed. If you don't do that at some time, they won't just appear instinctively in us. Good point. Thank you for that insight.

I wonder if this could be a possible origin of anthropomorphism in literature?

Could it be a coping mechanism to deal with social isolation?

Perhaps the trait of viewing objects as friendly and or having emotional temperaments is stronger some people than others.

Fascination and feelings of comfort around objects probably make objects easier to study and focus attention on for prolonged lengths of time too.

Interesting.

One of my the better times of my life was when I was a teenager.
That was because I had to wear school uniform: everyone looked the same, so there wasn't a problem. Hence I was completely oblivious to fashion until non-uniform day came when people asked me:

"Is that what you really wear?"

I said: "Yes. What's wrong with it?"

I was wearing completely inoffensive comfortable/practical clothing.

No-one had ever explicitly told me that I had to dress up, so I was confused as to why other people seemed to be wearing different clothes to me.

As for deodorant, I was told to use soap for a long time by my family and that washing every day was sufficient. It was only when my sibling discovered deodorant that I wanted to wear some myself. Some deodorant actually smells quite nice.

As long as I look presentable and have good hygiene I don't see what the problem is. I should be allowed to wear what I like (within reason). I think that following fashion trends and wearing impractical and uncomfortable clothes just because everyone else does is incredibly superficial. I'm all for colours not clashing and looking aesthetically pleasing, but others bullying people on how they dress seems very shallow minded to me.

yes. practical clothing only. that is all i wear also. nothing tight and nothing synthetic (although my swimmers are synthetic and i find that ok as they dry better.) everything else is cotton. i loathes scratchy things and tags have always been ripped off

I had a really hard time dressing myself in a presentable manner as a kid...and it was a big source of the teasing I received....

When I was in Jr. High, I was called a lesbian, because I had this notion of wanting to be a minimalist, so all i would wear were flannel shirts and t-shirts and jeans...and I had just a very few to pick from, and I wanted to keep my belongings very sparse...

Then something snapped(puberty?), and the clothes I wore became more and more eccentric..I became obsessed with vintage clothes...and had this really weird rugged individualist style that was half admired and half teased...and I would still make oblivious mistakes...like wearing a shirt as a dress with just leggings underneath...and I had these tie-dyed stockings I woud wear and everyday, someone would ask me if that was my actual skin...

To this day..my clothes mostly consist of weird badly altered paint stained rags

..and I was always oblivious to conventional standards of hygiene and fashion...I was so painfully behind everyone else...and oblivious to the "groupthink" of the other girls my age.
it was crazy..

When I was in 6th grade, I had just started developing, and I still wasn't wearing a bra..and towards the last day of school I wore a sleeveless white t-shirt for people to sign (that is what alot of kids did)...and i created a bit of an uproar because anyone could see my chest through the armholes of my shirt and noone told me until a teacher had to take me aside and give me a sweatshirt to wear and a lecture on how I need to start wearing proper undergarments...(and that was not the first lecture of that sort I had received...I was just so oblivious..)

happy days

I would go to a school that I'd have to wear a uniform to as well and on those uniform free days people would be surprised about what I was wearing.
I would wear a shirt with shorts and a pocket chain. So what if I wanted to look like a boy? I was comfortable.

I remember once my mum told me to buy a new bra because my other one had stretched and was not fitting me properly. I would have never even noticed.

as a female aspie, i internalize everthing. i only cry, leaking fluid out of my eyes with no physical emotion. crying makes me mad because i cant seem to control it. i also will leave the scene and hide. Eye contact is something that i didnt really know that i wasnt doing until 15 years ago. i dont get jokes, i dont get directions, i am constantly lost, i cant use a GPS, I dont care if if i do things socially, probably because i dont know what to do in groups of more than 2. i am not animated, people usually think i am mad. i grew up a tomboy, i wore Levi's and tshirts, overalls and sometimes mistaken for a boy, not that i wanted to be one, i tried to attract the opposite sex but wasnt very good at it. i was more about comfort then and still am today. at 43, i wear cargo shorts until its freezing, jeans and tshirts. i obsessed on model cars, rocks, skating, waterskiing and long distant running. the latter was not the best choice as i fell down a lot. the skating and waterskiing, i seemed to be born to do. growing up asian was my other obstacle. i was the only one and i was not your stereotypical, overachieving, supersmart straight "A" asian. I wasnt able to live up to that reputation. I was put into all of the high classes because the schools thought i should be there. Learning was very hard for me. It still is. Math was bad, i could read but couldnt understand it. The only thing that was easy was spelling. PE was horrible, i couldnt catch a ball, throw one or walk across flat ground without falling. Plus interacting with others was impossible.
Now as an adult, i do study others to imitate was is considered normal. sometimes, though, it doesnt always work when i say something totally out of context. so, i try not to talk nodding and saying umm, hmm.

As for the Asperger's Syndrome and Girls that outlier referenced:

"In elementary school, these girls often cope by finding one good friend. This friend is often kind and motherly, and her friendship is a lifeline to the girls with Asperger's Syndrome. In fact, if she moves away, it has devastating consequences."

I have made good friends with a lot of "tribal matchmaker" and "agony aunt" type girls. Sometimes, these emotionally astute girls have been instructed to look after me by the teachers.

Some of the more emotionally intense ones I could only talk to for about ten minutes at a time maximum. It just became too overwhelming. They weren't bad girls at all. They just seemed so absorbed in interpersonal relationships that they sometimes became a little "scatterbrained" about the physical environment around them. Many of them mislaid items, usually make-up.

I've noticed that their Mums seemed to do "nurturing" or "female mutual grooming" kinds of jobs:

-hairdresser
-marriage guidance counsellor
-day care assistant
-baby sitter

Surely a very emotionally intelligent girl would have a complimentary (opposite) character to an AS girl.

I can't help, but wonder about this black and white magic mythology. Could these beliefs have their roots in two distinct brain wirings?


I believe that there are essentially two kinds of caring:

-Practical caring: telling people it's "for their own good" and giving them advice or a proverbial "kick up the backside"

-Emotional caring: sharing feelings and emotions, being a "shoulder to cry on"

I seem to be much better at practical caring.
The emotional caring would be the domain of the "motherly" girl.
It seems that practical caring seems to be going out of fashion these days.

I believe that a traditional nurse would administer a form of practical caring. It would be advantageous for a nurse to maintain some degree of emotional distance between herself and the patient. That way the nurse could administer drugs and treatments to the patient without feeling too guilty. The traditional nurse would need good organisation skills and would have to be able to reliably follow strict rules and procedures. Any carelessness could put the patient's life at risk. So a bit of neuroticism, the ability to perform ritualistic tasks and meticulous record keeping would be an advantage.

Maybe that's how I was wired up to view school: I've got some nurses genes in me. Maybe I saw my High School as sort of like a "Hospital" with lots of individuals to gather from and give knowledge to. I kept a kind of data logger on each person in my head.

Some teachers claimed that I wasn't socialising "properly" in the cliquely, fashionable "lets all huddle together in a group" kind of way. I think that this kind of socialising would be disadvantageous in a "Hospital" type setting. My style of socialising was more like the "interplanetary diplomat on the Starship Enterprise" kind of socialising.

That kind of socialising seems to be regarded as "odd" for some reason, but I don't see anything wrong with it. I sent lots of people Christmas cards and they liked me. I think that there's an upper limit on this kind of socialising. I can't seem to keep track of more than 1000 people in an unstructured environment. The more structured the environment, the fewer the people and the clearer the rules, the better I seem to be able to cope.

Interesting.

I come from a country and a culture where paying attention and listening in class is valued.

At school I was praised for my extraordinary listening ability.

When I spent hours studying alone and did well at exams I was praised.

Where I come from there's so much propaganda saying that everyone should try and do well in every subject and every exam. It's all so competitive now. I don't personally think that any sane human being can do all of that, not even the really good people. I found that I had to keep socialising to a bare minimum just to be able to get the top grades. I have been in really highly pressurised academic environments, but how people can socialise and do well academically is beyond me. It's just all gone crazy. Schools have such high expectations of kids these days.

There has to be a due paid somewhere. If I have a project on, socialising is put to the bottom of my priority pile. I don't think that's been helpful or healthy for me over the years, but I've felt so pressurised to be "normal" by others that I've overcompensated and overshot the mark by quite a long way. My social ability has suffered as a result. Actually, I don't think that any of this has been healthy for any of the "normal" people I used to know either: lots of the academically good ones resorted to self medication when things got really rough. I personally don't blame them.

When I've been no trouble to anyone and followed the rules, I was also praised, so I just kept following rules to the letter and being quiet. I didn't want to get punished for "acting" out like I did when I was younger. They just forced me to keep quiet and get on with things basically.

I've noticed that there does seem to be a sort of direct positive correlation between how quiet you are and your academic ability. I've observed that quieter people tend to do better with solitary assignments.

omg you have just described me! I do have alot of crying meltdowns, I hardly ever cry of sadness it's usually always frustration or anger. And I remember having this man come to my house asking me loads of questions about when I turn 16 do I want to take control of my money or have my mum take over for a while. I was really frustrated at what was being said and everything was just too much and I started crying, which isn't really the time to start crying but I was melting down

It's true in the states as well, at least in the northeast, where I live. The competition to get into the first- and second-level universities is fierce. I started college in 1976 with very good grades and test scores and all that, and there would be no way I could get into the same college now. Just no way.

I'm very fortunate in that my daughter goes to a small private school where they believe in keeping a balance between studies, athletics, community service, and socializing. I really appreciate the conscientiousness of the people who teach there. It can get a little intense around exam time, but on the whole, the teachers want to see the kids succeed academically *and* become well-adjusted human beings. There are kids at the school who work too hard, but it's really coming from inside them, not from the school itself. It's nice to watch my daughter have the academic and social life I didn't have.

I can't believe I missed this thread. This is the best and deepest postings I have ever seen and addresses issues in dozens of other threads. I hope this one stays on top where it belongs.