I think it's kind of sick that they bring gender into it, or that they think "I changed my mind" is an excuse to break a commitment. I haven't heard of that before, which is probably a good thing.
Although I don't necessarily think it's okay, I have, in the past, not shown up to meet people when I agreed to. (I didn't give that canned non-explanation or any explanation at all; I never figured out how to explain things to people. Any things.) My internal excuse isn't about gender or changing my mind, it's simply this: Consent made under extreme social pressure when I (pretty obviously) don't have the social skills to talk my way out of it is not real consent. (This goes double for when I never actually state I'm going to meet them in the first place, they just decide it on their own and fill in my end of the conversation in their heads.) If I agreed to something of my own free will, I would try my best to follow through on it. I don't see why someone would break a commitment they deliberately entered unless the terms were drastically changed by external forces.
...No, wait, there was that time when I explicitly agreed to go to somebody's house "for just an hour" when we knew I had a major academic deadline looming. After waiting with the person for their ride for several hours...in a place where the buzzing equipment made me physically ill to the point where I was curled up in a ball on the floor...I just wandered off instead of following through. I just couldn't think of anything else to do except lock myself in my dorm and sleep off the nausea. I know that doesn't technically count as "drastically changed by external forces", but it felt like it at the time. *sigh* I wish I were a good person. X_X
I probably lie a lot more than most(/real?) Aspies because in almost any conversation with a non-family-member at this point in my life, my entire objective is to exit the conversation without invoking anger. So I'll just sit/stand there and nod and smile a lot until they go away. I still consider lying very unethical and I'm not the slightest bit proud of my defense mechanism. In settings like the Internet where I can escape realtime interaction at the touch of a button, my only knowingly untrue statements are occasional sarcasm (which no one ever gets, but still, it's honorable intent).
It doesn't sound like the neurotypical girls in question had consent issues with the scheduled engagements, so I'm struggling to understand their behavior. If they were my friends, I'd probably start suspecting some mysterious secret agenda and stop attempting to go anywhere with them (which I guess says more about me than about them).
23 May 2013, 5:15 am
