If each gender saw itself through the others eyes...

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but i don't believe that men's and women's subjective experiences are different.

They can't not be. We have different things pulling on us instinctively, different reward cascades based on that and because of that probably many very novel corners of our psyches. Almost everything about a person's self is generally built of coping mechanisms and what spirals up from the ground as they mature. Its true that we probably have strong currents in common but the way the subjective uses and arranges them I don't think its wise to take the 'We're all the same' notion that far, people likely become more outside-compatible at least as they get older but that's still part internal reality and part interface but far from being full internal reality.

there is more overlap between the genders than there are differences. if men and women were incredibly different, we would not be able to empathise with each other - yet we do.

It's still a 55 to 60% empathy and its more over outer-world triggers than inner-world.

how can you know that? well, you don't. you're assuming a lack of understand across gender lines, but it could be related to any number of factors. for example i've seen women on this board relate to you very well, but maybe you resist that connection.

But its still narrow range and I've still met more guys who I could sense on all levels 'got' something where women, to their credit have diligently tried to and see part of it perhaps but don't fully.

Same back when my friend was married, we were watching junkyard wars, and his wife and her friend were laughing themselves to tears at how dorky it all was. I also don't think I'll ever understand the appeal of either soap operas or Toby Keith no matter what I intellectually tell myself. Especially later - with things like music, there shouldn't even be such a thing as 'testosterone' in sound or estrogen for that matter if it were the case that both genders are identical.

do you see though - your experience of connecting with men was about *you*.... not about the male gender.

i don't care about soap operas or Toby Keith. i watch what you must consider traditionally male programs, actually. it may be the case that you hang with a crowd that has some pretty strict gender roles. that has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with your peer group.

I guess I'm just confused about the point of this thread and how it's useful to speculate and get philosphical about this sort of stuff. OP, I think the best, although maybe not the easiest, way to get a better handle on some of the issues you're grappling with might be to branch out more and get to know members of the opposite sex as whole people, not just as members of 'the other' gender. (Edit: Not sure if I phrased that last part in a way that makes sense? Stumbling over my words a little here.)

You sound in some of your posts like you have a strong circle of male friends; maybe you should broaden that and make some more female friends, too. When you mainly get to know members of another gender when they are either family members or people you're trying to date, I'm sure that can easily make the dynamics seem a lot more mysterious and complicated than they really are.

But to notice somewhat disproportionately that you connect to one gender or another better indicates that there are modes that are normatively gender specific. Don't get me wrong - I get why telling aspie women this would raise a lot of eyebrows as many of you are probably told every day that on some theoretical level you don't exist or that you couldn't who you say you are. At the same time though, and yes - on intuition, it doesn't seem right to say that its all culture. If geeky girls or really heartfelt guys meet the opposite gender better its still more inherently 'them' genetically/biologically than culture - hence why I still think that the norms have more solid stuff to them rather than just being a psychological vapor of what's been passed down to us. The claim that gender is purely culural seems almost as unfalsifiable as the notion that most of the evil in the world would go away if we got rid of capitalism.



If you're not an aspie you're, at a minimum, an NT with pretty strong traits so that would make sense. I'm not saying all girly-girls or semi-girly girls are the same or that they don't have big portions of guy stuff they like to do whether its flirting with extreme sports, taking metal working in school, moshing at a metal concert or getting into gangster rap, shooting it up in Modern Warfare, etc., just that there's still a lot of stuff that doesn't overlap.

i don't connect better with one gender or another. i connect with some people better than others, but that's it. this is because i do not make a distinction between the genders when choosing friends or enjoyable activities. i don't assume that a woman would like soap operas or a man would like Junkyard Wars.

i don't have any female friends that like soap operas. NT women aren't automatically into those things just because of their gender. the differences you are emphasising are largely socialised.

I guess one of my strongest passions and desires, one that I can't really erase, is the desire to understand the human condition as much as I can and really find ways to hack and take apart what I see as the impractical that stands between people. Wherever I am, whenever I see it, it drives me crazy and it seems like its something that slogs down people's lives to the point where it seems like so many people I know are only living 40% of the life they could be if humanity could sort itself out. Seeing people suffer, to me, is a nonstop and ever unfolding tragedy, and an unnecessary one at that.


Believe it or not its not a choice. Life treats people differently, people react to people differently, two different people can say the same thing and get different results because of anything from hair and eye color to build, height, weight, expressionality, etc. etc.. For whatever reason I have not had the kind of luck where I can make heartfelt female friends of my own aside from either online, friend's girlfriends, or the occasional tomboy who sticks with the group and doesn't really date. I do have a friend who I've been hanging out lately who's about 40 minutes across town and she's someone who we knew back in 2000 and just got back in contact with in the last few years. Even there she's a bit more the conversational introvert, some of her friends and cousins are a bit more outgoing but with them even they're still not 'inside the box' culturally so-to-speak, hardly anyone I end up hanging out with really is.


The dynamics of that aren't nearly as mysterious as they used to be. I've seen friends go through all sorts of things and if anything I've had a lot of vicarious living through them that's taught be a lot. Then again its not the 'how does the long haul work?' question that I've had to struggle with nearly as much as the 'is there anyone right for me?' (gratis: and vice a verse) or 'should I be looking at all?'. I notice most people are powerless to change themselves, when they find the external impetus even there's maybe 5 or 10 degrees of pivot that they have out of 360, and I realize myself that I'm an utter and likely permanent failure at conformity and that failure at conformity isn't something I can wear as a badge, I can call it whatever I want but, especially as eccentric/stilted as I am its really a sentence of condemnation passed by genetics.

All that though is completely aside from why I started the thread though. I guess I really wanted to see if I could get people to think, and a lot of time when I start asking questions or posting things that are depth-risque I'm crossing my fingers and really hoping that I can prove to myself that the thought I'm having isn't one more thing that's a me alone anomaly. Its like the more I feel like an utter space alien, even among aspies, the more I feel like there's nearly zero hope for my future. I really didn't want to make this thread into an 'about me' thing but I guess its too late for that; people ask - I explain.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 29 Feb 2012, 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

....I would then shake them in front of the mirror.

Extrema examples are a bit easier to clarify a concept though and that's what Soap Operas and Junkyard Wars tend toward.

Well, ok, I'm not having a great day pain level-wise and am a bit out-of-it, so maybe this is going over my head, but it still seems like you're missing the forest for the trees.

I can see both sides to this one. Personally, I relate better to males than females, so I 'get' junkyard wars and will never understand the appeal of soaps. However, being physically female there are some things I just will never understand.

Yes, there are a lot of similarities but I could talk until I was blue in the face and no man would ever 'get' what it's like to be pregnant or give birth. I'm not just talking about the physiology here. People react differently to a pregnant woman. Men can observe this, but they cannot truly experience what it's like to have complete strangers think it's okay to ask all kinds of personal questions and touch your belly.

I'm not sure what would happen if we were able to see from the other side. Perhaps a lot would change, perhaps nothing would. Taking the pregnancy example, you still see women that have gone through it do the exact same thing to others even though they couldn't stand it when it was their turn.

I agree that the majority of gender differences are due to socialization rather than being innate. But that does not mean they do not exist.