Expecting people to be mindreaders

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This sort of ties in with the whole business of "nice guys" that 'can't take a hint'.

Now, I am female, and I've never had the problem of actual serious 'unwanted' attention. So I've never had to 'send signals' that I'm not interested. However, theoretically if this were the case, I'd be upfront about it.

Is this a Neurotypical thing, where women send signals either yay or nay, and expect men to figure it out? Or do some AS women also believe/practice this? Conversely, are there NT men that expect women to be able to read the signals they are giving off?

No, actually. What happens is that the body language of being open to being interrupted for conversation versus not is quite universal, not unique to one gender. However, our culture socializes men that it's ok to ignore such body language when they want to talk to women.

That's how you can tell if it's a "not getting it" problem or just a "being a jerk" problem -- if the guy can figure out when not to interrupt his boss or the school bully, then it's not a body language problem.

If you google Deborah Cameron you can find some of the actual studies done on this.

Yes it's a "NT" thing you call it. People communicate non verbally and the majority of communications is through that. Freaky huh?

I don't think they learn it, they just learn it on their own because it's wired into their brains. But some people don't have that so they have to learn from books and stuff. But yeah even normal people have this difficulty too because there are books out there on body language and maybe it's for the minority who can't learn it on their own so they need a boost.
Yes even normies misread each other and even normies put off the wrong signals and doctors do a better job at reading it than lot of people because they are trained in that area.

I knew a woman with AS who did this. However, she made a promise to me that she would "never disappear with a reason". She ultimately went back on her promise, and for whatever reason, she stopped answering my e-mails and blocked me from IM, without giving me an explanation.

That freaking sucks.

The worst part was that I was very attached to her, and she accepted me at a time when nobody else would.

Exactly. I've had plenty of times, my friends have had plenty of times, I've seen many other guys have plenty of times where we freeze up, our shoulders shrink, and we do the 'help me' look when someone's around who's really annoying us. I think what probably confuses a lot of guys as well - guys who are attractive to most women, if they do interrupt - its ok, they're attractive, either gender tends to be much more tolerant of disruption from the opposite sex when its someone attractive. Like in sales - someone who walks to the front desk of a business where the secretary (either male or female, doesn't matter) is charged with being the 'gatekeeper' and keeping solicitors out, if its someone attractive or charming of the opposite sex there's a better chance that they will in fact pass a business card along or at least listen to what the person has to say to see if purchasing would want anything to do with what it is they're selling.

I don't understand the whole 'suddenly cutting off all contact' thing. How can you tell when you're blocked on IM?

Perhaps something happened...?

Shebakoby, to answer more of your original question, yes, there's always some dependence on body language. No one's figured out how to make human society do without it.

For example, most people, even Aspies, have no problem figuring out that you don't wander around waking up people who are sound asleep in the middle of the night just because you feel like it. In this case, the reclining posture and slowed breathing are the body language indicating, "sleep -- don't interrupt". If this weren't true, the entire human population would shortly go psychotic from lack of REM sleep from waking each other up all the time.