Bullying's effects on AS males ability to initiate

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Another reason Aspie males may have trouble initiating with women is that they have had to deal with being treated like crap throughout their lives. This can only hurt their self-esteem. Bullying can make it so that they don't have the confidence to approach and initiate relationships they would like to with women. Plus having negative experiences with people can make them more hesitant to approach people in order to form a relationship.

You may be onto something there. Being treated like a geek/wimp/loser doesn't do much for confidence. Also, it probably didn't help that my first rejection, which only happened because some idiot decided to ask the girl out "for me," went along the lines of "I'd rather eat cockroaches than go out with you."

But it doesn't matter. If women want to indulge in big brown insects, they can for all I care...

I'm a female...sorry to pry in here. Just wanted to share the way bullying I think affected me.

I kept a low profile and tried to be invisible which worked for a while. But I think throughout highschool and then coming out of that, I was still worried someone would tell me how ret*d I sounded. So it wasn't easy for me just to talk to people or initiate conversations lest their be more jokes.

I do think bullying does take a huge toll on people no matter what their condition. Sometimes it varies from person to person. I can remember how bad it hurt to be called names and knowing that I already had trouble making friends. This was way before I was diagnosed...so no proms or dates while I was in highschool.

It's something I'm learning to let go of but it's still there at times....the memories and how bad it hurt. I sort of let those people define me even though half the crap they said about me wasn't true.

Its weird to me that if you treat yourself like you are worth something, people will think you are. If you feel worthless, everyone will think you are too.

What also confuses me is how the above contrasts with the concept of modesty being an attractive quality.

No offense (this is an attack on your writing, not on you personally), but this is a big load of bull-excrement propagated by misguided psychologists! And the number of people who buy into that is staggering. I, like anyone else, could think of myself as God's gift to the world, but other people might still think of me as the biggest loser ever. A therapist I saw as a preteen told me the same thing: if I think highly of myself, people will be nice to me. So I went around thinking I'm great and all, but I was quickly proven wrong: the bullying still continued. I never believed that again, and rightfully so. Your own opinion of yourself can't change the society's opinion of you; only your actions and words can do that. Sadly, aspies oftentimes don't know the "right" things to do and say, which lowers their social status.

That's very true at least in my case. I'm always confused and don't know how my words come off to people. This is one of the reasons why I never fought back because everytime I did, my words came out muffled and odd which only made it worse.

Hm, interesting Aspie1.
I did read it from a therapy/self-help book and it sounds very weird to me but I have experienced it in effect. There was a girl at my highschool who dressed and carried herself as if she was very confident and pretty and everyone thought she was hot. But if you look at her carefully, she was really not attractive.

I am not sure what I think of the theory I posted. I think perhaps we aspies might not know how to implement it correctly. I don't think its about acting like you're god's gift to the world.. I think it's just about liking and respecting yourself internally and your internal confidence is supposed to draw others to you. If you act like 'gods gift to the world' that will probably repell people as well since you will be seen as concieted. There's some kind of fine line there, I think. Maybe. I'm horrific at fine lines.

I don't think it's so much a "fine line" as an "eye of the beholder" thing.
Something that looks confident to one person might seem arrogant to another, wimpy to another?

====================

Most of us stink at fighting. I certainly do.
You need some other kind of defense.

The "gods gift to the world" was an exaggeration (or in literary terms, hyperbole). I did try respecting myself and being proud of my internal qualities, just as my therapist and your theory suggested. However, it didn't reduce the amount of bullying not even by a little bit. My classmates still thought I was a loser, with or without me thinking highly of myself. By the way, I later ended up lying to the therapist and saying that her advice helped, because I knew she would just say I need to respect myself more (or something equally unhelpful from the books in her office). I didn't think she was a bad therapist or anything, just that her advice was misguided.

Any human being who doesn't fit the mainstream is a subject of bullying.

I was a subject for bullying at school for 2 reasons:
- My odd autistic behavior
- I was the shortest boy.

That's totally true.

Try to be obese for one day mitharatowen and you'll realize that what you said was total nonsense cliche.

Not to mention that being obese prevents one from being able to feel like they're worth something. I have firsthand experience...

There's always a limit. But I've seen many 6's get perceived as 10's by most guys (usually the few guys who don't by into social status are exempt from this phenomenon) just because of the way they dressed and acted- like they were a 10. Whereas pretty shy girls were ignored by the majority until 5 years later when the said guys see old pictures of the group and say, "Woah, she was hot! I had no idea!"

It's self-confidence and being able to roll with the punches that matter most.

I have to disagree -- people will definitely be influenced by how you hold yourself, and will treat you accordingly.

If you act like you are worth nothing, you will get bullied, taken advantage of, and mistreated.

If you hold yourself like you have dignity and self-esteem, you get generally (with some exceptions) treated a lot better, and people will think there must be something they can't see, and will be cautious about messing with you.

I speak from personal experience on this (I'm 32 y/o), having been bullied extensively at a certain age, and having had my self-esteem wrecked for a good portion of my life.

Btw, there are some excellent examples of this online in the form of female fight videos -- (ync.com, break.com, nothingtoxic.com, liveleak.com)

Notice -- In Asia and Eastern Europe, you see a lot of fight videos where multiple girls beat on one girl without mercy, and 99% of the time the girl is not fighting back. They have no mercy for her (some of this is cultural), but truly her lack of resistance only reinforces their contempt for her.

Contrast that with fight videos from the U.S. and Mexico -- no passive victims there (or very few), everyone fights back and gets at least some level of respect.

It makes sense -- bullies pick on those they perceive to be weak, and shy away from a challenge. They're opportunists.

Conversely, if you're looking for someone who is worthwhile to be around, you don't pick a loser -- you pick someone who seems confident and sure of themselves.

I was bullied as a teen by other females because I was very good-looking and intelligent but didn't have the ego or popularity to match. Because of their envy, they beat me down and I accepted it. In the end, I believed that I was unattractive, stupid and friendless. A gay male actually turned me around, picked up the pieces and gave me myself back.