Stereotypes in L&D forum.

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Just about every topic or post I read in the L&D forum is based on stereotypes about either AS females, AS males, NT females, or NT males.

People are more complicated than simply being slotted into one of these four categories, and I think basing ones understanding of love and dating on the limited unverified stereotypes about each category floating about on WP could be very detrimental to progress in this area.

Basically I think a lot of us on the forum are shooting ourselves in the foot by not having a more open mind to the complexities and individual differences in the process. I think it's almost impossible to progress and improve in the field of love and dating until one lets go of these stereotypes and approaches it with a completely open mind.

Here's some questions to you all:

How successful/unsuccessful have you been in love and dating?
Do you feel any or all of these stereotypes are generally true?
Have you never felt any of the stereotypes to be true and are you still unsuccessful in love and dating?
Did you find letting go of any or all of these stereotypes increased your success in love and dating?

What experiences, if any, have you had that verify the stereotypes described below, and why do you feel these experiences justify an overall stereotype (as opposed to an isolated event with one individual)?

Please feel free to answer any of the questions you feel like answering (you are not required to answer all the questions).

1. I've not been particularly successful in love and dating but it's hardly at the top of my priorities.
2. The stereotypes are entirely subjective. if you want something bad enough no amount of 'social awkwardness' will prevent you from having it
3. n/a
4. n/a
5. May I add, it's just all b*****ks really. If you are an aspie male put yourself in the shoes of a neurotypical female. What would they want, what can you offer them? More importantly, what can't you offer them?

I believe "C" - I strongly believe AS/AS relationships are the ideal, even though they can be very challenging to find.

The whole AS men vs AS women - who has it easier? is a useless/pointless argument, I'm not even interested in having an opinion on it.

Never been in a relationship, had sex, kissed, nada, nil, zip.

Which stereotypes? If you're talking about all stereotypes cited on the forum, I wouldn't know where to begin. It would be helpful to have a list.

I like to think I'm careful about women and what I say about them. I also think that a lot of people both here and in other parts of the internet are amazed by how social interactions work much of the time, but are also very stubborn, and as a result have their own peculiar views of why they work that they tend to stick to even when reasonably challenged. People also tend to extrapolate heavily from their own, usually quite limited, personal experiences. These issues, I think, can between them largely account for the frequent occurrence of whatever dubious stereotypes. In the end, I find these issues so commonplace that I trust almost nobody on L&D as an authority on relationships or attraction.

As for the poll questions... I don't know what is meant by (a), because there are many things "it" could mean, and I'm not sure how to answer that question if I'm just asked to quantify over all of them. I don't know what is meant by (b); if "NT women" are less attracted to AS men on average then yes, if "NT women" on average are more repulsed than attracted by a guy upon learning he is autistic then yes, but "NT women" can't distinguish between AS men and "NT men" much of the time. As for (c), I'm leaning towards "no".

I agree, but arguments usually linger for a reason, and I'm curious to investigate further. I feel the argument itself is useless/pointless, but what factors perpetuate the argument?

I think it's the very human need to blame someone/something for one's misfortune, you can sort of speculate about it one way or the other, but at the end of the day it's just trying to find someone to blame...

Just trying to go by the extent to which I can relate to people who argue women have it easier... I imagine many people here would rate their lack of success in dating as one of their strongest causes of worry, anxiety, insecurity, and self-doubt. If this problem were to no longer exist, then everything would be easier for them. They look at polls being taken here that show that women here have relationships earlier, they see women who speak of having had several sexual partners at a young age, and they notice that several of the women here are married. Some of them may draw the conclusion that if they were female, they would have it easier. Of course, being female brings with it some additional difficulties. But if you're self-centered enough, you may not realise the extent of the difficulties that others have that you do not.

The important thing being that even NEUROTYPICAL women have relationships and sex earlier (when and if they have them at all), because women tend to date older men. There's a lot of whining even outside the AS community about women having it easier. It never ever seems to occur to these individuals that for every man who's alone, there is a woman who is alone...statistically, more women.

Regardless, someone who thinks AS women don't face unique challenges, and that they have easier lives just because women in general can usually find a guy who wants sex, is quite obviously sex-obsessed himself, and is projecting that onto women.

The word "discriminate" in this poll is highly-loaded. You don't have a RIGHT to be liked....by anybody, let alone have a relationship or sex with them.

Try being an AS woman on a date with an NT guy and having a crying meltdown due to sensory issues,
or being dumped because you don't feel comfortable meeting a big group of his friends,
or because sensory issues prevent you from being able to have sex,
and then they can get back to us about how we somehow have it better.

(Please note that nowhere in this post did I imply or state men have it easier- I'm sick of the opining, but in all fairness, the incessant b*tching on the subject seems to almost always come from a male.)

Last edited by Bethie on 16 Apr 2011, 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A fair point - it should be tested against the polling results of people without AS. Based on what I've seen here though, compared with other places and people I know IRL, I think the difference is still more dramatic for people with AS. It's still anecdotal so I might be wrong, but I doubt it.

There's a lot of anecdotal things one notices here on WP (at least, for me).
It will be very interesting when more research is done as to the correlative relationships between Aspergers and different factors.

I would think if the difference is there, it's not due to AS women dating and having sex earlier than NT women,
but AS men, a much larger group with a corresponding number of outliers, having it later than NT men.

I was referring to the particular three I isolated in the poll (although I acknowledge there are many more than just these).



I would agree with this, and I think it's a pity, because I feel the majority of posters on the forum are scientific/logical thinkers, so theoretically the discussions should be less limited, repetitive, and based on the same stereotypes than they are.



What I meant by (a) is do AS men find it more difficult to succeed in dating and having relationships than AS women do. Regarding (b) it was more generalized than how you interpreted it, so I would say it would cover both "NT women being less attracted to AS men on average" and "NT women are more repulsed by a guy upon learning he is autistic". If you believe NT women can't distinguish any differences between AS men and NT men, then you would be disagreeing with (b) as discrimination would then not occur. For (b) to be true you would assume NT women could distinguish differences between AS and NT men.

I didn't vote for B because it implies it is only Autistic men who have a hard time with NT's.

If it had said "Autistics have a hard time trying to date NT's", (a deduction of C, which I did vote for) I would have agreed.

NT girls discriminate against AS guys? I'm sorry, I'm trying not to provide a knee-jerk emotional reaction to that one. If you go by the NT women who post in this forum, I'd say there's not much evidence to support that idea. By far, the NT women who post in this forum are trying very hard to understand their AS partners, and save their relationships. I see a ton of posts by AS men who aren't in relationships, but honestly, I don't know if I've ever seen a post by an Aspie man looking for advice on how to save his relationship with his NT gf.

I've also never understood mythologizing the Aspie/Aspie relationship as superior to mixed relationships. I can understand wanting a partner who is like you. But because both partners are Aspie doesn't mean they're going to be anything like each other. Throw in a difference in backgrounds (functional vs. dysfunctional), co-morbidities, addictions, and AS symptoms that vary so widely they can make AS look like a different disability from one person to the next - it seems like an extremely difficult relationship to navigate. AS is such an unusual disability in that it makes relationships so much harder....I don't understand how both partners having a disability that makes relationships more difficult will ultimately lead to a more successful relationship.

I think almost all AS men whose social interaction skills are high enough for starting a relationship, are able to get everything they need from NT man/woman relationship books, and other NT material, if they are interested to improve the relationship with their contribution. So this is also factor when it comes to to that.

Not very, but admittedly mine's more a problem of just finding few people I'm attracted to.


I believe b) and c), just that I still believe a) is far too homogenized and that b) really is personality against appearance, mannerisms, and that both AS women and men alike get discriminated against for different things in different ways (although the notion that perhaps slightly more AS guys are discriminated against than AS girls - seems intuitive but that's as far as I'd go).

Also, admittedly, I think these have much more truth in high school and, say, your early 20's than later in life.


It would help later in life but in high school I came out to think that I was undateable, untouchable, unloveable, etc. mostly because I was attractive, had many of the most popular girls checking me out and like clockwork they'd all be insterested for a few days or a week and then vanish. Had the same experience working at a restaurant through college that drew similar types. Had many accuse me of having a terrible personality, no personality, playing games, overheard some people trying to scare up dates for me with responses of "NO!! He's a F***ING NERD!! !". After enough of that I said 'f--- this, I don't need it', figured that if no one cares who I am and if the outside is all that matters, again, f--- them, they'll have to work to know me, not vice a verse as I owe them nothing and I know for certain that I owe them nothing, and to be someone else's footstool, especially for a guy, is seen as a sign that you really have no right to be alive anyway.

I guess that's part of why I'm so particular as well. Just like I'd imagine gay guys/girls have a radar for their kind, I have a radar for the right types of personalities or personas, without that I'd be stepping into one completely hostile situation after another.

My take on what the biggest challenge for aspies - getting over the instilled belief that you're inferior and that every time your thrown hostility there's that instinct to wonder what it is that you did wrong. It's taken me years to pull that out of myself, sadly in my pre-teens when I was dx'd I was told by psychs exactly that - that I'd never know what was going on and that I'd need to put other people's judgment of situations ahead of my own for the rest of my life. Obviously coming at it from that angle at any point in life, as the world happens to work, makes you a mark.

I don't know who has it easier and I don't care. Everyone is out for their own, you make your own life, and we all have to play the best we can with the cards we are dealt.

blaming others and accusing others of having it easier isn't going to find you sex of a GF. Figure out what does. I can tell you.

Be interesting
Learn social skills
Try to cope in social situations
Be a whole person, not half of of a potential pair.