Aspie Women and Feminism

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I decided to put this here mostly because I'm desperate to keep this from turning into a simple feminism-bashing thread, which is totally not my intent (and I think if I put it anywhere else, that's what'll happen). Also, if this post sounds a little confused, please forgive me; I'm writing it in part to try to work out my own thoughts. I really like reading feminist articles about all sorts of issues because it's a very interesting subject. But I always feel like those articles are sort of saying "This is the sort of thing that you, as a woman, should be worried about." But here's the thing: I don't really relate to any of the issues the articles discuss, except a bit on workplace advancement. Though I agree broadly with most feminist positions, I really don't understand the passion that goes into a lot of the topics they discuss. A little of it, I think, is simply because my own background really doesn't match a lot of the things they think are problems at all. For instance, I was reading a bunch of articles blaming subconscious social cues girls get as they grow up for the number of girls who fail to go into STEM majors when as kids they say they really like the subjects. As one of the girls who falls into that basket though, that was never my problem. My problem was that in middle school I started failing those subjects, and it took three years to figure out I had a learning disability. By then I had so much ground to make up that I interpreted the entire mess as "I'm no good at math," rather than "I learn math differently from other people." More important to me is the gap in diagnoses of LD and ASD between males and females that could lead to these sorts of problems. But you never hear feminists talk about that. Does anyone relate at all, or am I just totally spinning my wheels?

I'm not AS, so an article about the gender gap in diagnosis isn't of particular interest to me - but that doesn't mean it's not a feminist issue. Diagnosis issues do affect a lot of women though. My grandmother probably died earlier than she should have because she had a heart attack back in the day when they thought coronary heart disease wasn't a common problem in women.

So much of feminism is understanding how structural sexism affects our everyday lives, but we all have different every day lives which means that some of these articles and examples resonate more with us than others.

I have a STEM degree, but never worked in it. Is that because of structural sexism, I don't know. I know I experienced some sexism when I first started looking for a job - but I can still appreciate the point.

I have autism, and many of my skills and interests lie in the STEM fields.

I had to deal with sexism in some math classes. I had one math teacher in middle school who tended to ignore the females in his class who raised their hands or asked questions but was glad to answer males, and he very much wanted to rid me from his class. I knew he despised me. In other public school math, shop, and science classes I have had some teachers and other students not want me to interact or let me study with them because I was not a male (and also because I was weird -unaware undiagnosed aspie-).

I didn't get mistreated much in college, but had to deal with a lot of male attitudes and bullying in the Army, mainly in workplaces that had few or no other females than myself working, and where their were no females in leadership positions. Having a female or females in leadership tended to reduce or eliminate bullying by males on females.

I have dealt with mistreatment, refusal and exclusion based on my being female at many times in my life (many other times than I mentioned above). So yeah, I am interested in feminism, and it is still necessary in this world.