Do women really have more normal looking special interests?
Please define "normal"? I'm a woman in my 40s who is absolutely fanatical about anything Oldsmobile related, including: having an actual classic Oldsmobile of my own, hundreds of diecast model Oldsmobile cars in various sizes, shirts, hats, metal signs, tote bags, banners, keychains, artwork, etc. Even took an airplane (despite my HUGE phobia of flying in planes) to Lansing MI to visit the Oldsmobile museum, a giant Oldsmobile show and visit the gravesite of Mr. Olds himself. Made several trips to GA and TN in my Oldsmobile to attend National/regional Oldsmobile shows. I know a lot of men are highly interested in cars, even specific ones. So I don't consider this as abnormal, to me anyway. Also extremely interested in theropod dinosaurs, of which many had feathers (like their descendants, BIRDS). Also other paleontological creatures, like trilobites. I collect fossils and teeth and dinosaur models/action figures/artwork. Plus I have parrots, which are modern day dinosaurs.
Other severe interests of mine include: medical conditions and diseases, boots(in the shoes category, so perhaps a bit more normal), crows and other members of the corvid family, bears, World War 2 (Pacific AND European fronts), and more recently battle tanks. Maybe I'm not like other women, but this is who I am.
lmfao I would say no. I am obsessed with the porn industry recently, but not for sexual reason just the whole field is so bizarre and people talk so shallowly.
I even built a statement of income for a freelance porn star just to see how much money he can earn a year.
Before that I was obsessed with NPD (narcissist personality disorder), the dark net and jeffy epstein. All very twisted topics I'd say.
xxZeromancerlovexx
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I don’t like the term special interest. Everyone has different interests. As long as people don’t force their interests that I don’t like on me I don’t care.
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AriaEclipse
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I've read that sometimes the special interests of females on the spectrum can appear more "normal" and like the interests of NT girls, like music groups (my best friend's Autistic little sister is obsessed with BTS), fashion, and dolls. I once did a research paper for a psychology class about females with ASD and it was mentioned and also said to be a reason why females don't get diagnosed as often as males.
My special interests are almost always TV shows and occasionally books or musicians. This has been the case my whole life. I really love Sci-Fi and computer stuff, which I have often been told are "boyish" things, but I don't think that's really true. I know a lot of girls who are into those things, especially the Sci-Fi part.
xxZeromancerlovexx
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My special interests are almost always TV shows and occasionally books or musicians. This has been the case my whole life. I really love Sci-Fi and computer stuff, which I have often been told are "boyish" things, but I don't think that's really true. I know a lot of girls who are into those things, especially the Sci-Fi part.
This is true in some cases. The only boyish thing I like are videos games but even then I prefer girly games and games with cutesy elements and animation. I also like games with female lead characters.
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“There’s a lesson that we learn
In the pages that we burn
It’s written in the ashes of the fire below”
-Down, The Birthday Massacre
I don't know.. maybe our special interest might be more useful or more acceptable? Or what is meant with that? Depends on what "normal looking" means..
My special interest since many years are nutrition(+othomolecular medicine and acutally everything that includes the brain and the human body from the perspective of nutrition) and Psychoactive substances aka drugs.
When I was younger it was playing videogames, drawing, my own fantasy and my cats.
Childhood:
Stamps, My Little Pony
Puberty:
Penguins
Later, some until today:
Bands (I got obsessed with certain music genres)
Coding
Languages (I pick up a language to learn, get obsessed for a while, get bored, pick up the next one, and repeat)
Video Games
I also played soccer for some time and liked to watch it. I like to watch a lot of shows, but I think some of them are general very popular (Supernatural, Sherlock, Star Trek, True Detectives, The Walking Dead, to name just a few).
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When you belittle others, you only end up belittling yourself.
I'd say that most of my special interests were fairly 'normal' for a girl my age, it's just that I was very intense about them and that intensity was what made them strange to others.
I was really obsessed with a kpop boy group, so much so that it was how my classmates identified me by; 'the girl who likes Super Junior'. The only thing people knew about me was that I loved this group. I think my intense obsession definitely weirded a lot of my peers out
Some of my other 'normal, girly' special interests include:
- fashion
- Miraculous Ladybug
- languages (German in particular!)
- and more musicians (David Bowie and Nirvana especially)
My I think mine have always been a mixture of slightly more normal but veering towards more unconventional on the whole.
My special interests are mostly based around art (both observing and creating), embroidery, freehand embroidery of animal skulls, had a big poison dart frog embroidering phase awhile back, currently working on a scarab beetle! Lot's of interests around nature and animals (that's been lifelong).
A long running interest and love for the Bronte Sisters (in particular Emily and Anne) have made several pilgrimages to the Yorkshire moors over the last few years.
The music of PJ Harvey, cemeteries(often visiting them and exploring new ones), fossilising, Victorian culture, medical history, classic and Gothic literature, ghost stories.
When I was a child everything revolved around animals, for years I was utterly obsessed with the life and death of Anne Boleyn, and I've always loved unsolved mysteries and crimes, the unexplained etc I'm normally fixated on one or several of those at any given time.
Plus very much love and adore my cats(and all cats) and tea!
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Loves Art, Nature, drawing, freehand embroidery,The Bronte Sisters, classic literature, mystery novels, ghost stories, museums, Victorian culture, true crime, cats, collecting
NightMuse
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I love learning about history (specifically about the WW2 and Vietnam eras), so if this is odd, I'll happily own it.
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"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." -- Ronald Reagan
My special interests as a child were Shakespeare, reading the dictionary and greek/roman mythology-so not exactly normal. Now that I am an adult they have pretty reliably been genetics, abnormal and developmental psychology, artificial intelligence (as a 21 yr old I spent 300 hours programming a chatbot just for fun) and poetry. Recently I have developed an interest in economics which has led me to spend about 200 hours reading every textbook I can find on the subject. I hadn't developed a new special interest in many years since the AI obsession started when I was 21, so I have really been enjoying the deep dive.
I don't know whether my adult 'special interests' are normal or not, for a man they probably would be-for a woman not so much. I certainly would never bring up my recent reading of 'Irrational Exuberance' or 'The Misbehavior of Markets' in the lunchroom as I am pretty sure it wouldn't be considered normal by a long stretch. I have found that outside of scrapbooking/craft/photography, exercise or art that having any kind of 'special interest' isn't that common for most (NT) people.
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