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How FDS Can Help Autistic Queens Navigate Relationships
49 Plays4 years ago
We celebrate our very first Queen Sh*T! And welcome two subbies (Artemis and Stena) to talk about their experiences with autism and how FDS helped them navigate life and relationships.
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Transcript
Success Story: Escaping Abuse and Finding Happiness
00:00:00
Speaker
All right.
00:00:00
Speaker
So we have our very first queen shit from our Patreon subscriber, Hanop.
00:00:07
Speaker
And she wants to share with us a success story.
00:00:10
Speaker
One year ago, I was in the middle of divorcing a low-value male.
00:00:13
Speaker
He was abusive and manipulative.
00:00:15
Speaker
He cheated.
00:00:16
Speaker
And when I spoke up about it, he tried to manipulate my family against me and convince them that I'm imagining things and that I needed mental help.
00:00:23
Speaker
That was it for me.
00:00:24
Speaker
I asked for a divorce shortly after.
00:00:26
Speaker
During the divorce, the emotional abuse got worse.
00:00:28
Speaker
He actually ended up sending me a list of everything that is wrong with me, how he thinks I'm a failure, and that I won't be going anywhere in life.
00:00:36
Speaker
This 34-years-old unemployed prick with no degree or career prospects actually sat down in his parents' house and typed out a list of reasons why I'm a failure.
00:00:45
Speaker
But meanwhile, right.
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Speaker
I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it's always the unemployed guys who have absolutely no prospects that tend to be the most abusive and just try the hardest to bring you down.
00:00:59
Speaker
Because he knows that she's better than him.
00:01:00
Speaker
And so he's sending her a list of everything that's quote unquote wrong with her because he wants her to feel as bad.
00:01:06
Speaker
He wants her to feel bad about herself so that he can control her more easily.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's like abuse 101.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's fucked up.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, I believe we even had a thread on that about how sometimes the guys at the bottom of the social hierarchy feel more desperate to dominate women because they have no other power in their life.
00:01:24
Speaker
So it's just all desperation.
00:01:27
Speaker
So to continue, she says, Meanwhile, I landed a high paying job and was already planning to move to another continent.
00:01:34
Speaker
Exactly one month after the divorce, I moved as planned.
00:01:37
Speaker
A year later today, I'm in my late 20s, living my best life.
00:01:41
Speaker
I got my dream job, an amazing apartment.
00:01:43
Speaker
I can afford nice things in life.
00:01:45
Speaker
And I met amazing people and traveled quite a bit.
00:01:47
Speaker
I've never been happier.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yes, queen.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yay.
00:01:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:52
Speaker
We love to see it.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yes, queen.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:56
Speaker
We celebrate your love of love.
00:01:58
Speaker
And she says, thank you, ladies, for everything you do.
00:02:00
Speaker
FDS helped
00:02:01
Speaker
me process my trauma and played a huge part in me becoming the confident woman I am today so thank you so much for that feedback awesome that makes me happy I'm smiling so much that's just that's made my week warms my terrible cold heart that's like for all the shit we put up as moderators it's those kinds of stories that make me go like oh my gosh that makes it worth it that just makes it worth it
00:02:25
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:02:26
Speaker
100%.
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Speaker
100%.
00:02:26
Speaker
So congrats to you.
00:02:28
Speaker
Congrats to you.
00:02:30
Speaker
Kudos to you.
00:02:31
Speaker
So that was our queen shit.
00:02:32
Speaker
If you'd like to submit your own story of your own level up, please visit our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy.
00:02:40
Speaker
And you can sign up for one of our tiers and submit your story.
00:02:43
Speaker
And we will select one every one or two every week as part of a raffle and we'll read it on air.
00:02:47
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:48
Speaker
And check us out.
00:02:53
Speaker
What's up, queens?
00:02:55
Speaker
Welcome to the Female Dating Strategy Podcast.
00:02:57
Speaker
I'm your host, Ro.
00:02:58
Speaker
And this is Lilith.
00:02:59
Speaker
And we have two very special guests today who are going to talk to us about what it's like to date with autism and how FDS has helped them manage the dating world and mismatched expectations between men and women.
Understanding Autism in Women
00:03:16
Speaker
So we have our first guest, who is Artemis.
00:03:22
Speaker
Hi, Irma.
00:03:23
Speaker
And our second guest, Dana.
00:03:24
Speaker
Hi there.
00:03:26
Speaker
So just to kind of kick things off, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?
00:03:31
Speaker
Okay, I'll start.
00:03:33
Speaker
So I was diagnosed with autism at 29, and that started a self-discovery process that really helped me a lot, really understanding all my problems.
00:03:44
Speaker
And then last year I was browsing Reddit and one of the posts from FDS made the frontline from Reddit.
00:03:53
Speaker
It was being dissed, I think.
00:03:56
Speaker
People were like making fun of it or something.
00:03:57
Speaker
So I was like, oh, what is this?
00:03:59
Speaker
And then I was blown out because it was amazing and it really, really, really helped me.
00:04:04
Speaker
Hi there, I'm Artemis.
00:04:06
Speaker
I found FDS through a couple of my friends that we were, you know, looking for a centered, women-centered, empowered online space.
00:04:17
Speaker
You know, we...
00:04:19
Speaker
in our friendships, we help each other grow and encourage each other to be the best version of ourselves.
00:04:24
Speaker
And, you know, we found that FDS does that and, you know, encourages us to love ourselves and love other women.
00:04:33
Speaker
And, you know, I really was drawn to it initially by that and found that, you know, in being autistic, it helped me navigate
00:04:44
Speaker
dating and navigate the world a little better and navigate some relationships.
00:04:50
Speaker
It's really been helpful.
00:04:52
Speaker
I was surprised to learn that, you know, autistic women have
00:04:57
Speaker
you know, unique struggles related to dating.
00:05:00
Speaker
So, you know, since I started out doing this, like, modding stuff, being a little bit ignorant about autism, can we maybe start out by going over what autism is and what are some of the misconceptions about autism that most people have?
00:05:14
Speaker
I'll say this.
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Speaker
I didn't realize when we started writing books
00:05:21
Speaker
about like having clear boundaries that it would be of such value with autistic women.
00:05:26
Speaker
And I remember that we got a post and I believe it's in the handbook where an autistic person was discussing the fact that without clear guidelines and boundaries, sometimes it's very, very easy to manipulate autistic people because they have difficulty picking up on social clues.
00:05:48
Speaker
Is that true to your experience or?
00:05:51
Speaker
Let me just start by saying what autism is so you can kind of get an overall.
00:05:57
Speaker
So autism is an disease.
00:05:59
Speaker
It's not like there's anything wrong with us.
00:06:00
Speaker
There's a lot of misconceptions about what it is.
00:06:03
Speaker
And it's like a Mac versus a PC.
00:06:08
Speaker
It's just a different operating system for the brain.
00:06:11
Speaker
Macs are better at some things and worse at others.
00:06:13
Speaker
And the world is set up for a PC, right?
00:06:15
Speaker
The world has PCs everywhere.
00:06:19
Speaker
And occasionally you'll find a Mac.
00:06:21
Speaker
Um, so, uh, one in 68 people are diagnosed with autism and it's basically when you're developing, um, in childhood, there's something in the brain called synaptic pruning.
00:06:33
Speaker
And that's when like a neuron will go to another neuron, right?
00:06:37
Speaker
It's like a one pathway.
00:06:39
Speaker
And when you, as a neurotypical person hear a reference to something, you connect that one thing to the one thing.
00:06:46
Speaker
Well, with autism, we don't prune all of those synaptic connections.
00:06:51
Speaker
So it's like a tree and it can go many different ways.
00:06:55
Speaker
So sometimes we need a clear path to the way that the neurotypical person is seeing the thing that we are seeing.
00:07:05
Speaker
So
FDS Guidelines for Autistic Individuals
00:07:06
Speaker
like, for instance, it's like, you know, Netflix and chill.
00:07:09
Speaker
Like now everybody knows that Netflix and chill needs hookups.
00:07:13
Speaker
But autistic people, like when you ask us to come over and watch a movie, like we literally thought we were coming over to watch a movie.
00:07:19
Speaker
So we're a little more naive.
00:07:22
Speaker
Sis, I got to tell you, we all did.
00:07:23
Speaker
Well, we all did at first.
00:07:28
Speaker
But, you know, I mean, that's a more extreme example, you know.
00:07:33
Speaker
We don't get those social cues, so we're much more easily taken advantage of.
00:07:37
Speaker
We can't, like, protect ourselves.
00:07:40
Speaker
So it's like, okay, so now that memes came out telling us what Netflix and chill is, we know what it is, and we can build our, you know, social interactions around that.
00:07:49
Speaker
Like, we can say, hey, like –
00:07:52
Speaker
I don't know if I want a Netflix and show with you, but you know, we can do this instead, you know?
00:07:57
Speaker
So there's, I think FGS really helps, um, get like, get a set of guidelines that we can follow, um, to make sure that we're not being taken, taken advantage of.
00:08:11
Speaker
Um, so does it kind of help lubricate certain types of social interactions, um,
00:08:18
Speaker
or more bring more clarity it absolutely can yeah I mean I think some of the things are with autism like we have a lot of experiences and we within human experience we kind of build little boxes that people put things in right and
00:08:39
Speaker
And an autistic person just organizes those boxes differently.
00:08:42
Speaker
So we need to have a more direct, like direct communication, direct, you know, a lot of people think that we're really blunt and we're really rude.
00:08:53
Speaker
And when we're just trying to communicate, we're not as soft with our language sometimes.
00:08:58
Speaker
So we can come off.
00:09:00
Speaker
offensively when we don't mean to.
00:09:03
Speaker
It's definitely the biggest issue sometimes with us is communicating with neurotypical people on both ends because we don't know what they're saying and then they sometimes will form a context around what we're saying when we're really just meaning what we're saying, literally.
00:09:23
Speaker
The one thing I also wanted to mention, like, you know, there's different, a lot of people say there's like high functioning autism and low functioning autism, but that's not really how the spectrum works.
00:09:35
Speaker
It's, it's, it's like when you have a sound bar and there are different, there's a bass and there's treble and there's all of these different things.
00:09:45
Speaker
And it's not that, that things get higher or lower and,
00:09:52
Speaker
Things can get higher or lower than average, right?
00:09:54
Speaker
Like, so some people think autistic people don't have empathy.
00:09:57
Speaker
But really, autistic people have a lot of empathy sometimes or no empathy sometimes.
00:10:03
Speaker
It's not, you know, some people are nonverbal.
00:10:05
Speaker
Some people like me are very verbal.
00:10:08
Speaker
We don't shut up.
00:10:09
Speaker
Right.
00:10:10
Speaker
So a lot of people have this like concept of what they think autism is, but that's really, it's really based around boys.
00:10:18
Speaker
It's based around boy children that present in a certain way.
00:10:24
Speaker
And that's often not, not what it actually is.
00:10:28
Speaker
So yeah.
00:10:28
Speaker
Could you tell me more about how autistic men and autistic women present differently?
00:10:33
Speaker
And then maybe further, why do you think so much emphasis has been put on boys rather than how it affects girls?
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, the differences actually in the post by an autistic woman that is on the FDS handbook.
00:10:49
Speaker
She mentions that the typical interests of autistic boys tend to be like transport, like trains, that's a very typical one, they're obsessed with trains and with organizing them.
00:11:01
Speaker
Or...
00:11:02
Speaker
Other non-social interests in boys, like mathematics, for example.
00:11:06
Speaker
So trains and mathematics, they are two very clear ones.
00:11:10
Speaker
And then women like things that are considered stereotypically feminine, like they might like dolls or animals, or they might love celebrities.
00:11:21
Speaker
So people don't really pick up that this girl is actually not developing the same way as the other girls are because her interests are so typically feminine that everybody just assumes she's just a normal girl and nobody really picks up on the other cues, on the other stuff that's going on.
Gender Differences in Autism
00:11:40
Speaker
Is it something that presents in extremes?
00:11:42
Speaker
Because I would think for little boys, it wouldn't necessarily be atypical for them to be interested in math or trains.
00:11:48
Speaker
Is it that they're interested in these things to the exclusion of other things?
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:11:55
Speaker
You make a very good point and a very good question.
00:11:58
Speaker
So the reason people really pick up with boys is that they see
00:12:03
Speaker
that they reject social interaction in favor of the trains, the math, or whatever it is their special interest is.
00:12:12
Speaker
So that would be the thing that really makes people notice.
00:12:15
Speaker
The boy refusing social contact to be with their special interest.
00:12:22
Speaker
So with girls, because so much of our social conditioning is around being social, I would almost think it would show up quicker for girls, but I guess not because people think it like playing with dolls or being obsessed with celebrities because those are people or representations of people that must mean that they are good at social interaction or they're learning proper social interaction.
00:12:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:49
Speaker
And also, if a girl is quiet by herself in a corner playing with her dolls, for some reason, that doesn't raise alarms in people, especially not just parents, but also like teachers or other education professionals that see that, oh, the girl is just being a girl, being in a corner, quiet, playing with dolls.
00:13:11
Speaker
But also women are a lot better at masking and they don't stim as much.
00:13:16
Speaker
So men, so stimming is a really big part of autism.
00:13:20
Speaker
When somebody shakes their leg or when they're flapping their hands around or doing things like that, it's a big way that an autistic person can calm down.
00:13:31
Speaker
And the reason we need to calm down often is that because we don't have that synaptic pruning, the sensory stimuli is very overwhelming for us.
00:13:41
Speaker
So women do stimming in other ways that are, is not outwardly presenting like males or male children do.
00:13:53
Speaker
So like you'll see a kid sometimes even screaming and, you know, that is a really big off-putting thing to some people and they'll try to get their kid diagnosed.
00:14:05
Speaker
But the other thing, you know, there's something called masking.
00:14:09
Speaker
So women are much better at masking.
00:14:11
Speaker
And basically what that means is we copy people's behavior.
00:14:17
Speaker
Sometimes we don't know why you do something.
00:14:20
Speaker
We just do it to fit in and because we saw you do it.
00:14:23
Speaker
So that's we learn women are so much better at learning social signals and copying them to look like a typical person when we're maybe not.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:34
Speaker
And that's actually one of the main reasons why autistic women burn out because they have to mask all the time.
00:14:42
Speaker
And that means like playing a role, like you're in a
00:14:47
Speaker
in a theatrical play and whenever you step out of home you step into this character who looks into other people's eyes, who talks like other people talk, but that doesn't
Late Autism Diagnoses and Personal Growth
00:15:00
Speaker
come natural to us or at least to most of us or many of us.
00:15:04
Speaker
And so we have to act.
00:15:06
Speaker
So whenever I am going to do or say something
00:15:09
Speaker
a part of my mind has already pre-rehearsed it before.
00:15:14
Speaker
So it isn't quick, it isn't natural, it doesn't flow.
00:15:18
Speaker
That is the masking and it becomes really exhausting, but it's a trap because women become so good at it that people just don't believe it.
00:15:27
Speaker
Like, what?
00:15:28
Speaker
You don't look autistic.
00:15:30
Speaker
It's like, duh, because I mask and it becomes exhausting.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:35
Speaker
And is this also why autistic women tend to be diagnosed much later?
00:15:40
Speaker
Like a lot of women just seem to go much of their lives not even knowing that they have autism.
00:15:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:15:46
Speaker
I mean, it's, it's really, it's hard to get diagnosed because it's very expensive.
00:15:51
Speaker
A lot of doctors
00:15:53
Speaker
don't know how to properly diagnose a woman.
00:15:56
Speaker
If insurance will pay for it, you're incredibly lucky.
00:15:58
Speaker
I was 35 when I got diagnosed.
00:16:00
Speaker
It, you know, I'm, it was this year.
00:16:03
Speaker
It's, it was a really hard journey for me.
00:16:07
Speaker
So did it just like make everything in your life click into place?
00:16:10
Speaker
Was it was it a relief when you found out or was it like, oh, no, this is something I guess if you've been dealing with it your whole life, you would kind of have already put together some coping mechanisms.
00:16:19
Speaker
Is this like a process of you unlearning things or are you learning new things or how does this work if you if you get diagnosed at this point in your life?
00:16:26
Speaker
Well, for me, you know, it's really silly because I saw a bunch of memes from like an autistic page that one of my friends would share and they would all really click for me.
00:16:38
Speaker
And I never understood why I had so much trouble with certain things.
00:16:42
Speaker
And then so I started looking into it and it just fit me exactly to a T. And then, you know, I thought like maybe I was a little bit, you know,
00:16:52
Speaker
a little bit, you know, on, on a little bit of the spectrum.
00:16:56
Speaker
And then it just, one day it just all clicked and I,
00:17:00
Speaker
I went to get evaluated and I talked with more people.
00:17:04
Speaker
I actually have a disease called Ehlers-Danlos and dysautonomia.
00:17:08
Speaker
And a lot of people with the disease have autistic characteristics and have autism spectrum disorder as well.
00:17:17
Speaker
So it was something that once I saw that research, I thought I should get evaluated.
00:17:23
Speaker
And now the research says a lot of people have both.
00:17:27
Speaker
So once you have that information, what do you do with it?
00:17:31
Speaker
Like, do you change anything in your life?
00:17:33
Speaker
Are you just sort of, it's just sort of comforting to kind of understand yourself a little bit better?
00:17:37
Speaker
I imagine there's a lot more writing and resources now for you to kind of understand how your own mind works.
00:17:43
Speaker
But is there anything that you're practicing now that you didn't before now that you learned your diagnosis?
00:17:50
Speaker
For me, definitely.
00:17:52
Speaker
For me, the main thing, so I've been diagnosed for about three years, a bit more.
00:17:58
Speaker
And the main thing that changed for me was giving myself permission to do the things that I need to do to dress the way I need to dress.
00:18:07
Speaker
So for example, I've given myself permission to just wear tracksuits.
00:18:12
Speaker
whenever I need to go to work, I just get a nicer tracksuit that looks a bit more special, whatever, but I wear tracksuits because I cannot stand the physical sensations of tight clothing and your typical feminine clothing, which is also why a lot of autistic girls tend to be tomboys because the sensory discomfort from clothes
00:18:39
Speaker
girly clothing is usually more uncomfortable.
00:18:42
Speaker
So that's one of the things.
00:18:43
Speaker
And also just giving myself permission to rest when I need to rest, give myself permission to not go outside if I really feel that it's not a good idea to say no to a lot of things.
00:18:57
Speaker
And this ties to, for me, a big thing after my diagnosis, which is grieving what I thought my life would be like.
00:19:07
Speaker
When I was a kid, I thought that I would be an adult who would have a lot of friends, who would go out a lot, who would have a busy job and who would do lots of things.
00:19:16
Speaker
Right now, I realize I do not have the energy for that.
00:19:20
Speaker
I get burned out really quickly.
00:19:22
Speaker
I cannot connect to people.
00:19:24
Speaker
It's just not doable.
00:19:27
Speaker
So I've said goodbye to that ideal life I thought I was going to have.
00:19:32
Speaker
So that's been a big thing for me.
00:19:34
Speaker
So grieving a lot as well.
00:19:36
Speaker
And that's why I don't really consider autism for me to be just a different thing.
00:19:43
Speaker
For me, it really is a social disability because I really feel disabled socially because I don't have the same energy.
00:19:52
Speaker
I don't have the same ability to just feel good with other people.
00:19:57
Speaker
So those are the things for me after my diagnosis.
00:20:01
Speaker
When you've had positive or connective interactions with people, what has it typically been like?
00:20:07
Speaker
Is it usually when you're engaged in doing something?
00:20:10
Speaker
Is it like a particular topic that you feel more connected with people?
00:20:14
Speaker
Is there anything that you recall in your life where you're like, I actually feel like I'm having a good social interaction or a good connection?
00:20:23
Speaker
And what was that like for you?
00:20:26
Speaker
For me, it's like right now, because right now the interactions that we're having are framed within a specific situation with specific requirements.
00:20:36
Speaker
I know what's expected of me.
00:20:38
Speaker
I know how the situation is going to go.
00:20:41
Speaker
So things like right now or when I'm at work,
00:20:43
Speaker
when I know what I have to do, what I can expect from other people.
00:20:47
Speaker
So really structured interactions work very well for me.
00:20:52
Speaker
That makes sense as to why FDS would appeal to autistic people, because we do kind of structure social interactions in a way
00:21:00
Speaker
That's not typically done with dating.
00:21:03
Speaker
I think sometimes when you look at popular culture, they have this anything goes mentality.
00:21:12
Speaker
And, you know, it's all about communication.
00:21:15
Speaker
But for people for whom that's very, very difficult, and even for people who don't have...
00:21:20
Speaker
autism, these interactions are just fraught with a lot of miscommunication that leaves a person open for exploitation, misunderstandings, negative social interaction, because a lot of times people don't know what's expected of them, right?
00:21:36
Speaker
Obviously, we're firm believers of FTS.
00:21:38
Speaker
But I feel I wanted to make that point because
Structured Interactions for Autistic Individuals
00:21:40
Speaker
I feel like some of our critics who attack us for having gender roles don't understand that the structure actually does
00:21:47
Speaker
benefit a lot of people if we set expectations up front for ourselves and for the people that we interact with, and then start to normalize certain interactions and communicate those interactions to make our social interactions as smooth as possible and create, I think, a safe space for us to have a good dating experience.
00:22:07
Speaker
People get mad at us for how, quote unquote, structured we are, right?
00:22:11
Speaker
Like, modern dating culture is so, even for people that aren't autistic, I struggle with it.
00:22:17
Speaker
So like wishy-washy, like, oh, just one day at a time, just go with the flow.
00:22:22
Speaker
You know, oh, I don't want to put a label on our relationship, that kind of stuff, right?
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah, I can't do that.
00:22:29
Speaker
So I need to have them in a box.
00:22:31
Speaker
I either need to have them in the friend box or in the maybe we'll be more than friends box or that we are more than friends box.
00:22:39
Speaker
Because otherwise, I don't know whether I need to flirt with them.
00:22:42
Speaker
I don't know how to interact with them at all if I don't know what we are.
00:22:46
Speaker
And if they want to just be friends, then they get mad at me when I'm not flirting.
00:22:50
Speaker
And I'm like, well, you wanted to just be friends.
00:22:52
Speaker
They don't really mean that.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:55
Speaker
And they'll get upset about the idea of the friend zone, right?
00:22:58
Speaker
Like they'll get mad at women for like, oh, they don't consider me dating material.
00:23:03
Speaker
They put me in the friend zone or, you know, they've put me in this box.
00:23:08
Speaker
But like sometimes that's necessary to make sense of the world that we live in.
00:23:11
Speaker
Not everything can just be this postmodern wishy-washy words don't have any definitions kind of nonsense.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, but men put themselves in the friend zone.
00:23:21
Speaker
I mean, if they're not taking us out on dates and if they're not acting like they want us, then why would we be anything more than friends with them?
00:23:31
Speaker
Facts.
00:23:31
Speaker
Because they're used to women...
00:23:34
Speaker
you know, to use an often used phrase in our subreddit, they're used to women being like emotional sponges and mommy McBang made.
00:23:40
Speaker
So they kind of think that a friend, it means that you do all of the performative feminine labor that a woman would normally give a boyfriend.
00:23:50
Speaker
And so they've, you know, with those lines being blurred, men have started to expect more and more from women while giving less and less commitment or, uh,
00:24:00
Speaker
They're more noncommittal in the way they interact with women, but still expect and have become accustomed to women still giving them all the perks of being in a relationship without actually being in a relationship.
00:24:11
Speaker
I think another thing that FDS does is, you know, FDS is full of really empowered, smart, beautiful women and, you know, encouraging us to be better at the things we want to be better at and supporting us through that is really huge.
00:24:30
Speaker
A lot of women are intimidating on FDS to men.
00:24:35
Speaker
You know, a lot of autistic women were very smart.
00:24:37
Speaker
We can talk about anything.
00:24:39
Speaker
We're information sponges.
00:24:41
Speaker
We can speak to any topic.
00:24:42
Speaker
And when a man brings up a topic that they think we're going to be dumb and not know how to have an hour long discussion on, and then they just get intimidated when we know more than they do.
00:24:53
Speaker
I absolutely love that so much.
00:24:55
Speaker
I'm just imagining you have a conversation with a guy who's mansplaining something you're literally an expert in and you just tear him to shreds.
00:25:02
Speaker
I don't know why, but that's a mental image that really excites me.
00:25:05
Speaker
It's really fun.
00:25:06
Speaker
I'm a molecular biologist.
00:25:07
Speaker
And when guys try to bring up things about COVID or science, and then they try to tell me something that's so way off, not even close to being true.
00:25:16
Speaker
And then I explain everything around it.
00:25:19
Speaker
I mean, that's a really simple example, but it's just men want, oftentimes they think they know everything about everything.
00:25:26
Speaker
And then when a woman can actually speak intelligently to something, they just crawl in a little hole.
00:25:30
Speaker
And instead of being attracted to that, actually, my current partner is very attracted to that and loves it.
00:25:36
Speaker
And that's
00:25:37
Speaker
Why we get along so well.
00:25:38
Speaker
Oh, that's so awesome.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:40
Speaker
With men like that, it's because they always feel like they have to be better than the woman to like maintain the upper hand rather than interact with women.
00:25:49
Speaker
If you have any friends in any capacity, just platonically, you should at least have some friends that just know more about anything than you do.
00:25:56
Speaker
Right.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:57
Speaker
Because they always say like you're a reflection of the five people you hang around the most.
00:26:00
Speaker
So I would love to hang around people that know things that I don't so that, you know, they could rub off on me.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I would think a person who is interested in interacting with a person rather than dominating a person would appreciate when that happens.
00:26:14
Speaker
But that's why we weed those guys out because, you know, yeah, that's frustrating.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:18
Speaker
And the hardest thing I think with dating is like sometimes you're having two different conversations with somebody.
00:26:22
Speaker
Like did you guys see that Key and Peele sketch where –
00:26:26
Speaker
They're texting each other and they're having completely different conversations.
00:26:29
Speaker
Like one of them says, you want to go?
00:26:31
Speaker
Like you want to go to the bar?
00:26:32
Speaker
And the other one's like, you want to go?
00:26:33
Speaker
Like he thinks you're reading it like you want to fight.
00:26:36
Speaker
And, you know, since we don't have the same body language and tone in our voice as a normal person, I'm sorry, I don't even want to use the word normal, as a non-autistic person does, sometimes we're read differently than we intend.
00:26:50
Speaker
So it's communication is really difficult.
00:26:53
Speaker
So tell me, do you have any stories like that about, you know,
00:26:56
Speaker
Cases where, you know, you're in a relationship and you were saying one thing, the other person was saying one thing, and you just were not, not getting each other or just speaking at each other and not not understanding one another.
00:27:06
Speaker
Countless.
00:27:07
Speaker
I mean, so many.
00:27:08
Speaker
I mean, it's usually the opposite in that I'm very direct.
00:27:12
Speaker
And they don't believe what I'm saying is the truth because they're looking for some hidden context that isn't there.
00:27:19
Speaker
They're looking for, you know, like if I ask, you know, somebody asks, what's your favorite thing?
00:27:25
Speaker
I'm like, well, what is he asking for?
00:27:27
Speaker
Is he trying to take me to dinner?
00:27:28
Speaker
Is he trying to like, why is he asking this?
00:27:31
Speaker
So I have to know how to answer it.
00:27:33
Speaker
And it's,
00:27:33
Speaker
A non-autistic person will know what these questions mean when a person asks them.
00:27:39
Speaker
And when I ask a question, I'm literally asking what I'm asking.
00:27:42
Speaker
And I don't want you to dance around the point.
00:27:44
Speaker
I don't want anything more.
00:27:45
Speaker
I'm trying to figure out that very specific information so that I can frame whatever I need to frame around it.
00:27:52
Speaker
See, I'm the same way, but I'm not.
00:27:54
Speaker
Obviously, I'm is neurotypical an appropriate word to use.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:59
Speaker
So I'm I'm the same way, but even as a more neurotypical person, but I have found the way that my mind works.
00:28:06
Speaker
I'm a person that just likes to organize information a certain way.
00:28:10
Speaker
So I've I've had to really work on my tone of voice because I've been tone polices before as well.
00:28:16
Speaker
And it's really, really frustrating, I think, to a person who's like that, who is already neurotypical.
00:28:21
Speaker
But I can't imagine, like, to the nth degree when you're dealing with legitimate social cognitive differences between a person who is used to women emoting and used to women, like, having – I don't know.
00:28:35
Speaker
I don't even want to say women always having hidden agendas or anything.
00:28:38
Speaker
But just, like, used to women, like, giving them more emotional reaction behind their words.
00:28:46
Speaker
how incredibly frustrating that can be.
00:28:48
Speaker
So I'm just saying that to say I sympathize because I, you know, I just, just, you know, in my normal interactions and the way that I've interacted with men that they'll, they'll say, they'll say things like, oh, you're intimidating or you're to the point, or they'll, they'll try to dress it up and be like, oh, you're masculine if you don't naturally emote.
00:29:05
Speaker
And to the point where I actually started to kind of train myself to have a little bit more of a feminine sounding, sing-songy voice when I, when I wanted to, but it's like,
00:29:17
Speaker
You know, it's something I worked on just to make my social interactions better, but I can't, you know, if it's something that's just not in your repertoire, you know, I can imagine that would lead to a lot of difficult social interactions with men who are used to women doing that.
00:29:33
Speaker
What you said just now kind of reminded me of this, like, you know, the whole red pill thing where they say, like, overcoming last minute resistance where, oh, you know, even if she wants to have sex with you, she'll pretend like she doesn't because she doesn't want to seem like she's a slut.
00:29:51
Speaker
And so if you're with her and you're kissing or whatever, and she's pushing you away, she doesn't actually mean it.
00:29:58
Speaker
Deep down, she actually wants it.
00:30:00
Speaker
But she's just pretending like she doesn't so that you don't think badly of her or whatever.
00:30:05
Speaker
Right.
00:30:05
Speaker
And so when you come and this is this sort of mentality, it's not just a red pill thing.
00:30:10
Speaker
It's surprisingly, a lot of guys seem to have that mentality of like, oh, she really wants it.
00:30:15
Speaker
She secretly wants it.
00:30:17
Speaker
They feel entitled to women's emotional engagement.
00:30:19
Speaker
I think that's what it is.
00:30:20
Speaker
So then when you don't give it to them, they feel like you robbed them of something.
00:30:24
Speaker
Or they just feel like we're not into them.
00:30:26
Speaker
I could tell a guy a million times I'm into him.
00:30:29
Speaker
I can text him all day.
00:30:31
Speaker
But if I'm not doing very specific things that all of the other women that have done to show their interest, then apparently I'm not interested enough.
00:30:39
Speaker
And then they
00:30:39
Speaker
reject me before I can reject them and then I tell them no look I'm really into you and they're like oh I'm so sorry I really didn't think you were I'm like but I've told you and I've showed you and I don't know what else I can do I'm just not doing it in the way that you're used to yeah I was thinking what I was thinking of is more cases where the woman isn't into him and the guy like that that's the weird thing about men that I even I don't understand it's like when you act like you're into them they think you're not into them and then when you act like you're not into them
00:31:09
Speaker
they think that you're into them.
00:31:12
Speaker
It's very confusing.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:13
Speaker
And it's like a guy has to show you a guy can tell me all day, you know, that they're into me, but if their actions don't match their words, it just doesn't fit right in that box for me.
00:31:23
Speaker
Like it has to be, you know, a full, you know, it has to be very direct and very clear, um, without being too wishy-washy.
00:31:34
Speaker
And that's really FDS approved, right?
00:31:36
Speaker
Because if,
00:31:37
Speaker
if they feel lukewarm or wishy-washy, like, why would we, why would we waste our time if, like, you're with a guy for a year and he still doesn't know what he wants?
00:31:45
Speaker
And it's like, well, you know me, you know who I am, you know, you know, maybe you're not ready for some reason, but then I need to move on if that's, you know, if that's the case.
00:31:57
Speaker
Personally, I think men confuse themselves because they project how they feel onto us.
00:32:01
Speaker
And I think a lot of the times it's just projection.
00:32:05
Speaker
And there's nothing else we do at FDS is to kind of say just really, really depersonalize the way that men interact because they do so much projecting of their own emotions onto women, especially if they're interested, right?
00:32:18
Speaker
Like...
00:32:19
Speaker
I mean, that's how they get the audacity.
00:32:21
Speaker
They have to, in the back of their mind, believe, oh, all these women out here secretly want me.
00:32:25
Speaker
I just have to go up over there and show them the man that I am.
00:32:28
Speaker
And they're going to run into my arms, you know, stuff like that.
00:32:31
Speaker
But, you know, I mean, women with autism tend to become fixated on helping their partner versus attending to their own needs.
00:32:39
Speaker
And we end up with the opposite types of men that are needy and that take advantage of our giving and caring needs.
00:32:46
Speaker
culture.
00:32:47
Speaker
So FDS teaches us like what pick Misha's are and to be able to stand up for our needs and to know what our, you know, help evaluate what our needs are.
00:32:57
Speaker
That's, that's so important is being able to know what your needs are.
00:33:01
Speaker
So I, I having a space like this, I think to have women just articulate, um,
00:33:07
Speaker
Just how are they feel, even if it's like negative or positive and isn't like the best, most, you know, thought out idea, but just really, truly emote so that you can identify what your needs are at a most primal level.
00:33:21
Speaker
I feel like that's got to be really valuable.
00:33:23
Speaker
Eventually going out into the world when you interact with men, if you already have a place where you can just have that free feeling.
00:33:29
Speaker
you can then build the tools to negotiate that with a man that you're dating rather than just like always starting from a place of compromise because you start performing femininity rather than performing and emoting in a way that's true and genuine to your needs.
00:33:45
Speaker
Yeah, FDS really, really helped me with that, with giving myself permission to
00:33:53
Speaker
learn and identify the needs that I hadn't really identified before, the needs that I just didn't even look at because I was too busy performing something for the enjoyment of some low-value men.
00:34:07
Speaker
And also another thing that FDS really gave me, that's something that I'm very grateful for, is a narrative where men aren't automatically good at
00:34:24
Speaker
Because in life, the conversations, the media that I consumed and the conversations I encountered, people are always assuming the best of every single man.
00:34:37
Speaker
He may break all of your plants.
00:34:40
Speaker
He may destroy everything you love.
00:34:42
Speaker
He may kill your pet.
00:34:44
Speaker
or sleep in a nest, whatever, but he's just a great guy.
00:34:48
Speaker
He's just a little confusion.
00:34:52
Speaker
You saw that post with the guy who literally slept in a nest in his bedroom.
00:34:57
Speaker
I couldn't.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:35:00
Speaker
So in my life, this was like a breakthrough, like a Buddhist enlightenment moment for me.
00:35:07
Speaker
Like, wow.
00:35:07
Speaker
Wow.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm saying it like that, but it really meant something as big as that for me.
00:35:14
Speaker
Because then I could start doubting men.
00:35:19
Speaker
Because this is the thing with many autistic people.
00:35:22
Speaker
We love rules because rules make sense out of the chaos that is life.
00:35:28
Speaker
So people tell me men are good and I will believe that.
00:35:33
Speaker
even against my own better judgment, even against my own eyes, seeing what the man is doing.
00:35:40
Speaker
So I was so good at mental gymnastics to excuse everything men did to me.
00:35:47
Speaker
And FDS comes into my life and they're like, no, no excuses.
00:35:51
Speaker
If he wanted to, he would.
00:35:52
Speaker
And all of these ladies and all of these examples.
00:35:55
Speaker
So I was like, okay, men aren't really that good.
00:35:58
Speaker
I think I'm being lied to.
00:36:00
Speaker
So I could really stop men taking advantage of me.
00:36:03
Speaker
And that has given me so much life force, so much healing, so much... It sounds so...
00:36:11
Speaker
kind of new agey and silly to say these words, but really it was undoing a lot of damage.
00:36:17
Speaker
It's validating.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's validating and it makes you trust your own judgment a little bit more.
00:36:24
Speaker
Exactly.
00:36:25
Speaker
Right.
00:36:25
Speaker
Especially since I think you're used to questioning your own judgment all the time because of having autism.
00:36:31
Speaker
So,
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:33
Speaker
And it's so funny when I hear you guys say these things because I felt this way too.
00:36:36
Speaker
And I know a lot of other women who are more neurotypical have felt this way.
00:36:39
Speaker
But I guess it's just a matter of the degrees of it.
00:36:43
Speaker
And it's not true that there's entirely no rules because as we've discussed before, like we've crossed them and we've gotten really dragged by the media.
00:36:53
Speaker
We're saying things like, you know, even silly things like, oh, well, we don't want to date guys with a small penis like our last episode was about.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:37:03
Speaker
Oh, my goodness.
00:37:19
Speaker
But you know, it's like autistic people are seen by Autism Speaks as this plague on society that will be single forever.
00:37:27
Speaker
Like something like 98% of autistic people never find a partner.
00:37:31
Speaker
So we're told to settle for less.
00:37:33
Speaker
And FDS teaches us that we deserve more than that.
00:37:36
Speaker
We deserve what we want in a relationship and a partner that respects us and loves us.
00:37:41
Speaker
And we deserve love just like everybody else does.
00:37:43
Speaker
We are not some plague that needs to be wiped from society.
00:37:49
Speaker
So one of the things I've noticed in the difference between the way it seems to present to me from women to men is that for women, they know they need to have the social interactions and they think about the face-to-face interpersonal part.
00:38:04
Speaker
But what I've noticed, I guess, from the insults on Reddit, it seems to be more like they want to impress women.
00:38:10
Speaker
So they try to – they don't try to interact as much as they try to, like, almost show their competence, if that makes sense.
00:38:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:18
Speaker
And then sometimes that comes across
Misleading Communities and Harmful Behaviors
00:38:20
Speaker
awkward to people.
00:38:21
Speaker
Is that, am I going anywhere with that?
00:38:24
Speaker
I think a lot of men that are autistic adults,
00:38:30
Speaker
like try to look for ways to connect and things to do.
00:38:33
Speaker
And they fall in with the pickup artists that are telling them what to do.
00:38:37
Speaker
And those are not the people that they should be listening to.
00:38:40
Speaker
And they don't know that.
00:38:41
Speaker
They think that these people, they're getting brainwashed into thinking that these are the social skills to copy.
00:38:48
Speaker
And then they do those things.
00:38:50
Speaker
And then they come across as awful men when really they're these, this is them trying, this is them trying to, um,
00:38:57
Speaker
to follow the social behaviors that they're being taught are right and they just don't know.
00:39:02
Speaker
And that doesn't make it any less harmful to women.
00:39:05
Speaker
But I have, you know, I think sometimes those are the men that we need to have the conversations with to say, like, look, I know this is hard for you and you're struggling, but you can't listen to them.
00:39:14
Speaker
Like, this is not what women want.
00:39:16
Speaker
And, you know, I think it's important to know that, like, intent and
00:39:24
Speaker
The outcome, it doesn't matter.
00:39:26
Speaker
Sometimes if you're going to harm somebody, the outcome matters more than the intent.
00:39:31
Speaker
But I do think that a lot of times the intent to do good and to connect is there.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:37
Speaker
So that makes sense to me.
00:39:38
Speaker
And that actually kind of tracks with how the red pill came out of the gamer culture as well, is that it was a lot of men who retreated into gaming because they just were not good at social interactions, um,
00:39:50
Speaker
offline and really got on these message boards.
00:39:53
Speaker
And then over time they realized like, oh, I was using like the seduction mystery pickup artist stuff and it didn't work.
00:39:59
Speaker
So then Red Pill comes with this rubric of rules and ideas that they can follow to get women.
00:40:06
Speaker
And there's not really like an alternative out there for men.
00:40:08
Speaker
There's no structure.
00:40:10
Speaker
And in the absence of structure, they created this incredibly toxic community, which is now wreaking havoc on anybody and everybody and making everybody miserable.
00:40:18
Speaker
And that's the thing.
00:40:19
Speaker
When all of these men got together, what they created was like the most toxic iteration of patriarchy that you can imagine.
00:40:30
Speaker
I think this just shows the importance of having some kind of guide to social interactions.
00:40:37
Speaker
It doesn't have to be like strict gender roles, but like without them, then there's so much like bitterness and unmet expectations on both sides.
00:40:45
Speaker
Right.
00:40:46
Speaker
And I think that the virtue signaling when it's not accurate, both betrays us as women, but also gives men the wrong idea about how to interact with us rather than us being honest.
00:40:58
Speaker
If anything, that's
00:40:59
Speaker
FDS is very honest.
00:41:00
Speaker
And though we get lambasted for it, I feel like I would rather them think we're mean, but have a more accurate understanding of how women experience the world.
00:41:10
Speaker
Because I think the guys, the men who have good intentions and actually want to improve their relationships, we have gotten so much feedback from them and being like, I finally understand some of the points that my ex-girlfriend, ex-wife or my current wife
00:41:23
Speaker
is making that they may not have understood before because they didn't have the context or she was hinting at it or they just couldn't see the bird's eye view of how women experience the world.
00:41:33
Speaker
So, you know, I'm just saying that like, you know, regardless of, you know, there's good people and there's bad people.
00:41:38
Speaker
And I don't think an autistic person is any different, but I do think it's important to then have a series of social expectations so that you can, you
00:41:50
Speaker
smooth out your social interactions, not create a bunch of bitterness over unmet expectations of both sides.
00:41:59
Speaker
Weed out the people that are bad, right?
00:42:00
Speaker
Because there are going to be people that are bad.
00:42:03
Speaker
And also just not waste your time.
00:42:05
Speaker
I think the biggest expectation that we have is direct communication.
00:42:10
Speaker
So when you were talking about like hints and people giving hints, I think it's really hard for an autistic person to be like,
00:42:17
Speaker
Oh, that means that they want me to do this.
00:42:20
Speaker
And it's the biggest accommodation, I guess, that people can give us is really as direct communication as possible.
00:42:29
Speaker
And when we communicate directly to believe what we are saying.
00:42:34
Speaker
Definitely.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:37
Speaker
I'm all for direct communication.
00:42:39
Speaker
I'm 100% in agreement with that.
00:42:43
Speaker
But the reason why I wanted to make this episode in the first place was to sort of explore the sort of interaction between...
00:42:52
Speaker
you know, how patriarchy and the rules that patriarchy sets out for men versus for women and how that interacts with autism.
00:42:59
Speaker
Because what Stenna said earlier about how people can, you know, autistic people can pick up on the general rules.
00:43:07
Speaker
And then when those rules aren't met, it creates resentment.
00:43:11
Speaker
It's important to remember that the rules for men and the rules for women under patriarchy are completely different.
00:43:17
Speaker
And that's why I think it's not...
00:43:20
Speaker
How do I say this?
00:43:21
Speaker
It's not that like autism creates a certain type of man or autism creates a certain type of woman.
00:43:26
Speaker
It's that people with this condition existing in a patriarchal world are going to experience it differently simply by being male versus female.
00:43:35
Speaker
Right.
00:43:36
Speaker
The thing that horrified me was I read statistics about autistic women being more likely to experience sexual abuse or to have unwanted sexual encounters.
00:43:45
Speaker
And that's why I think FDS is so, so important is to help women, especially all women, including autistic women, is to cut through these bullshit cultural narratives that, you know, tell women, you know, not to have standards or that tell women, you
00:44:00
Speaker
that you have to lower your standards and put up with a low-value man if you want love.
00:44:04
Speaker
Or even just the general idea that men are good and trustworthy, because they're generally not.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's a reframing of society.
00:44:12
Speaker
I mean, FDS is flat out like a reframing of a lot of these issues surrounding us by looking at it through the lens of what is our actual risk, what is our reward, and
00:44:24
Speaker
You know, how can we maximize the things that are highly rewarding and minimize the things that are highly risky but low rewarding and create a strategy from there?
00:44:34
Speaker
So it's not necessarily like the typical like feminism is just about equality or feminism is just about like being the exact same as men.
00:44:42
Speaker
It's more or less like how do we balance our specific needs as women against gender?
00:44:48
Speaker
the wants, I guess, of men, which is mostly wants, right?
00:44:52
Speaker
I feel like when it comes to men, like everything they need is pretty much there.
00:44:57
Speaker
And they have things that they want from us.
00:44:59
Speaker
Whereas I feel like
Challenging Societal Expectations
00:45:00
Speaker
with women, we're constantly negotiating the things that we need.
00:45:03
Speaker
And the downfall of modern feminism has been negotiating away the things that we need so that we can give this illusion of sameness with men when we're not.
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:45:12
Speaker
And it's okay to not be that way.
00:45:14
Speaker
Yeah, and one thing that FDS has created for me is a framework that pretty much encompasses the entire world for me.
00:45:23
Speaker
So I feel like I have transitioned from a world where men's desires and needs were the priority in my life.
00:45:33
Speaker
So, for example, going back for a second to the rules and the way that autistic people, or myself specifically,
00:45:42
Speaker
take rules very literally.
00:45:44
Speaker
Like I expected men to be wonderful to me as long as I was pretty.
00:45:50
Speaker
You know, if you're pretty, men will be good to you and you will transform a terrible man into Prince Charming.
00:45:57
Speaker
So I believe that.
00:45:58
Speaker
And over and over again, it wouldn't happen.
00:46:00
Speaker
Did you listen to that Princess and the Bum episode?
00:46:02
Speaker
Because it's not you.
00:46:04
Speaker
That's the cultural messaging we get.
00:46:07
Speaker
And it's trash.
00:46:07
Speaker
It's bad.
00:46:08
Speaker
And it's not true.
00:46:09
Speaker
Sorry to interrupt.
00:46:10
Speaker
Exactly.
00:46:11
Speaker
No, that's good.
00:46:11
Speaker
That's good.
00:46:12
Speaker
So what FDS has done is moved me really, really.
00:46:18
Speaker
FDS was like a hand from the sky who just jerked me out of this world made for men in which I am a commodity for men.
00:46:27
Speaker
in which I am a project of a mommy bank made.
00:46:31
Speaker
And it has put me into a world where I am the center, where finally I am the center of my own world and a world where my benefit is what's important because my benefit does not mean someone else being deprived of the rights while the other way around is actually what happened to me.
00:46:53
Speaker
that my rights got stepped on just to satisfy some men.
00:46:56
Speaker
So what FDS really did give me was this new framework where my safety, my desires, my needs, they are okay to be centered and given me tools and strategies to really go about that.
00:47:12
Speaker
And that has transformed my life probably the same or even more as my autistic diagnosis, which is something I'm really thankful for.
00:47:20
Speaker
And you know, that's, you describe the autistic experience so well.
00:47:27
Speaker
You know, our needs are not valid.
00:47:28
Speaker
We are told to stop stimming because it makes other people uncomfortable.
00:47:32
Speaker
ABA is the number one most common treatment for autism and most autistic people are against it because
00:47:39
Speaker
It basically tells us to sit down, shut up, act like we're supposed to act and don't make anybody else uncomfortable.
00:47:45
Speaker
And for us to be comfortable in this world, there are certain things that we have to do that may make other people uncomfortable because they're not what the average person does all the time.
00:47:57
Speaker
Can you explain what the ABA is?
00:47:59
Speaker
I'm sorry, that was an acronym I've never heard.
00:48:02
Speaker
Let me look at it.
00:48:02
Speaker
Hold on.
00:48:02
Speaker
Just give me two seconds.
00:48:06
Speaker
Well, she looks for the exact meaning.
00:48:08
Speaker
I can tell you a real quick explanation.
00:48:12
Speaker
Basically, imagine an autistic little girl.
00:48:16
Speaker
She wants to stim, which means she wants to move her hands in a specific way, flapping or whatever.
00:48:21
Speaker
She wants to move around.
00:48:23
Speaker
And an adult is next to her, forcing her and telling her, no, look at this picture.
00:48:28
Speaker
What is in this picture?
00:48:29
Speaker
There is a duck.
00:48:31
Speaker
Say duck.
00:48:32
Speaker
Duck.
00:48:32
Speaker
How do we spell duck?
00:48:33
Speaker
Now say duck.
00:48:34
Speaker
No, don't look at that.
00:48:36
Speaker
Look at the picture.
00:48:37
Speaker
What is this?
00:48:38
Speaker
This is a duck.
00:48:39
Speaker
Say it out loud.
00:48:40
Speaker
Say duck.
00:48:40
Speaker
And you see the little girl just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking until her own soul is kind of broken and she just does what she's told.
00:48:50
Speaker
That's basically this quote unquote therapy.
00:48:54
Speaker
That is horrifying to me.
00:48:56
Speaker
And that sounds like basically conditioning women to be compliant.
00:48:59
Speaker
And that is terrifying to me.
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, it stands for applied behavior analysis.
00:49:04
Speaker
And the goal, it says on Autism Speaks, it says the goal is to increase behaviors that are helpful and decrease the other types of behaviors.
00:49:14
Speaker
But the behaviors that are helpful to who?
00:49:16
Speaker
The parents of autistic people?
00:49:18
Speaker
The rest of the world?
00:49:20
Speaker
It teaches us that the behaviors that we do to comfort ourselves and to get through everything in life is
00:49:27
Speaker
are not okay.
00:49:29
Speaker
And, and that's, you know, and, and in women, society teaches a lot of that and they don't go through ABA as much.
00:49:38
Speaker
Um, but still, I mean, society, society doing that to us and telling us how that we need to act and what we need to do and, and shunning us if we don't, it's really difficult.
00:49:50
Speaker
I find that such an interesting example.
00:49:52
Speaker
And we've talked about this before on FDS, how certain concepts created with men in mind, when you apply that to women, it creates either an undesirable or harmful effect for women.
00:50:05
Speaker
And so things like therapy for, you know, I could have a whole episode just roasting couples therapy, right?
00:50:12
Speaker
And how the idea of like, oh, you know, you have two
00:50:16
Speaker
And, you know, they just need to work on their communication.
00:50:18
Speaker
It's under the assumption that both people are like generally like good and are invested in the relationship.
00:50:24
Speaker
But it doesn't really take into account cases of like, say, abuse, for example, or, you know, if the man goes and cheats.
00:50:31
Speaker
And, you know, you're, you know, she's upset.
00:50:34
Speaker
And it's like, well, what could you have done differently to make your husband not cheat on you, right?
00:50:37
Speaker
Like, so much therapy is just very sexist, or just doesn't even consider the specific needs of women, right?
00:50:43
Speaker
And so this therapy you've described to me, applied behavioral, was it ABA?
00:50:50
Speaker
Applied behavioral analysis, yeah.
00:50:54
Speaker
it just sounds to me like it's just basically conditioning women to be compliant.
00:50:59
Speaker
Like if you do that for a girl, you're just teaching her to be compliant and to not meet her own needs.
00:51:04
Speaker
I mean, it's to everybody.
00:51:06
Speaker
And it's really harmful to a lot of people.
00:51:09
Speaker
A lot of people in autism groups speak about what they went through as a child and how they had to unlearn all of this to be able to stim and have productive lives.
00:51:18
Speaker
And I think it's, you know, a lot of,
00:51:21
Speaker
A lot of people in the autism community are speaking out against Autism Speaks and people who promote ABA.
00:51:28
Speaker
And a lot of people that are neurotypical just don't hear them.
00:51:32
Speaker
They don't want to listen to us about what we need.
00:51:36
Speaker
They want us to fit in with the rest of the world and don't really care about anything else.
00:51:41
Speaker
I can understand from the parents' perspective, maybe they're afraid their kid's going to be bullied or something if they don't fit in and that sort of thing.
00:51:49
Speaker
And now to be clear, I have a lot of sympathy for, I can understand how hard it is to watch your child suffer and, you know, parents definitely need support, but not at the risk of harming a child.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:03
Speaker
Like you said, it's just a different operating system.
00:52:06
Speaker
And I would love to live in a world where
00:52:08
Speaker
that was like normalized where being an autistic person is just like, you know, it's not something like, it's something that people maybe have more understanding, more compassion about.
00:52:18
Speaker
One thing I want to mention that's important.
00:52:20
Speaker
A lot of people don't realize people with disabilities still are not equal in the U S we can't get married.
00:52:25
Speaker
Like everybody else can.
00:52:26
Speaker
We don't make the same wages as everybody else does.
00:52:29
Speaker
There are literally laws that say these things and people are very passionate about
00:52:37
Speaker
racial bias and bias that makes society unequal, but there are still laws against us.
00:52:45
Speaker
You don't have to pay us minimum wage.
00:52:47
Speaker
You don't have to let us get married.
00:52:48
Speaker
If we get married, we can lose any benefits that we have.
00:52:53
Speaker
that make up for the lack of wages and be able to feed ourselves.
00:52:58
Speaker
I mean, it's really, truly the state of disabled people in America is disgusting.
00:53:05
Speaker
And, you know, disability is not something that...
00:53:10
Speaker
People become disabled.
00:53:12
Speaker
You can't become black one day.
00:53:14
Speaker
You can become disabled.
00:53:15
Speaker
This is something that I feel like more people should
Compassion and Equality in Autism Discussion
00:53:20
Speaker
have compassion over, but they don't.
00:53:23
Speaker
I feel like they don't care about disabled people.
00:53:26
Speaker
They just don't want to hear from us.
00:53:27
Speaker
They don't want to see us in wheelchairs.
00:53:28
Speaker
They don't want to...
00:53:31
Speaker
I have a wheelchair that I use sometimes.
00:53:33
Speaker
I have a PICC line that is basically a central IV line.
00:53:37
Speaker
People just look at me like I'm a monster sometimes.
00:53:42
Speaker
People just don't... I don't know.
00:53:44
Speaker
Our country is so...
00:53:47
Speaker
I mean, it's capitalist.
00:53:48
Speaker
So everyone is looked at as exploitable labor instead of as a person.
00:53:53
Speaker
And there's been, you know, depending on which political philosophy or ideology you buy into, there's been a deep de-emphasis of community in a lot of ways and the idea that
00:54:07
Speaker
community should incorporate the gifts of everybody.
00:54:12
Speaker
I think it's just a mentality where everybody sees people who can't contribute in the same economic ways as disposable.
00:54:21
Speaker
And I agree, it's really disgusting.
00:54:22
Speaker
And it's something I hope that
00:54:26
Speaker
I don't want to sound exhausted, but it's just like it's something that I just really, really hope that we have a conversation about how are we going to structure our working life so that people feel valued and contributing and like they're part of a community and not just a widget in the corporate machine.
00:54:45
Speaker
So I hear you.
00:54:48
Speaker
So I remember reading about they found this Neanderthal skeleton that had some like broken bones, like it wouldn't have been able to walk, but it lived to a very old age, like 60 or seven years old.
00:55:02
Speaker
And so they were thinking like, this is very strange, like this person had broken legs for that healed.
00:55:08
Speaker
So that means that someone must have been there to take care of them and to feed them, they wouldn't have been able to like hunt by themselves.
00:55:15
Speaker
And yet this person lived a very long and clearly healthy life based on their bones and stuff, right?
00:55:21
Speaker
And a lot of, I guess it's, is it anthropologists, I guess, talk about how the idea of taking care of
00:55:30
Speaker
the sick or people with disabilities is what's is what makes human society like human.
00:55:36
Speaker
It is like the defining quality of being a human being.
00:55:39
Speaker
It's what separates us from animals.
00:55:42
Speaker
This is harsh, but like if it say, for example, a deer gives birth and they find that their baby can't like walk or whatever, the mama deer will just like leave it.
00:55:49
Speaker
We'll just abandon it.
00:55:50
Speaker
If, if like in most animals, if a baby is born with any kind of deformity,
00:55:56
Speaker
they just like leave it for the predators, right?
00:55:58
Speaker
But that's what makes human beings different is we take care of those who were maybe born different, right?
00:56:06
Speaker
And include them in our community.
00:56:08
Speaker
And so...
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah, like what I'm seeing in America is... Yeah, we suck over here.
00:56:13
Speaker
I think that's been the theme of the past couple of weeks.
00:56:17
Speaker
Our healthcare is terrible.
00:56:19
Speaker
It's literally inhumane.
00:56:20
Speaker
My point about America is inhumane.
00:56:23
Speaker
It's the opposite of community violence.
00:56:26
Speaker
It's just, it's very hard to get, what is it?
00:56:28
Speaker
I think the last census said we had like 350 million, 360 million people.
00:56:33
Speaker
So it's very hard to get a country of the size of 50 different states to move in a collective action.
00:56:38
Speaker
And it's just, it's, things have to get really bad sometimes before they get better.
00:56:43
Speaker
Sure, but shouldn't we all be for equality though?
00:56:45
Speaker
Like, is there equity even?
00:56:48
Speaker
Like, I mean, there shouldn't be, there's certain basic things that we should all do.
00:56:53
Speaker
be fighting for.
00:56:54
Speaker
And I feel like the pandemic made a lot of things that we should be fighting for apparent, but it didn't, it's crazy to me that it didn't make fighting for disabled people, which the pandemic is literally causing people to become disabled.
00:57:09
Speaker
Why are we not focusing on this?
00:57:12
Speaker
I just, I, people, people are upset, but there's not a lot of people out there in front with solutions.
00:57:18
Speaker
And so
00:57:19
Speaker
Well, I think there are, but they're not being listened to.
00:57:22
Speaker
And to be clear, autism is not always a disability.
00:57:25
Speaker
A lot of times it's not.
00:57:27
Speaker
Sometimes it can affect people's, you know, social dynamics and things, but sometimes people that are autistic thrive and are, you know, it's kind of, a lot of people have evolved to be better in a lot of things.
00:57:40
Speaker
So it's not always a disability.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:44
Speaker
In some ways I'd say, I don't know.
00:57:46
Speaker
I feel like some people, for some people it's a strength.
00:57:49
Speaker
Like if they...
00:57:52
Speaker
Like you said, it's just a different operating system.
00:57:54
Speaker
Again, when you value people based on only their economic impact or their economic, who they are as an economic unit, you devalue a lot of people that have things to contribute.
00:58:05
Speaker
You know, if they can't do it in a way that's always directly economically measurable, our society teaches them that they're not as important.
00:58:13
Speaker
And I think, yes, the pandemic has caused us all to reevaluate what kind of society we're living in.
00:58:19
Speaker
And hopefully, um,
00:58:20
Speaker
Hopefully we'll be seeing changes in the future.
00:58:21
Speaker
Yeah, if that's okay, I just wanted to add a really quick thing.
00:58:26
Speaker
Sure.
00:58:27
Speaker
I spoke to my psychiatrist a couple of days ago, a new psychiatrist, first time I saw her, and she was looking at my diagnosis and she was like,
00:58:37
Speaker
oh, okay, you're autistic.
00:58:38
Speaker
And then I talked about a romantic partner and she was like, oh, but you date?
00:58:43
Speaker
This misconception is actually within professionals and it's very deeply entrenched that autistic women or autistic people in general that we don't date.
00:58:53
Speaker
So they really need to study us better because a lot of us date.
00:59:00
Speaker
And I think perhaps it's true that women might date more than men.
00:59:04
Speaker
I have no idea.
00:59:05
Speaker
But I mean,
00:59:07
Speaker
Really, if dating as a woman for me, it's a matter of how low your
00:59:16
Speaker
you accept things to go, you know, like where do you put the bar?
00:59:20
Speaker
If you put the bar really, really low, you can date very easily.
00:59:24
Speaker
If you start moving the bar up to what you're going to accept or not, if you only accept high value behavior, for example, you will have a hard time dating, regardless of whether you're autistic or not.
00:59:37
Speaker
But just I wanted to say that the misconception is truly, truly common.
00:59:41
Speaker
And for me, it's always a funny one, because even my psychiatrist had that idea.
00:59:47
Speaker
Dispelling misconceptions here.
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:49
Speaker
There's one, a couple quick more things.
00:59:53
Speaker
So a lot of women with autism, the main symptom they present with is an eating disorder.
01:00:00
Speaker
And because we're picky eaters, tastes and textures are problematic for us sometimes.
01:00:05
Speaker
And that leads us to not want to eat.
01:00:08
Speaker
People think that we are anorexic, diagraphic.
01:00:12
Speaker
people, you know, doctors will diagnose a woman with an eating disorder and then force her into a clinic and literally force feed her foods that make her sensory.
01:00:22
Speaker
And, you know, she just, it's, it's really torture, really, really torture for these women.
01:00:29
Speaker
Um, I think it's, it's really important to, to, if somebody has
01:00:34
Speaker
you know, the, you know, the women listening to this, if your children have eating problems, you know, look into autism as opposed to necessarily an eating disorder.
01:00:43
Speaker
Um, you know, because a lot, a lot of women that is women with autism, the biggest harm they have sometimes is sometimes is these inpatient, um, eating disorder clinics and, and the way they, um,
01:00:58
Speaker
the way they go about abusing these, these children and even adults.
01:01:03
Speaker
So it's more, so their eating disorder is more about the taste and the feel of the food and not necessarily body image.
01:01:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:09
Speaker
It's not about body image at all.
01:01:10
Speaker
It's not about, you know, eating disorders are usually about control and a lot of other things.
01:01:15
Speaker
And in autistic women, you just have to give us food that doesn't repulse us.
01:01:19
Speaker
It's not that hard.
01:01:21
Speaker
You know, it's, it's like if you cook broccoli too much, I get very grossed out.
01:01:25
Speaker
It just needs to be a little al dente, you know, and,
01:01:29
Speaker
I'm very grateful that I've never been diagnosed with an eating disorder and that I had very, you know, loving family and that I, you know, they would cook the way I wanted.
01:01:39
Speaker
And then, you know, as an adult, I cook for myself, but not everybody has that, you know, experience.
01:01:45
Speaker
And I really feel for these women who went through these programs and how they, you know, talk about their experiences.
01:01:50
Speaker
It's awful.
01:01:52
Speaker
you know, I have in my mind this like sense of urgency and I'm very alarmed by the amount of like grooming that I'm seeing online, uh, on Tik TOK and on Reddit and that sort of thing.
01:02:05
Speaker
And I just get the impression that women with autism are way more likely to be, um, to fall prey to this sort of predatory grooming than maybe a neurotypical woman or girl.
01:02:19
Speaker
And so I,
01:02:22
Speaker
you know, I have this in my mind, I'm like, we have to do something about this.
01:02:25
Speaker
Like, but you know, what can we do?
01:02:27
Speaker
Like, what, what do you have?
01:02:29
Speaker
Do you have any ideas?
01:02:30
Speaker
Cause I have no idea.
01:02:31
Speaker
And I'm very scared.
01:02:32
Speaker
You're already doing it.
01:02:34
Speaker
FDS, the podcast, the social media, you're already doing it.
01:02:40
Speaker
Oh, thank you.
01:02:41
Speaker
I encourage women that think that they might have any of the traits of what we're talking about to go to like Aspie memes and, you know, Reddit, Reddit has a really great thing.
01:02:52
Speaker
And basically if you look at all of those and you're like, Oh, this is me, then look at the diagnostic criteria for women.
01:02:59
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, I think like, Oh, that's how I got, you know, my eyes were open to this.
01:03:05
Speaker
And what I thought was autism, you know, I thought,
01:03:08
Speaker
when I looked at a young boy, that's what autism was.
01:03:10
Speaker
I never knew what it really was in women and, and how it presented.
01:03:14
Speaker
And I mean, I think a lot of people, if they become educated on it and learn about
Conclusion and Community Message
01:03:20
Speaker
it, you know, they can learn why they have meltdowns, why they, you know, and then they can know what to avoid.
01:03:27
Speaker
Awesome.
01:03:28
Speaker
Well, I think, yeah, we're, we're over time.
01:03:30
Speaker
So let's, let's wrap up here.
01:03:31
Speaker
Ro, do you have any closing remarks?
01:03:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:34
Speaker
That's all I have.
01:03:35
Speaker
This was a really productive discussion.
01:03:37
Speaker
And thank you, ladies, for coming on to speak with us.
01:03:40
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me.
01:03:41
Speaker
And that's our show.
01:03:43
Speaker
Please check out our Twitter at at fem.strat, as well as our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash the female dating strategy and our website, the female dating strategy.com.
01:03:53
Speaker
Thanks for listening, queens.
01:03:54
Speaker
And for all you Redditor predators out there, die mad.
01:03:57
Speaker
Cool.