Is misandry relevant to autism?
Is misandry relevant to autism?
[This is a recycled enhanced question that I posted a while ago at an online autism discussion. It attracted an answer, but I don’t think it addressed the full scope of my question.]
If Hans Asperger’s “extreme male brain” theory of autism is correct, then it seems to follow that neurotypical females, particularly NT females of the “empathizer” type described by Baron-Cohen, are, generally speaking, the section of the population who are the least cognitively equipped to be able to understand the autistic mind and the autistic point of view. Should we therefore be concerned that such a large proportion of the autism experts, therapists and autism professionals of various types, teachers, and administrators of autism organisations, who are paid to serve autistic people, are neurotypical females? Might neurotypical female authors of books about autism/AS and autistic people bring an unconscious feminine anti-male and anti-autistic bias to their work that should be checked for? Does more need to be done to maximise the involvement of fathers with their autistic offspring?
If there was a section of the population that were like the opposite of autistic, in that they were judged to be disabled due to having extremely female type brains, would we be content to have these people cared for by a predominantly male group of carers, professionals and parents?
Am I making an incorrect assumption in my first question? If there is in fact a group of people in the spectrum of humanity who fit into Baron-Cohen’s category of “empathizers,” are they therefore good all-purpose empathizers who are naturally skilled at understanding and reading the feelings of all types of people, including autistics, or are their empathizing skills limited to understanding people who are not too different from their own psychology? If empathizers (male and female) exist, do their empathy skills rely on them being willing to guess about the feelings of others by making the assumption that others think and feel in a similar way that they do, or are these people able to gain true and deep insight into others who are considerably different to themselves by means other than guessing and analogy?
Should I just go to bed and stop writing stupid questions?
Lili Marlene’s Is misandry relevant to autism? appeared on February 3, 2007 at Incorrect Pleasures, and is reprinted here with her permission. Discussion ensued, with one commenter leading off with an emphatic “NO, DON’T GO TO BED!! KEEP ASKING QUESTIONS!!“
Lili Marlene on 05/5/10 in featured, Society | 7 Comments | Read More
Comments (7)
Thank you for raising again, something that has been a concern of mine for years.
Questions that seem silly, often in the long run turn out to be the most profound…
I told the Autism Diva in an email, once, that neurotypical women frighten me. She said they frightened her, too. It’s so hard to find the weird gals who will put up with my weirdness. Sigh!
This phenomenon is not strictly put on autistics, though I myself am a high functioning 31 yr old man with Asperger Syndrome… But there are NTs with this problem too.
Look up True Forced Loneliness (TFL), you’ll get a gaping view into the rampant misandry in our society, and why millions of men world-wide are being deliberately forced into lives of loneliness. This is pure eugenics.
It is mostly males who live with this oppression. Though there are a few females, a female only lives TFL if she is at the absolute bottom of the totem pole of physical attractiveness (rather she is aspie or not). But for men, the criteria is so damn high in the dating scene, he can look like a GQ model but still not have a Holywood bank account, still not be 6′ tall, still not have the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc etc.
This is because all the pressure is put on the man. If a man falls on hard financial times, he’s crap out of luck. The man has to have his own house, his own car, a high paying job, has to look like George Clooney with the build of Hulk Hogan, has to be a mind reader, etc etc. But the woman doesn’t have to take any chances on anything, her life with her opposite sex is usually GIVEN to her on a silver pladder. And she knows early that she has 100% the pick and power, the man has none.
Now, some may say this is just biology, due to males being selected out in the animal kingdom. However, in the wild there is a penalty for this; the males who are pushed out end up raping.. And no, I am not defending rape, rape is an abominal, attrocious act. But so is forcing millions of people into isolation, crapping all over them their entire lives, and pushing them to the fringes of society. So if this is “natural” then are we to conclude rape is “natural”?
Or here is a better one; is it not also “natural” for women to be in the kitchen?
Point being, this stuff isn’t natural because if you go back about 60 yrs this problem didn’t exist in the dating scene. Anyone could find a mate back then, and a good one. And people remained happier together longer, whereas today’s relationships aren’t likely to go beyond 2 yrs at best. But even if it were natural, just because something is natural doesn’t make it right…
They could have just as easily said about slavery, or segregation “Oh well it’s just nature,” or with Nazi Germany, “It’s just nature,” and let them off the hook… It wouldn’t make it right.
So what I am talking about here is a VERY taboo topic, but one that most “insiders” in society know very well at an instinctive level, though they will never bring themselves to admit… This crap is done deliberately. Women use the hitlist of high standards to weed out “undesirables,” and then use the whipped man-ginas to keep us “undesirables” from speaking out. The sisterhood chooses these “bad boys” so she can blame it back on men when he burns her (conveniently ignoring the fact that SHE CHOSE HIM).
I always here the same tired excuses “Nobody owes you a relationship,” ok then well nobody owes them food to eat either, so once the food shortages come, they need to remember nobody owes them the right to live a healthy life or to be fed. Basic human affection and a chance at life should be a RIGHT. For everyone, of either gender.
Then the feminists wanna talk about how we’re supposedly treating them like an object (though women like being treated like objects because they get power from it, meaning they are the goal of the dating game), meanwhile they have no problem objectifying men. And they seem to think they are entitled to some rich man who supposedly owes them a living…. Yet, they say they are independent but they are waiting on a sugar daddy to support them. Feminism is not about equality, it is about superiority, and bashing men.
Think about this; a man and a woman are both arrested for the same crime. The man does a lot more time than the woman.
A woman hits a man. Most people automatically assume the man did something to deserve it because he is a man. And lemme ask you, where is the shelter for battered husbands?
Why does the woman almost always clean the man out financially in divorce cases? Why does the woman almost unanimously always get the children in custody battles?
What does your TV tell you? You have 2 types of men according to the TV, you have 1. Sitcom man, the dunce who can’t make a pb&j sandwich without screwing it up, or you have 2. Serial Killer man… Meanwhile women are always being portrayed as these perfect little angels who are so far superior to men in every way, intellectually, morally… It’s repulsive.
Once again I am not a misogynist. But misandry is far more an epidemic here in western cultures than misogyny.
Warren, your posts here are generally not at all relevant to my article, nor are relevant to the autistic spectrum.
Warren, regarding deleted comments, please see link to Comments Policy in the sidebar.
Warren-
your comments are certainly true enough
& these sentiments are gaining prominence on the web-
suggest you Google voice for men,
national organization for men,
search for misandry on youtube…
all of those, however, are quite direct
in their focus on men, men’s issues & masculinity.
The autism/Asperger’s thing is much subtler
& more ambiguous.
Go to my website-www.laustcawz.biz
Click on “Trivial Rantings & Ravings
Of An Independent Mind”
…& navigate to “I’m O.K., You’re Autistic”.
There, you can read my own conclusions.
Who is the artist of the woman sizing the boy for a dress? I’d like to use the artwork, but I want to get permission.