no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I made some new friends but I think I don’t like socializing anymore? I go out and I just find that I am happier when I get home :/ and I dont like entertaining so having them come to me is a non-starter.

The friends I made are nice & it is always a nice time but it’s like I have this handbrake inside me that won’t let me be a friend back to the ppl being friendly to me

i pretty much only have made friends who enjoy doing the same activities i do
beyond that, there's not much to say because i don't like to share personal info with people i don't know very well
i've always been like this, why change now

i go back and forth between being really social and wanting to be around people to wanting to be alone a lot, and i worry that my friends have "moved on" ... one of my best female friends had someone close to her die recently, (different context than the fire which killed a bunch of casual friends/good friends of friends) and I'm giving her space, and several of my other best friends are also kinda introverted, so we will go months without hanging out in person ... I'm also seriously cutting back on drinking, which means I don't go out as much, because I know myself, and if there is booze and people are drinking it, then I'm gonna get drunk too.

i think i'm done making friends in my life

like, it's over

as in you feel you have enough to last you ... or ?

no i'm just too tired and i don't like people i guess, and i'm bad at it

feel this

xp - do you deal with people a lot at your job?

Harbl OTM

i deal with people way too much at my job which is partially (not entirely) why my brain runs out of fuel for any other human interaction the rest of the day

harbl, I get that too with my current job

I work mostly alone so I have the opposite problem- I feel like I've lost all ability to function socially with people I don't already know super well.

i deal with people way too much at my job which is partially (not entirely) why my brain runs out of fuel for any other human interaction the rest of the day

― assawoman bay (harbl), Sunday, October 1, 2017 12:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100%. I really like my neighbors a lot and they're super chill but sometimes I just sit near them (outside) and smoke silently while reading and they know not to talk to me.

I like talking to ppl but a lot of the time now I'll start trying to have the "obligatory social" tone with someone and then my brain goes blank and I don't know what the next line is supposed to be. lol at that point I'm usually like, "I'm sorry, can we start over? Let me ask you something I actually care about the answer to."

Hi, everybody! I'm pretty good, I guess. Tired today so it's hard to tell. Miss you lot and just miss hanging out with wimmens in general.

Hello wimmins.

I finally got an official Asperger's diagnosis the other week, after 2 years of sitting in various queues, and 35 years after I first entered the mental health system.

What's funny is, a couple of the questions in the interview portions were things like "Do you understand what a friend is?" and "In your own words, can you explain what are friends for?" and "Do you have a partner, do you understand why people have partners?" Which are ridiculously difficult questions.

But it's kind of a relief to see that, y'know, even *neurotypical* people struggle with these questions.

Kind ladies,

Does 1P3 dare me to put out a personal ad headed with "TCM and chill?"

xp Branwell, would be interested to hear more. Why did it take so long, for a start? Has the diagnosis changed things for you?

Oh wow, Kinder, that's an essay and a half.

It's taken 35 years because understanding of what Autism is, and how it manifests differently in different kinds of people has expanded exponentially only during the past decade or so. (I mean, there's posts on ILX from 15 years ago, of me going "do you think I might have Asperger's? I score off the charts on all these tests..." but the definitions themselves being totally inappropriate for who I was, i.e. if you design a test for 9 year old boys, it will only catch 9 year old boys.)

Why it took 2 years to get in the right queue... Because I fell between buckets. Disorganisation between the GP and the specialist hospital. The specialist hospital insisting that it was more important to talk to talk to someone in my family (who does not really accept the diagnosis) about what I was like 40 years ago, than it was to actually interview and seriously test *me*. The fact that ~parents of autistic people~ are always considered more legitimate sources of information on autistic people than autists ourselves is just.... ASDLKJFSKLJ ASKLDJFLSDAJFKLSAFJKL

Even the freaking stereotypes and preconceptions that the people who are supposed to be testing you come up with. (I actually got a copy of my diagnosis last week, and I just came away with *such* a negative feeling about the person who interviewed me, and I found when I read her report that she simply hadn't even listened to what I actually said. To the point where I'm considering writing a letter contesting it. UGH.)

The diagnosis itself (or rather, the preliminary diagnosis from a non-doctor therapist 2 years ago) has been absolutely life-changing. It's enabled me to actually maintain a job for the longest continuous period in my life. (Coming up 3 years in November.) It's amazing how such tiny changes in environment make such a huge difference to whether I can actually function!

Ugh, sorry, rambling again. I know ILX isn't about these massive essay posts any more. I apologise.

Really pleased for you Branwell, despite the wait and those infuriating bits of the system. Also ilx might not be about massive essay posts these days but I always appreciate a well-written long post.

I'm having a bit of a shit time at the moment (lol "at the moment" - and for eternity) and I'm having to move back to Notts - a part of me is relieved to be getting out of this city but I don't really know how to manage without the support of my band: I've never had a female friendship network as close and strong as I have had with them, most of my friends back home are men and the music scene is kinda male dominated.

I also appreciate a well-written long post! What did you change in your job? (I am interested generally but also because I recently did a kind of questionnaire thing -being deliberately vague- that actually seemed not 100% bs and gave me some things to think about.)

btw emil.y that sucks, will you be able to keep properly in touch with them?

emil.y that sounds like such a mixed bag. On one hand, it really doesn't seem like Brighton has been at all a positive time in your life, so a change of environment might be a good thing. But on the other hand, yes, I know what it's like to feel like you have Your Girl Band, and what it's like to lose that sense of close, strong, female ganghood. I don't know what the balance is; to try to build a female network in your hometown, or to try to use technology to keep close links with your remote pals.

kinder, some of it was very much environmental. The ability to use headphones to block out the very noisy call centre, getting stronger blinds to eliminate bright lights, having one of the meeting rooms turned into a quiet room. Some of it was more social. My boss went and did a training course on how to manage ppl with Asperger's, which covered things like... written instructions, clear guidelines, using a third party (my boss or HR) as mediation when I'm having interpersonal difficulty. I am now excused large group things I do not think I will be able to handle, without having to justify it. A lot of it has been getting people to change their expectations of me, just trying to explain again and again, "I'm not being rude; I have Asperger's." until the penny drops, WRT clarity and explanations, and the fact that I really don't get, and cannot be expected to do, small talk and social lubrication chitchat.

that sounds great! I'm happy for you, B!

and the small talk and social lubrication chitchat in a work context is really aggravating to me -- I end up being asked to sit in meetings with my boss and -- to keep things general -- a client, and I'm not the one who will be managing the project or working closely with said client, but I have to sit through the chit-chat and small talk, and I just end up sitting there thinking about how much my superfluous presence is costing the company, and I generally quickly come up with a task that I need to get back to right away, but it was great to meet the client, etc.

That sensory stuff sounds great, in my office I think a lot of us are already sensitive to that kind of thing which is quite nice. If I could only drop the large meetings which I am terrible at speaking at...

uh ... so this "me, too" meme? ...

yeah i like it but one of my younger friends who is millenially obsessed with being the most seen & the most woke has turned it into some kind of olympic event & i just want to be like girl fkn chill we see you, jesus fuck off
which i know is mean but god

TBH many of my friends who have had assault/rape incidents are the most uncomfortable about it, and have said as much on FB (its been triggering and offputting to have it all in their faces from everywhere suddenly, and I totally get that.)

both of you otm

I don't know. I have been having this conversation since the mid-90s, and there is no good answer.

Every time some powerful man is revealed as an abuser, I know with depressing regularity that social media is going to be a triggery minefield for the next day - and because I curate my timeline pretty carefully, it's not going to be the actual rape apologists in my face (though I know they are out there) but the well-meaning screen-cappers and campaigners and awareness-raisers.

I still *blame* the abusers and the apologists for putting the awareness-raisers in this position in the first place.

(This is literally why we invented trigger warnings: to resolve the dispute between people who wanted to discuss and address this stuff; and those who wanted to deal with it only on their own terms at times they felt OK with it.)

But when I see this whole "the awareness-raisers are so triggery and well-meaning but awful" that really makes my back go up.

Like, here is a thing: Women* (*people who are raised as women and/or people who are read as women) are ALWAYS expected to do the emotional labour of checking in and making sure that everyone in the room is OK and comfortable with the conversation before they / we (delete as necessary) are even allowed to express an opinion about their own lives and own experiences.

Now, I'm not saying that being aware of the needs and emotions of the people around you is a BAD thing. I'm not saying that checking in to be aware of how one's words and actions affect other people is a BAD thing. In many circumstances, it is a very good thing, and I do wish that cis fucking men would do it MORE.

However, this idea that we expect every woman* to do this by default, in every situation, even when discussing abuse they have experienced, and if they/we don't do it, or do it wrongly, or do it too "most wokely", they/we are castigated, dismissed, held up as wrong, and problematised for it, in ways that men rarely, if ever are? I am not OK with the policing of women* in that way, and I never will be.

this entire past year has been the biggest trigger explosion i have ever experienced. for a long time i didn't know what was going on, that i was experiencing symptoms of PTSD. that felt terrible. after a lot of introspection, talking, and reading, i weirdly feel relieved releasing my "me too" into the world. i really identify with roxane gay's book to the degree that immediately after i read it, i wanted to talk about it all the time but i was hesitant to recommend it publicly because i didn't want to start a conversation about my own experience (and i still don't honestly) -- but i do recommend it A LOT to anyone who hasn't wrapped their head around the idea that it's not just the assault that's harmful, but the self destructive impulses it can spark over long periods of time. her book helped me through a really difficult time. i know how awful it must have been for her to write. it actually reminded me that i used to enjoy writing before my voice was squashed by fear. anyway, don't let rape culture tell you that your experience with assault was not bad enough to complain about. that's what i told myself for a really long time to my own detriment and as it turns out, it was worse than i thought.

The more contentious thing for *me* social media wise was the response/discussion around the Mayim Bialik article -- because for many years I was somewhat gender non-conforming, and there was a bunch of negative shit I got/felt because of that, and some of the women responding to that article were responding to it in a way that brought a lot of that back.

The article was definitely contextualized horribly, but I agreed/found value in a lot of what she said, and if it had been published (minus the Weinstein connection) in one of the teen girl magazines I read in my early/mid-teens, I would have found it very valuable.

Girl thread, I need some... I don't know if I need help or some advice or someone to just listen to me. I know there's a ton of talk about gendered violence lately, but I don't know where else to go with this.

Firstly, what does it mean, and secondly, what's a *better* way of reacting, when a grown man, a stranger, says to me, on public transport, some variant of "If you weren't a woman, I would hit you" ?

This happened this morning, for the third time in two years. (It had happened before then, but it has definitely started accelerating since I have been presenting in a less feminine manner.)

1) This is definitely a threat, and I am correct to read it as such, right? This is not a man saying "I'm definitely not going to hit you"; it is a man raising the threat that he *could* hit me and letting me know it. This is threatened violence, and it is *gendered* violence. (I do not know how men threaten other men they plan to hit while on public transport in a context outside of drinking, because I have never seen it.)

2) The way I react is almost certainly going to get me injured one of these days. Because my reaction (and this is definitely coming from a place of being someone who *has* been hit) is to announce, as loud as I can, so that every person nearby can hear, something like "Oh, so you're a misogynist!" and then I get up close to him, within punching distance, and I say, extremely loudly, "GO ON, THEN. HIT ME." And then I stare at them, straight in the eye, until they look down or they get off the train. So far, no one has hit me. Because what they *expect* is for the threat of gendered violence to *work*, in terms of cowing the women around them. And it scares the shit that a woman who is just as big as them if not bigger, is calling their bluff.

But one of these days, one of these guys is gonna hit me. I've had men get off the bus/train and try to follow me to my place of work (I have walked straight to the nearest security guard, and tell them "this man threatened to hit me in front of a crowded train/bus" and let them sort it out.)

It makes me really angry and furious and... You know, powerless. Like I know it is designed to make me feel powerless. Because every man in my family is over 6'2", and funnily enough, not one of them has had strangers threaten them on public transport in this way. I know that if I were actually a man, these guys would *never* hit me. They wouldn't even threaten to hit me. But because they *read* me as a woman, they think it's OK to threaten me. Or, I dunno. Maybe guys punch each other out on the morning train every day and I never read about it.

(The context is always the same: on public transport, I either refuse to cede space to a man who is trying to push in front of me; or else I address a man who is blocking doors while people are trying to get on or off in a manner he finds insufficiently "polite". These are men who are behaving incredibly rudely or selfishly to start with, who dislike me interfering with that.)

I dunno, girl thread. Thoughts? (Apart from getting an electrified cattle prod to deal with guys who stand in the door / people who do not let people off the train before trying to get on the train.)

When I took public transit to work, I dealt with situations like yours semi-regularly and in the exact same way you have, so I don't have any advice, but I want to let you know that "it's not just you," and "thanks, because it makes me feel less of a freak."

And also at the back of the mind during these encounters ... "I've definitely had plenty of experience taking a punch."

) This is definitely a threat, and I am correct to read it as such, right? This is not a man saying "I'm definitely not going to hit you"; it is a man raising the threat that he *could* hit me and letting me know it. This is threatened violence, and it is *gendered* violence.

Yes. It's not only a gendered threat, it's also narcissistically self-congratulatory--"You earned my violence but since I'm such an honorable man who respects women, I'll save you from myself--but also tell you about it so you know that I have the right to hurt you if I choose." Come the fuck on.

Well thanks for making me at least less insane / aggro / cursed, that I am not the only female-bodied person this happens to.

And yeah, I can't remember if it was CA or Why Does He Do That, that flagged up "I could hit you but I won't (right now)" is a threat not a reassurance.

ilx feels way more eyerolly to me in this woke-to-patriarchy era than back when it was a non-woke sausage party

yep

like i appreciate the overtures but in general i would prefer ppl to just BE cool and not talk so much abt how they ARE cool

eh idk -- i think it's a little better? at the very least i feel more welcome to share my viewpoint without being attacked.
"be cool" otm

true

the language tho is hella boring

i wanna move past this woke-language era into the era where ppl dont sound like they are chairing a local collective

LL kudos for representing in the masculinity thread! Which is mostly dudes talking with other dudes about women's experiences.

I mean in general I think it is a good thing, but for my particular ilx enjoyment it has become more of the same of the same of the same of the everything and I'm just tired of it.

also "have you ever masturbated in front of a woman" is stuck in my bookmarks after I made a bad move that I regretted several posts later. So now I see it every damn time I open SNA and blech.

yeah that masturbating thread was a real u_u moment jfc

is mansplaining about mansplaining to men = meta-mansplaining or?