I can't keep female neurotypical friends

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Fine, I honestly don't want to escalate this.

Where did I say men were telling women how women "should" feel?

But since you mentioned, there is some implication of how women should feel, too.

With that clarification, which do you want? Assertions made related to how women are, assertions made related to how women should be, or both?

How they are...fine tuning a tool for predictive validity for how they respond.

*Sigh*

Do you still want examples of people telling women how they think, or how they should think, as you asked, or have you already lost interest in your own previous question?

No, men who are approaching women need to understand what they are thinking so they do not humiliate themselves or waste their time.

Is how it will affect the man the only thing that matters in such an interaction?

I don't blame you for trying to change the subject away from this denial.

What, did you suddenly remember that I absolutely would happily scour and quote every instance across all 7 pages where someone made an assertive claim about how women are, or feel, or think?

I do find it funny though, how you continually claim that a woman can't really know how a man feels, yet you seem to feel certain that you know for a fact how young women feel, despite having never been one. Also the way you hurl the spear of narcissism at women, while believing that you're obvs too good of a catch to have been passed on so much, that your perspective is the actual truth, that other men need your specific input in order to succeed, and that these men hold you in high regard for your efforts.

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@OP - you've given far too few details for anyone to know where or how you may or may not have gone wrong, or what you could do better. We'd have to know the specifics of the interactions in far greater detail. However, I am reasonably certain that "blaming other people" is not a good start.

I said I wouldn't post in this thread, but I feel obliged to make one more observation:

I am baffled by women or men who say that you have to be the sex and/or gender of either men or women to be able to comment on the experiences of men or women or to be competent in understanding men, or women.

A woman doesn't have to be a man to observe and analyze the behaviour of a man, or to have an opinion on men.

A man doesn't have to be a woman to observe and analyze the behaviour of a woman, or to have an opinion on women.

Consider the example of a male gynecologist who has qualified as a specialist with all the hard work and study that brings?

Imagine someone telling that very qualified person that they cannot do their job, because they have never had female genitalia? It is a ludicrous notion.

Equating the behavior of people in this thread to those who’ve devoted years to study and research in medical school is, yet again, not an equivalent comparison.

If people want to know how women think and feel, they need to actually listen to women. Instead, female opinions about women are often dismissed on WP if they conflict with a male member’s subjective experience and biases.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 07 Mar 2024, 11:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

It is a more extreme example that I gave, purely to illustrate a point, but both men and women can figure out what motivates each or to know each other to some extent. Obviously not to an expert level or anything in many cases, but to say that men or women can't have an opinion on each other, diminishes the estimated intelligence of both men and women, in my view anyway.

Sure, it is an advantage to be either a man or woman when taking on a perspective of either a man or a woman - a lived experience is an advantage, but not having a lived experience doesn't disqualify anybody from having an opinion on either men or women as either a man or a woman, or non-binary if a person is non-binary, even.

I am sorry that you feel that your views have been dismissed.

Your example isn’t applicable in this context because, once again, male doctors don’t rely on subjective experience and personal biases when it comes to treating their female patients.

In any event, people have the freedom to hold whatever opinions they like about demographics they don’t belong to, but they should not be promoted as facts. Sometimes those opinions should be kept private. It crosses a line when they are used to mansplain, dismiss a woman’s experience, promote othering, and propagate other forms of sexism which have occurred throughout this thread and historically on WP. Encouraging other members to adopt sexist attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors is especially problematic, but it happens a lot.

Being open to adjusting one’s thinking by actually listening to what women have to say might be useful.

This isn’t just about me. It’s a general trend that other women on WP have experienced too although, overall, I think it was much worse a couple years ago.

I think it's also worth noting here and remembering that medical students learn about the body from information gathered about stereotypical white 'male' bodies. Science has traditionally used white males as the basis for study, so everything was learned from that perspective as the basis, and people of color or other genders were almost an afterthought. In textbooks you rarely (especially in the past, it is getting better) if ever saw images of wounds etc on skin that wasn't white. So essentially the entire history of medicine has been formed through the perspective of a white man, and with the perspective that a healthy white man was the "baseline". Medicine has not been studied from the perspective of women or other people. And it wasn't until recently that anyone really thought perhaps patients might be better served if other perspectives were considered.

Male doctors can only ever have academic knowledge of the female experience. That's not even necessarily their fault. I can't truly understand what it feels like to get kicked in the testicles. I can know it sucks, but I have never felt it. People without a uterus can't know what cramps feel like, or what daily life dealing with a period is like. They can know everything academically about the way it works and about the internal processes that are happening, but they can't KNOW from experience. And I think society in general is learning that one of the best ways to learn about the experience of someone else is to hear from them firsthand, so I do think positive progress is being made.

A doctor without a uterus can be a great doctor, knowledgeable and efficient, even as a gynecologist. But that doctor will not know how it feels to have a pap smear done. They also don't have the societal influence of gendered experience from that perspective. Men are not socialized to recognize women as a statistical source of extreme danger. While it happens for sure, men are not typically victimized or assaulted by women, at least not nearly as frequently. So that male doctor doesn't know how it feels to be laying on that table, feet in the stirrups, showing off your stuff, while someone uses a speculum to go spelunking.

So I think in some ways, there will always be a component missing in academic understanding of another persons body. But I don't necessarily think that makes someone less likely to be good at their job.

I just think it means we should seek to find accounts of those experiences from the perspective of the person who lived them and keep that information just as we would the academic facts based knowledge.

^ Good points!

I think it helps to find doctors who try to understand and empathize with their patients’ experiences. Women frequently aren’t taken seriously, especially when they talk about struggles with female health. They are so often told that their pain is normal which can delay the testing, diagnosing, and treatment of conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, etc.

Overall, I’ve been pretty fortunate and had some amazing doctors - both male and female. Of course, I’m pretty choosy and won’t settle with a doctor I don’t like. If they don’t seem compassionate or if I’m not comfortable with them for whatever reason, I look for another doctor.

I'll re-direct you to the OP's dilemma which is specifically about keeping female NT friends. Hence the emphasis on the male perspective in this thread. If the thread was reversed about making/keeping male friends then sure, the female perspective is what would matter.

I’m pretty sure that being friends with NT women is applicable to people of any gender. In the beginning of the thread, men, women, and NB folks talked about their experiences relating to the topic. Whatever the case may be, it doesn’t change the problematic, sexist comments/posts that were made in this thread. If people want to be friends with women, listening to them might be useful.

Cornflake seemed to be okay with the direction the thread has taken because it’s an important one.

The trend here appears to be that, rather than answer difficult or, perhaps, uncomfortable questions, posters deflect them by shifting the focus or by claiming they’re off-topic. They have also claimed that they were the only ones staying on-topic when that obviously hasn’t been the case. It makes one think that the questions might lead to unsatisfactory answers.

Do you have all these rules written down somewhere? Or do you just make them up as you go along? You're not even the OP. Who put you in charge?

Does it really warrant an explanation as to why, if you want something from someone, it behooves you to get their perspective, too? Is it really that outlandish an idea, that if you want something from women, it might be beneficial to talk to women about it? Or is this just gate-keeping, to disqualify a dissenting voice?

That aside, the assertion that if a woman started a thread about issues with guys then things would be reversed, is comedic gold. Women start threads about women's issues with men fairly regularly, and guess which male members are often in them, stomping their feet and flailing their arms, cos the women won't concede to their manly point. Men even shoved their manly perspectives into the threads about the groomer incident that happened here, despite it targeting specifically women. Even in that thread, regarding an actual grooming incident, that actually targeted real women on here, some guys were still more preoccupied with the poor hypothetical MEN who get WRONGLY! labeled groomers!, even though that's not even what happened.

So don't even gimme that "if things were reversed" crap. Want me to go find the threads? Which usernames do you think we'd see in these threads? What kinda comments do you think we'd see those member make?

Wafflin' back and forth between "this forum is for all opinions" and "male opinions only plz!"... Simultaneously claiming that others can't know your mind, while you adamantly claim to know the mind of entire demographics...

Funny how your eyes only see factual truths, but everyone else's eyes just see lies and distortions. You're eyes can magically see across genders and neurotypes, but everyone else needs to stay in their lane...

Ok, now pull the other one...

And a general note - my real actual lived experience as a male has shown me that this kind of behavior is directly related to one's ability to make and retain friends of any type, and pointing out the effects of this type of behavior on others seems highly relevant to the OP's question.