The UCSB shooter--an Aspie with a rant against women

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And, naturally, I talk only to clones of myself.

Do you think you could perhaps be taking things a bit far?

My own experience indicates that women rarely ask and both my male and female friends agree with that. Certainly, nobody has ever asked me and I have not had a single date until I was 31. So, why should your experience be a true indication and mine not?

This + ban guns but that's just the European point of view.

Therein lies the problem right here. One can't pretend to be something he is not. They were expected to be salespeople when it was not in their nature at all. These engineers needed to stay in the basement. They did not need to be speaking to congress whatsoever. Someone who understood engineering principles and who could speak well should've been the ones to persuade congress. This is the first problem.

Second, if a group of people already have blinders in place especially if they don't think long term whatsoever then what can one do to convince them?

For people whom are excellent scientists and/or engineers but not naturally the best communicators should their talents be allowed to go to waste? What should be done with them in your opinion? What is your solution?

I've moved around in circles consisting of various ethnic and socioeconomic groups, primarily in the New York City area.

Despite the "anecdotal" nature of my impression, I feel like my impression is valid. It is, as follows:

Very few women ever ask a man for a date directly. However, a woman would frequently drop hints to a guy's friend, or to one of her friends who is also acquainted with the guy. She would also send strong signals to the guy that she would be quite delighted if he would ask her out, almost to the point of saying, "C'mon now, stop being such a doofus, isn't it evident that I want you to ask me out, for chrissakes?"

I've been asked out by a woman only once in my life. I am not gargoyle-looking, by any means, though I am short, and sometimes a bit chubby. Supposedly, I resemble Robin Williams somewhat.

This occurred when I was 17 years old. This girl asked if I wanted an ice-cream soda, her treat. I accepted. It turned out that she was on a religious kick. We went out for maybe a few weeks afterwards. Nothing happened sexually.

However this may be, I don't believe this fact should cause guys to think that "they have it harder" in a dating sense.

Or they send Valentine's cards to the guy to let him know that he's got a "secret admirer". Unfortunately, he's then left to guess who it's from. That's what happened to me once when I was in high school and I never worked who it was from. Although, I at least know it was from a girl because my friends knew who it was from but they refused to tell me. Oh well, that was one potential opportunity for having a girlfriend while I was still in high school that went down the drain.

Last edited by Jono on 30 Jul 2014, 8:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think having a secret admirer would be cool; I wish I had one! LOL

Think about Charlie Brown's travails with the Red-Headed girl.

A lot of this stuff is teachable. The people who wind up in front of members of Congress are among sci/eng's best communicators. The culture of academic sci/eng, and its funding model, just trains them badly -- much too narrowly, far too little awareness of audience, too much pressure to "sound like a scientist (or engineer)". And unfortunately industry scientists and engineers, when they're trained to communicate at all, are trained to communicate as though they'll be PhD academics. Which is to say very badly. That can be fixed, but by and large the sci/eng PhDs have resisted it because they see training in communication as not-science, not-engineering, and therefore a waste of precious time, something people should pick up magically. That's changing, though, as the money dries up and/or they over-reproduce.

There will always be some who just can't do it, and to be honest I don't know what the answer is there. If you have clients, if you work in teams, you need to be able to make yourself and what you're doing (and want to do, and why) understood somehow. If you can get into a niche where you're the reliable producer of X and a specific set of knowledgeable clients can work directly with you...man, even there, the two things I've seen derail projects the fastest are incompetence and inability to communicate, people who just sail off doing their thing and can neither listen well nor explain themselves well. But this is the reality in many facets of life -- in order to do something well you need not just a skill but a variety of skills (some more important than others), the temperament for the work, various supports, physical wellbeing.

Okay, consider the two cases:

Person A hears women asking men out for decades, and knows no women who would find it unacceptable to ask a man out - if she were interested.
Person B is a man who doesn't get asked out.

In the first case, we've got direct evidence of women asking men out. Not just a few, but lots, and as a normal state of affairs over decades.
In the second, the man's not being asked out, but doesn't know why -- so makes assumptions about why.

The assumption being made here is that he's not being asked out because a cultural model involving coyness makes it impossible for women to ask, or extremely unlikely. But there's no reason why that must be true, and it seems to be contradicted by Person A's experience. More likely, I think, is that women simply aren't asking *him* out. That's unflattering, to be sure, but it's also a reasonable conclusion.

I've said this elsewhere, but my experience is that women by and large are pretty okay outside relationships -- the "I'm taking time for myself" business is endemic -- and tend to be pretty picky. Most of us don't, as far as I've seen, go throwing ourselves at men, because we're not interested enough to do that. If there's a particular man we're interested in, we'll go after him pretty vigorously. It could be that the percentage of men women are really interested in is pretty small. I hadn't thought about it before, but most of the men I've been involved with are pretty accustomed to female attention. My recent exbf, the one with AS who struggles to get his life together, has had three women come courting in the last year. I can certainly see why. He's a very handsome, charming fella, mannerly and well-spoken, looks like a great boyfriend and husband manqué. (He does not, incidentally, have a car or drive at all, and is chronically unemployed, has no money, does not have his own place. None of this seems to matter.) If initial courtship were the whole game, he'd be in great shape.

I see supporting trends in life after divorce for women. Not only do women report a higher quality of life after divorce (as opposed to men, who find life much harder after divorce), what I see is that women who can support themselves/families will often wait foreeeeever before dating again, and when they do they seem to just turn up one day with Probable Next Husband. I have no idea where they're even finding these guys. I don't think this is as true for low-income women, but even among low-income women, studies keep showing single moms being disinclined to remarry or even invite men into their lives, just out of fear that a man will be a net liability. The push just isn't there for them to couple up v. being single.

We're going back to ask rates, but if a majority of women are reasonably content outside relationships for long spans, and are relatively choosy...yeah, a lot of men are going to see few/no asks, and a few men will get lots (relative to the other men). If that's combined with a general friendliness in women towards relationships -- just positing -- then if non-asked men ask, some slice of women will shrug and have an "I could eat" sort of reaction -- yeah, sure, why not, nice to be asked anyway. And if the guy's persuasive in dates, then maybe it turns into something more...though he's going to have to be able to retain her interest.

I'm also not sure this should be cause for deep psychic wounds or outrage at the universe. (Or at women.) I'm nearly 50. I look okay for my age, fit and all, but I look like a tired almost-50 mom/busy person, and if I ever knew how to flirt, I'm sure I've forgotten. The rate at which I'm asked out has more or less fallen off a cliff, and after about a decade's experience in unhappily-married men, I see 'em coming now, and I must look less inviting or sympathetic or vulnerable, because I don't get the approaches I did a few years ago. The issue is not that men are coyly waiting for me to ask them; they just aren't interested. If they were, they'd be asking. (If I were in a bigger city with more single men my age/older, yeah, I'd get asked out more, but I'm guessing it'd be the rapid-fire asking-out of desperation, where the main thing that matters is that I'm single and breathing, not "wow, she's great, I want her" asking-out.) Their lack of interest, however, is not a referendum on my being. They're allowed not to be interested, and my life goes on anyway.

Well, don't think you're almost 50 years old think your almost 50 years young.

I have a question though for you. Why couldn't both of you be right in a sense? Maybe for the most part men would prefer to ask women out and women would prefer to ask men out. It may be true that for the most part that women don't actually ask men out.

Could there be exceptions that could be based upon region and sub-culture and other factors I may not think be thinking of? Why couldn't it be true that what Jono says is generally true but there are exceptions to this truth and the rate at which women prefer to ask men out and actually ask men out are higher in certain subsets? If this was true wouldn't it resolve this contradiction?

I will admit though that I have been hit on by other women and I didn't even know it. My wife has become jealous and we've had a few arguments about this. I didn't even think they were. As I've read about communication online it turns out they were and I missed it. A few months ago one Asian young lady hit on me strong. Even when I told her I had a wife she was still coming on to me strong.

It may be that some guys may be being hit on my women and not even realize it. A lot more data would have to be collected and this study on PT leaves to many questions unanswered. It is to narrow in scope and seems a bit biased and needs a wider sample space.

I would say that what Cube says is pretty much on the mark.

Person A obviously socialises with other women who are more liberal-minded, it's still anecdotal and does not mean it's the for everyone. If you're really a scientist like you say you are, you should be more skeptical of anecdotal evidence.



Wrong again, it's not just the case of me never being asked out. And no, that's not a reasonable conclusion I also have direct experience. I have direct experience of men telling me that girls rarely ask men out according to their own experiences, I have direct experience of women being interested in me but I failed to notice (see, for example, my anecdote of getting a Valentine's card above) and I also have direct experience of women telling me that they would rarely ask men out. Sorry, but your personal experience does not mean nothing, or at least it means just as much as mine does.



Yes, because an individual with AS who has Master's degree in astrophysics, about to get a doctorate degree in theoretical physics, and who's becoming a fully fledged theoretical physicist is someone who's "struggling to get his life together" apparently.



You're talking about older women who have already had been married in the past, so I don't see how it's relevant. It's also anecdotal



Now, you're the one making assumptions.



And I've demonstrated that I have outrage towards women, how?

Eh, I have no problem with heading towards "old". It's what happens when you live a long time. I feel lucky to've been able to do it, no complaints. I also have a vivid demonstration of "young" daily, and that ain't me.

The reason both explanations can't be true simultaneously is that they're positing fundamentally different things.

Jono and others here: the overwhelming majority of women will not ask because they're socially conditioned not to along some pretty antique gender lines (fear of being forward, expect men to prove themselves, etc.)

Me: plenty of women do ask and have no problem doing so, they're just not asking you, and they're not asking very often - because they ask only when they're seriously interested, and they're choosier than you'd like them to be.

I can totally believe that some subset of women simply refuse, for cultural reasons, to ask, and find it necessary for men to do the asking. But I don't think that, in the main, that's why women aren't asking out the men who feel it's all left up to them.

Jono: I'm trying to avoid quote forests:

1. I've said repeatedly that I am not a scientist. I work with scientists. Maybe part of why you're having trouble with what I'm saying is that you're reading part of it and filling in the rest from your own mind.

2. Person A actually has a pretty broad social world and talks to many people from many different backgrounds.

3. I did not say that this was simply about you, Jono, not being asked out. Nor am I talking about hinting. I'm talking about direct, verbal invitations. We're talking about asking people out, not hoping others will ask you out.

4. I don't know who you're talking about with the master's in astrophysics, but that's not my exbf.

5. Older women are in fact women. Please do not be ageist. Apart from which, women of all ages divorce. And no, it's not anecdotal, there are studies of quality of life post-divorce. Women happier, men not so happy.

6. You missed the "just positing" bit.

7. I did not say you have outrage towards women. Many men do stomp around quite a bit outraged at women for "forcing them" to do the asking and not going through the pain of rejection. Please stop assuming that every reference is to you.

Alas, the "pretty antique gender lines" still exist, despite their antiquity.

The wheel also exists, despite its antiquity.

I really don't care one way or the other. If I feel like asking, I'll ask.

Perhaps some change has occurred very recently, especially within academic circles.

But.....through consideration of anecdote (and purely through anecdote), I find that it is rare for a woman to ask a man out, for whatever reason. It could be for the reasons stated by the ladies. It depends upon the individual, really.

Perhaps, in 20 years, this condition might change--but I, through a conjuring up of my instinctual sense, doubt it.

kk, the pretty antique gender lines have done a lot of collapsing in the US over the past few decades, partly because women are capable of supporting themselves, often well, and partly because blue-collar labor markets for men have dried up. Marriage doesn't look much like it did 40, 50 years ago. Nor do families.