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Men can't read our signals
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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I'm autistic as fuck so I can't read anyone's signals but men are just as bad. I could never understand why men worked so hard to get my attention and got all weird when I didn't give them that attention.
They also spend a lot of time trying to shape me into the type of man they want to be around yet they would never outright say what they are doing and why I should change for them.
Then they would get all jealous when I actually hung out with women and get even weirder about it when I wouldn't engage them in the weird conversations they wanted to have about women.
Like dude, if you want a hug or a cuddle, just say so because these roundabout games you're playing is confusing as fuck.
So now I wander the earth thoroughly confused...
How to be a neurotypical:
1 - Have a somewhat societally common and shared, but also very unique and specific to yourself/particular social group, way of understanding and projecting tone, microexpressions, vocabulary choices, speech cadence, etc, with many distinct or uncommon idiosyncrasies.
2 - Assume everyone else on the planet has essentially the exact same way of seeing and performing all this as you do.
3 - Confidently interperet social cues incorrectly considerably more often than Autists, but be blissfully unaware of this, pathologize and shame the idea of asking for clarity and communicating in a direct, precise, and less ambiguous way.
... Autistic people consciously learn, process and evaluate how social cues actually work, and Autistic people also very much like logically consistent things that are not contradictory... so they are more likely to either be very rigid with one way of understanding something, or to.ask questions to clarify things that are not actually clear, consistent, universal, precise.
It thus takes them longer to learn how to adaquetly perform all this, aka, Masking.
Neurotypicals on the other hand learn, process and evaluate and perform social cues much more unconsciously, and they are far more likely to just assume their interpretation is correct, that their projected behaviors convey exactly what they think they do... despite the fact that if you sit a bunch of them down, they will all describe significant differences between their ways of understanding and performing mannerisms.
Essentially, they're bullshitting it, but there are more bullshitters than non bullshitters, so bullshitting is the norm.
The thing about having to consciously learn social cues and how to talk to people is that if you do it right and get good at it you can be REALLY, really good at it.
Is there a 'we are not the same' meme for skilled at masking autists, vs narcissistic sociopaths?
Make your dreams a reality.
I was just having some fun by pointing out that women aren't the only mythical creature whose signals are hard to read.
I do agree with your last point thoroughly, bullshitters do be bullshittin' it. A lot. Too much I would say.
See my other wall of text reply to your other comment, lol, I could go on for days with anecdotes of esoteric bs I've seen NT men do to signal things to other men and women, I totally agree this isn't a sex/gender thing, its a neurotype thing that manifests differently in different sexes/genders.
I tend to ignore terms like neurotypical and neurodiverse because I just view everyone as neurodiverse. And if everyone is neurodiverse, then nobody is neurodiverse. That just means to me that people are people. Some more insecure than others.
I also think that everyone is gay. Which means I personally don't really view anyone as gay, just people doing normal people things no matter who they love. Some people just happen to be insecure as fuck about loving another person.
What I do see are a lot of insecure people attempting to set and enforce normal behaviour because they are afraid of being weird while ignoring the fact that being alive is the most weird and pointless experience ever.
Gotta have a little fun with the weird, pointlessness of existence, that's what can make life beautiful and interesting :)
Well I disagree strongly with your unorthodox definitions of neurotypical, neurodiverse and gay...
But I do generally agree that a lot of people and social norms stem from insecurity, an inability or unwillingness to actually examine things in detail, with consistency, to hold your own self or group to the standards you hold others to.
We also seem to have the same absurdist take on reality and meaning, so laugh and dance and do backflips as you push that boulder up that hill, hahah!
I've had a lifetime of people labeling me as something and trying to enforce that label on me. When I eventually do something that sits outside of that label, those same people get angry at me for breaking the expectations that they set for me. Expectations that they never explicitly told me but assumed because of that label they placed on me.
As a result, I pushed back by "delabelling" myself, mostly. If I must label myself, I attempt to use the most broad term possible as to avoid cornering myself. Sometimes it's too easy to use a label as a conversational shortcut.
As a personal result, I tend to avoid labeling others. In my mind that puts me on even level with the people around me. It avoids me talking to specific groups of people and allows others to participate in the discussion, no matter how those other people view or identify themselves.
I've watched how words, labels and categorizations have become weaponized and used to divide people. Which is absurdity. Words are ever evolving and dying so to me it seems pointless to allow words to strongly influence me.
These days I surround myself with people who are able to show me who they are over people who spend their energy telling me who they are. Real confidence doesn't need to waste their time on only words. Those words should add to that person as a whole. That's how I want to view another person.
Not trying to convince you to change your mind, I do see the value in using words or labels to find community, especially in times like these. I think you seem open to at least seeing where my unorthodox views come from.
Oh I totally get where you are coming from, I could have written a good deal of that myself.
I'd offer you a hug if I could.
I completely agree that labels, words for boxes we put people in... should as additive, in a good way, as possible, descriptors, not restrictors.
But I also believe they should be accurate, and thus, we unfortunately still do live in a society, and we thus to at least some extent have to keep playing this word game.
I view a term like Autist simply as a matter of fact classifier, and while I won't force others to, I more or less use it as a self label, when it is relevant to some discussion.
My approach is 'take the word back' so that Autism Speaks and idiots who think the measles vaccine gave their kid Autism aren't the only morons using such words, proclaiming to represent me... us.
We can speak for ourselves actually, we're not all a bunch of invalid r-tards, and whether or not we like it, we are an extremely misunderstood and at risk minority group in much of the world... if we let others do all the talking, we shouldn't be surprised that they continue to get a lot of things very wrong.
A bit of insights:
They get all weird because they see getting your attention as a sort of investment. They take time, effort, dedicate themselves to figuring out how to best build contact with you, and when it doesn't work out, it naturally leads to frustration. From there, they either close down (minimize losses), or get weird (frantically trying to make it work).
As per hugs and cuddles, masculine culture heavily disincentivizes tender emotions, and they can be seen as a reason for ridicule. Being burnt heavily on that, many men prefer to be very careful about communicating such needs.
Part of the confusion is the men I have had experiences with spend a lot of time talking about women but then invest an uncomfortable amount of time trying to turn me into a man that they want me to be for them.
One guy spent nearly two weeks trying to get me to take creatine and go work out with him. Like if he wants me to cuddle him with big, strong, manly arms, he was going about it in a weird way.
It's just as confusing when men love that I treat them as unique individual but get upset with me that I also treat women like unique individuals, almost like they are jealous.
The signals are there but I can't read 'em!
Sounds like he just wanted a gym buddy
Autistic guy here:
100% agree, tons of NT men do weird, esoteric, 'interperet my strange, indirect dance of actions, and if you fail to understand what they mean, well you're an asshole / a bitch / a tease' type bullshit.
NT women of course do this as well, watching a couple recent compilations of women explaining that they are sending an extremely obvious flirting sign by literally holding eye contact with a person they are walking past for an actual quarter second longer than their own personal normal duration for this... has been uh, eye opening.
Like these girls would be irate, immensely frustrated that no one noticed this form of flirtation, no guy noticed that and then immediately asked for their digits... because this form of flirtation is apparently just extremely obvious and noticeable?
Everything would be about a million times easier if people just actually stated what they wanted... at least in concept... but the problem is that being that direct forces people to be honest with themselves, forces the possibility of a direct denial/rejection, and people tend to not like that.
The whole problem is that NTs all seem to think their specific weird actions are universally, easily understood to convey the same meaning to everyone, but other NTs will significantly disagree about these things when they bother to actually examine them in detail!
So its less that Autists 'cant figure out social cues' and more like 'NTs can't agree on social cues, but they all act like they do universally agree'... and then Autists are confused by this, because much of it actually is inconsistent and contradictory.
I'd love to be able to ask directly, but my fear is they'll treat me differently after I ask. It's already happened once to me; a friend stopped hanging out with me for a while (I think that's fixed now, but it lasted months). I feel a bit safer about it around autistic people though, because I'm pretty sure a rejection would be just a "no" and then we proceed like nothing happened.
Oh I also would love to be able to just communicate directly with people, but yeah your fear is not irrational or unfounded, I've lost a good deal of acquaintances by just actually answering their questions instesd of telling them comforting lies.
A whole lot of people are really, really insecure snd fragile.
And before someone says it: No, I am not talking about being brutal toward someone who is showing obvious signs of emotional distress, obviously that is the time to be comforting, be a good listener, help people try to de escalate themselves.
...
I also just generally feel safer around other autists, I have gotten to the point where I am 99% sure I will never consider seriously dating another non autist again.
Perks of being ~~a wallflower~~ an autistic hermit:
I can do a really good job of sating my proverbial Sims Socialization meter by having precise conversations via text, over the internet... and then just occasionally strike up some chit chat with an actual human face that belongs to a rando at a bus stop or neighbor that also lives in my building.
Small talk is actually rather fun and easy when it isn't mandated all the damn time, and you just avoid 'high stakes' topics, and it isn't with someone whose opinion of you could basically destroy your life in some way if you unintentionally offend them.
Oh, many men are jealous when women they like hang out a lot with other women and enjoy their time. Modern culture made it look like women may form a special form of deep connection men can never reach, while simultaneously making men feel isolated overall, and some are driven quite crazy over it.
As such, when they get the attention they crave, they don't feel they can secure it. Thereby, mentioning other women and what they mean to you feels like a threat. This takes a while to unlearn, and is one kind of trauma many men get to experience.
I do not have many personal insights about how men want their friends/partners to be manly, but I may suggest it may come from the same point. Male friendships nowadays are fairly rare, and some folks really just want a bro to hang out with.
I'm quite literally a bro they can hang out with, and have always been. I just lack the big strong arms they want me to have to cuddle them with D:
Lol
Hope you find bros who appreciate your current hugs :)
I'm quite fortunate enough to have found people who appreciate my hugs. Not quite bros. Or maybe they are. Depends on peoples perspective. In any case, my arms just fine as they are for them :)