I grasped how accurate all this was when I read "plausible deniability that you’re leveraging your attractiveness" because I remember Miss Manners specifying that flirting is expressing interest but in a way "from which either party can retreat at any point with honor".
A very very very easy hack I've found for making other women like (or at least diffuses dislike) you quickly is to give unprompted appearance bases compliments. Outfits and jewellery ideal. If you can't figure out what to say, just pick something you like about her outfit and say you like it.
I think it signals that you're paying attention to her (people like being seen but in the kind of stereotypically male dominated scenes that lots of us hang out in, women can often feel especially left out), and also it's something something recognition from a peer/ high status individual. I know I love compliments from girls who in my opinion are my own level of attractiveness or hotter - the signal is that she thinks of you as an equal in the attractiveness game, and that's very validating. It's especially good on something you have control over - outfits, makeup, hair - because to some extent these things are skill based. If you can pick out what seems to be the most effortful part of the outfit, compliment that. Nails are an underrated thing to compliment.
Your advice to learn from an older etiquette book is spot on. Some if it might seem ridiculous or dated, but the general idea of having good manners was to smooth interactions with others. There are generally two parts. There's using safe, recognizable language which helps avoid a broad variety of pitfalls when talking to someone as yet unknown, and there's showing consideration for their goals and feelings which is surprisingly rare and so appreciated. Maybe I'm an old timer, but I still call 800 numbers, and I've found that good manners can get me all sorts of good responses because I've given people a reason to want to help me.
"another aspect is that he might feel that he could never hijack attention in the same way, that he could look good but what you are doing to him is something he’s incapable of–so the easiest, most available go-to negative is resentment, which is very poisonous. "
i don't like that i do this but i've definitely noticed myself doing it. nice to see some else mention it explicitly.
Yes, this is really insightful and correct. I'm a heterosexual nonaustistic man and this makes sense of a lot of things for me. I'll give you a couple of examples from my recent experience that illustrate this.
I recently met a very flirty woman who is doing the opposite of your ladylike strategy. She is very feminine, flirty, talks about sex, talks a lot, takes up a lot of social space. Although she's not very pretty I was immediately attracted to her and ended up talking to her quite a lot. However, I quickly decided she wasn't the right person for me to date - too chaotic (among other reasons). I thought I could still have her as a friend but the problem is she monopolises my attention too much. This is partly passive - by drawing me in - but also active - by talking a lot and taking over conversations I'm in. I also don't think she's specifically attracted to me - she just flirts with everyone - and that feels a bit manipulative. I've decided to withdraw more from her and keep her at a distance.
By contrast, someone else I met recently is utterly beautiful and I approached her for that reason. However, she quickly said she had a boyfriend (which was helpful she did that) and has never flirted with me. She dresses modestly and elegantly. Because of the way she acts I usually don't feel particularly attracted to her even though she is much more beautiful than the other woman and much more suitable for me in other ways. This makes it easier to be friends. And because she has other qualities I value, I want to keep being friends with her.
I think there is also a mirror of the strategies you laid out, but for men - by replacing "attractiveness" with "desire". For men, we can hide our desire - which is tempting because the desire seems embarrasing or risky. Or we can be really overt in our desire - which while authentic risks being creepy by forcing people to deal with our desire even when they don't want to. But better is to show desire in light, plausibly deniable ways that allow women to either engage with it or not as they please, and where it gradually escalates as she shows availability and interest, and de-escalates when she doesn't.
I found this essay refreshing and possibly even groundbreaking in its explicitness and honesty. But there’s one big question that’s conspicuous by its absence: namely, what are the autistic woman’s GOALS? What is she trying to achieve with all these strategies? We can infer that she wants certain unspecified benefits from being perceived as sexy, and that she wants them without other women resenting her, perceiving her as a defector, or colluding against her; and also without men feeling foolish or led on. Well OK, but is she actually looking for a date, a boyfriend, a husband, whatever, or does she only want non-sexual benefits from sexiness? One might feel differently about the ethics *or* the tactical effectiveness of these strategies depending on the answer! Or maybe the refusal to specify is *itself* part of the “ladylike” strategy? :-D
No matter how much or little humans like it, sexual behaviour is tied to reproduction and the morality of sexual behaviour is going to be tied to reproductive outcomes.
Of course all behaviour that fails to reproduce dies out. But sexual behaviour is especially closely tied to reproductive outcomes. And females are the reproductive bottleneck for a population, so any sane society will have different expectations for women than men.
Promiscuous outcomes are worse for women. Promiscuous/without offspring is a dead end, and a rise in that type of women marks the end of a society as a whole. Promiscuous with offspring generally means less provision for children than married with offspring, and worse outcomes for offspring. The short term perceived power of being flirty/slutty is a dupe. In the long term the slut gets less out of men than the married women, even sexually she gets less.
The correct/optimal/ethical/practical way for any given woman to use her sexuality is to lavish it on the man that fathers her children and get literally everything out of him. All his protection, provision, sexual attention, everything that is his becomes hers as well. This is cross culturally and time tested the way for women to get the best life outcomes.
Flirting is about plausible denyability. But plausible denyability is for courts, not for social situations. People will cotton on to a flirt quickly and act appropriately, even if she denies it. Using attractiveness is signalling sexual availability. Men getting angry when a women flirts and then denies it is an entirely appropriate response, she was sending a deceptive signal. Women shame flirtatious women because they cheapen sexual access, so they're devaluing other women. Women slut shaming is entirely logical and appropriate behaviour.
Being a lady is being very clearly and unambiguously unavailable, or at least very exclusively available. If you do read the old books of etiquette you will find flirting is unladylike, and engaging is sexual discussion or jokes or anything of the sort with the opposite gender at all is very unladylike.
The polite society corollary to a lady is a gentleman. He gives a lady special treatment and attention just for being a lady. But he ignores or shuns the woman who behaves in promiscuous ways, not wanting to be associated with her or waste her time on her when he has access to better more faithful women anyway.
Tell young women to look for the guy that is not very impressed by flirtatious behaviour, he's the guy running the better life strategy and will have better life outcomes than the others.
The upshot of having sex and flirtation taboo in mixed company is that lines of behaviour are much more clearly drawn, and that's good for 'weird' types who don't pick up the subtle cues as easily.
Part of authenticity is having an understanding of what your natural drives are for and directing them to those productive ends. Just like eating good and healthy food leads to more health and happiness so does using sexuality properly lead to happier and healthier people.
You are wrong about one thing. You write "this strategy is bad for you, which isn’t true (yet)". No, that strategy is bad for you then too. You are so close, you will see it.
You're the first person ever who manages to explain this to me in a way that makes sense.
I work a job with a 10:1 male:female ratio, and I spent all of last year trying to figure out why some of the other women were horribly badmouthed while it virtually never happened to others. The differing variable wasn't promiscuity or lack thereof. The best hypothesis I eventually settled on was that the ones who got badmouthed were the ones who gave indication of being bothered by the horrible things said about them, and the unapologetic ones just never cared so people stopped bothering them.
Now, after you pointed it out, I realised that an important variable that was missing was signalled sexual availability. "Signals sexual availability but doesn't have sex"-> disdain by men, "signals sexual availability and has sex"-> disdain by women, "doesn't signal but does have sex"-> no one cares that much. Sample size relatively small, from n=1 to n=4. No 1:1 applicability for everyone due to confounding factors.
I probably didn't help that my social skills deficiency meant it took me a long time to catch on to get integrated into the gossip networks and realise who was actually behaving promiscuously and who wasn't.
Potentially dumb question. If I'm a woman with autism who doesn't care about being ladylike, and I'm already married, is there any reason I need to take this advice? Because a lot of this stuff just sounds like it will demand additional masking and lead to burnout. Maybe I'm not understanding the non-sexual/non-romantic benefits properly...
I grasped how accurate all this was when I read "plausible deniability that you’re leveraging your attractiveness" because I remember Miss Manners specifying that flirting is expressing interest but in a way "from which either party can retreat at any point with honor".
A very very very easy hack I've found for making other women like (or at least diffuses dislike) you quickly is to give unprompted appearance bases compliments. Outfits and jewellery ideal. If you can't figure out what to say, just pick something you like about her outfit and say you like it.
I think it signals that you're paying attention to her (people like being seen but in the kind of stereotypically male dominated scenes that lots of us hang out in, women can often feel especially left out), and also it's something something recognition from a peer/ high status individual. I know I love compliments from girls who in my opinion are my own level of attractiveness or hotter - the signal is that she thinks of you as an equal in the attractiveness game, and that's very validating. It's especially good on something you have control over - outfits, makeup, hair - because to some extent these things are skill based. If you can pick out what seems to be the most effortful part of the outfit, compliment that. Nails are an underrated thing to compliment.
Your advice to learn from an older etiquette book is spot on. Some if it might seem ridiculous or dated, but the general idea of having good manners was to smooth interactions with others. There are generally two parts. There's using safe, recognizable language which helps avoid a broad variety of pitfalls when talking to someone as yet unknown, and there's showing consideration for their goals and feelings which is surprisingly rare and so appreciated. Maybe I'm an old timer, but I still call 800 numbers, and I've found that good manners can get me all sorts of good responses because I've given people a reason to want to help me.
I'm so glad I'm far out of my twenties and don't have to think about this shit anymore.
"another aspect is that he might feel that he could never hijack attention in the same way, that he could look good but what you are doing to him is something he’s incapable of–so the easiest, most available go-to negative is resentment, which is very poisonous. "
i don't like that i do this but i've definitely noticed myself doing it. nice to see some else mention it explicitly.
Yes, this is really insightful and correct. I'm a heterosexual nonaustistic man and this makes sense of a lot of things for me. I'll give you a couple of examples from my recent experience that illustrate this.
I recently met a very flirty woman who is doing the opposite of your ladylike strategy. She is very feminine, flirty, talks about sex, talks a lot, takes up a lot of social space. Although she's not very pretty I was immediately attracted to her and ended up talking to her quite a lot. However, I quickly decided she wasn't the right person for me to date - too chaotic (among other reasons). I thought I could still have her as a friend but the problem is she monopolises my attention too much. This is partly passive - by drawing me in - but also active - by talking a lot and taking over conversations I'm in. I also don't think she's specifically attracted to me - she just flirts with everyone - and that feels a bit manipulative. I've decided to withdraw more from her and keep her at a distance.
By contrast, someone else I met recently is utterly beautiful and I approached her for that reason. However, she quickly said she had a boyfriend (which was helpful she did that) and has never flirted with me. She dresses modestly and elegantly. Because of the way she acts I usually don't feel particularly attracted to her even though she is much more beautiful than the other woman and much more suitable for me in other ways. This makes it easier to be friends. And because she has other qualities I value, I want to keep being friends with her.
I think there is also a mirror of the strategies you laid out, but for men - by replacing "attractiveness" with "desire". For men, we can hide our desire - which is tempting because the desire seems embarrasing or risky. Or we can be really overt in our desire - which while authentic risks being creepy by forcing people to deal with our desire even when they don't want to. But better is to show desire in light, plausibly deniable ways that allow women to either engage with it or not as they please, and where it gradually escalates as she shows availability and interest, and de-escalates when she doesn't.
I found this essay refreshing and possibly even groundbreaking in its explicitness and honesty. But there’s one big question that’s conspicuous by its absence: namely, what are the autistic woman’s GOALS? What is she trying to achieve with all these strategies? We can infer that she wants certain unspecified benefits from being perceived as sexy, and that she wants them without other women resenting her, perceiving her as a defector, or colluding against her; and also without men feeling foolish or led on. Well OK, but is she actually looking for a date, a boyfriend, a husband, whatever, or does she only want non-sexual benefits from sexiness? One might feel differently about the ethics *or* the tactical effectiveness of these strategies depending on the answer! Or maybe the refusal to specify is *itself* part of the “ladylike” strategy? :-D
Wish I could have read this when I was a teen. Wow. But now I appreciate the advice all the more
No matter how much or little humans like it, sexual behaviour is tied to reproduction and the morality of sexual behaviour is going to be tied to reproductive outcomes.
Of course all behaviour that fails to reproduce dies out. But sexual behaviour is especially closely tied to reproductive outcomes. And females are the reproductive bottleneck for a population, so any sane society will have different expectations for women than men.
Promiscuous outcomes are worse for women. Promiscuous/without offspring is a dead end, and a rise in that type of women marks the end of a society as a whole. Promiscuous with offspring generally means less provision for children than married with offspring, and worse outcomes for offspring. The short term perceived power of being flirty/slutty is a dupe. In the long term the slut gets less out of men than the married women, even sexually she gets less.
The correct/optimal/ethical/practical way for any given woman to use her sexuality is to lavish it on the man that fathers her children and get literally everything out of him. All his protection, provision, sexual attention, everything that is his becomes hers as well. This is cross culturally and time tested the way for women to get the best life outcomes.
Flirting is about plausible denyability. But plausible denyability is for courts, not for social situations. People will cotton on to a flirt quickly and act appropriately, even if she denies it. Using attractiveness is signalling sexual availability. Men getting angry when a women flirts and then denies it is an entirely appropriate response, she was sending a deceptive signal. Women shame flirtatious women because they cheapen sexual access, so they're devaluing other women. Women slut shaming is entirely logical and appropriate behaviour.
Being a lady is being very clearly and unambiguously unavailable, or at least very exclusively available. If you do read the old books of etiquette you will find flirting is unladylike, and engaging is sexual discussion or jokes or anything of the sort with the opposite gender at all is very unladylike.
The polite society corollary to a lady is a gentleman. He gives a lady special treatment and attention just for being a lady. But he ignores or shuns the woman who behaves in promiscuous ways, not wanting to be associated with her or waste her time on her when he has access to better more faithful women anyway.
Tell young women to look for the guy that is not very impressed by flirtatious behaviour, he's the guy running the better life strategy and will have better life outcomes than the others.
The upshot of having sex and flirtation taboo in mixed company is that lines of behaviour are much more clearly drawn, and that's good for 'weird' types who don't pick up the subtle cues as easily.
Part of authenticity is having an understanding of what your natural drives are for and directing them to those productive ends. Just like eating good and healthy food leads to more health and happiness so does using sexuality properly lead to happier and healthier people.
have you seen https://www.tumblr.com/naliniasha/144531756591/can-you-talk-more-about-elle-woods-being-autistic
This is a great article, but it would really be improved with proper capitalisation.
I mean, you're writing about how to dress, talk and act properly, but you're not writing properly while doing it.
This is amazing - thank you, and thanks to Tyler Cowen for linking here.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/12/sunday-assorted-links-396.html
You are wrong about one thing. You write "this strategy is bad for you, which isn’t true (yet)". No, that strategy is bad for you then too. You are so close, you will see it.
slay
You're the first person ever who manages to explain this to me in a way that makes sense.
I work a job with a 10:1 male:female ratio, and I spent all of last year trying to figure out why some of the other women were horribly badmouthed while it virtually never happened to others. The differing variable wasn't promiscuity or lack thereof. The best hypothesis I eventually settled on was that the ones who got badmouthed were the ones who gave indication of being bothered by the horrible things said about them, and the unapologetic ones just never cared so people stopped bothering them.
Now, after you pointed it out, I realised that an important variable that was missing was signalled sexual availability. "Signals sexual availability but doesn't have sex"-> disdain by men, "signals sexual availability and has sex"-> disdain by women, "doesn't signal but does have sex"-> no one cares that much. Sample size relatively small, from n=1 to n=4. No 1:1 applicability for everyone due to confounding factors.
I probably didn't help that my social skills deficiency meant it took me a long time to catch on to get integrated into the gossip networks and realise who was actually behaving promiscuously and who wasn't.
Thank you. Your post has made my life better.
Potentially dumb question. If I'm a woman with autism who doesn't care about being ladylike, and I'm already married, is there any reason I need to take this advice? Because a lot of this stuff just sounds like it will demand additional masking and lead to burnout. Maybe I'm not understanding the non-sexual/non-romantic benefits properly...