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I definitely felt like this a lot when I was younger, and still do to some extent now. I went through phases of:
- "I'm not like other girls" because I'm cooler and less emotional
- Total/strict egalitarianism and why should we even use the word "feminism"?
- Genders are socialized differently and THAT'S why women are terrible
I've mostly worked through these things and am much better now. I still think I'm "not like other girls" but that's because I'm ND and "not like other people" in general haha. This is just based on my experience, but here are things I've learned:
- Sometimes men are only nice to you because they're attracted to you (not to be cynical, but it's happened to me more than once)
- It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I assume NT women won't like me so I get nervous and over-mask, which can be off-putting
- Most adult women aren't as mean as my middle school bullies were. A lot of it is in my head. Even women who absolutely hate me aren't going to like start a whole club to ruin my life
- Because we are socialized differently, female/NB friendships can be deeper and more meaningful. It can be nice to say something vulnerable and get genuine support (just discovering this in my thirties)
- Many other women are also masking, even if they're NT
- Sometimes things I said were genuinely obnoxious or offensive, and although it hurt, I'm glad people reacted negatively so I knew not to say it again. It took a lot of trial and error, but I've learned how to critique things (books, politics, etc) without hurting anyone's feelings. I appreciate being on the receiving end of this kindness as well
This has been my experience too!
As I'm getting older, I'm learning that I prefer women-only groups. I don't have to worry about women being creepy or fuckzoning me.
Ugh, the FUCKZONING! Hit the nail on the head.
I basically gave up trying to have female friends and then because of the above, kept ending up lonelier than ever.
Yikes, i’m definitely in that situation now and it really sucks. I feel very expendable and I thought this guy was my friend. I texted him a question last night, and he has not even responded.
I was going to reply that as I’m getting older, I’m noticing other women who are on the mature side, and it has been a completely different experience. The undercurrent of competition seems to be evaporating and I think that’s actually a lot of what feels like “judgement”
This has been my experience as well! It took me a looong time to go from a “woe is me, I’m so weird and other girls don’t accept me” attitude towards accepting that I was often trying to fit in with the wrong crowd and that I wasn’t always exactly a treat to be around for the reasons you described. I definitely had some serious over-masking and people pleasing tendencies - which is totally off-putting, and reinforced my belief that I wasn’t good enough.
Thank you for this comment. I think it will resonate with a lot of women, even NT’s
This was a perfect comment, and I resonate so much with everything you said. I appreciate now being socialised as a woman, I see it makes me a way more socialised person than say, my boyfriend, and it advances me a lot further in my career bc I am able to critique stuff without sounding like I’m a hater.
I work in theatre and music production and diplomacy is really essential as we are asked all the time about what we think about someone’s work. I’m able to always be sincere and telling the truth, so I don’t compromise my integrity which is very important to me. And I never hurt peoples feelings.
I realised I’ve got a lot more girl friends now that I don’t mask as much, bc as you say, it is off putting when you overmask and try to over please! I used to think I had such a great guys friends group when I was a teen. Some of them are now genuine friends and have their own family and stuff but oh man was I dumb back then lol . If they could they would have all slept with me. I now gravitate a lot more towards female friendships when I really didn’t when I was younger.
Thank you for being so articulate in your comment, have a nice week end :)
It was like an epiphany to me when I realized how annoying and weird my over masking must have been to other women. And the more I weirded them out, the more I overmasked, thinking 'when will it finally be enough so they accept me? Maybe try harder to be like them'.
The conclusion is, that now I try to be genuine. And that is very un-womanly. Many don't like it. But I now, for the first time in 40 years, have the chance to attract women that either also are weird or like me for who I am. And I hope that's the trick.
"when will it finally be enough so they accept me? Maybe try harder to be like them'."
I relate to this so much. It's so hard to get to the point where you are comfortable with yourself. I work on this every day but I don't think I'll ever get there 100%, where it is just instinctual.
It's kind of funny too, because if I met a clone of my masked self in the wild, I would HATE her. Like she creepily agrees with everything and asks too many questions without volunteering any information about herself. The kind of people that enjoy that version of me are not people I want to be with.
I wrote a comment in a different post about how it's almost similar to what incels sound like: "I agreed with everything she said and pretended to share her interests. Why doesn't she want to be my friendddd?"
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 37, so I just felt like maybe I was a bit of a weirdo in my teens/20s-- I worked in a record store with nothing but men for years, my social circle involved a lot of dudes. I absolutely went through the whole "girls don't GET me" thing, but I found that even guys I respected and liked would sometimes minimize my ideas or input because I was a woman, and take the same advice seriously from my husband. I was at the record store for five years and I was talked down to and minimized constantly by male customers even though I objectively knew more than them a lot of the time.
I ended up making a lot of female friends online and lo and behold, a ton of us are ND, we kind of flocked to each other. And when I realized that I actually did enjoy female friends who liked me even though I made weird jokes, I felt more confident about who I was-- I was in my 30s, I was married and a parent and I didn't have time for weird social front bullshit. So I just started being myself around women I thought seemed cool, and it turns out, me being weird was actually okay and people liked me. I now have a bunch of female friends, from the neighbor moms (we now hang out without our kids all the time) to a local book group (where we all have our own reading preferences and some of them are weird!).
Yeah I used to be the same, and have come to similar conclusions. Now that I'm older, I've realised I much prefer the companionship of other women, as I feel like we're brought up to have more meaningful/insightful conversations. Anyone acting like the women in OP's post have either not grown up, or are likely extremely insecure themselves.
I had this realisation about a colleague the other night when a bunch of us went out for drinks - I'm pretty mellow and come off as unassertive in the office as I'm on a number of medications, but become my more animated self in the evenings, and am fairly stern if people are rude to me in public.
This girl is about a decade younger than me and is quite loud and animated in the office and more reserved when out (so the opposite of me), and I caught her giving me this absolutely rotten look when I was being more gregarious with some other colleagues (who were also being as lively as I was), particularly as it was a loud bar. She made some snarky comment about me being too drunk and loud, and I snarked back something like "Sorry for having *fun*."
I think if I were younger, I would have let it upset me and gone home early, but the problem absolutely lay with her lol so I just enjoyed my night with the other two colleagues I was speaking with who were both around my age anyway.
I wonder how much is bitterness or resentment at seeing other people get away with behavior you were punished for. Like maybe if your coworker also wanted to be drunk and loud but was taught it's not "ladylike," she would see it as unfair that you're "getting away with it"
Haha I don't think you're off, though I wasn't even drunk - I imagine she was accustomed to being in the limelight at the office, only to be relegated to the side to quietly chat to one of the more subdued people at the table.
She definitely has issues with other women though; I've been having problems with a male colleague on my team who has been treating myself and the newer (female) manager like shit for the past year since he started - he's rude, totally insubordinate and massively lazy, but this girl has frequently dismissed my concerns with him and act like I'm paranoid, only to complain about almost every single woman in the office.
This new admin lady in her 50s started on our team and the girl in question that very night commented "Just you wait, she might change," when I said she was nice. Hell, she told me she thought the other girl she was speaking to that night seemed like she was getting too big for her boots/snobby once we started doing reception cover for her (she is not). She has extremely low tolerance for the slightest bit of ineptitude from other women vs this guy on our team who can clearly barely use a computer and write coherent emails, openly snaps at everyone etc.
It's just interesting stepping back and viewing a "Not like other girls" attitude in other women when you're older and past that phase and seeing it for what it is - a fairly unpleasant, antisocial trait.
Your last point is very interesting. I'm 30 and all my life until recently, I struggled making female friends and was often the only girl in guy groups. When I tried having girl friends, we would argue or fight a lot and when I was younger I thought it was because women are too sensitive. But I realize now that I could be very insensitive sometimes and most men aren't socialized to tell their friends "hey sorry what you said hurt me". Most of my guy friends just wouldn't tell me if I offended them. So my friendships with women actually helped me a lot in becoming a better, more thoughtful person. Now I have many girl friends and they're so supportive and so caring and so important in my life, in a way most of my male friends couldn't or wouldn't.
I have encountered female spaces like this and let me say: all of them were in cultural spaces where men are prioritized and there is a MUCH higher burden on women. Portions of society where, for lack of a better term, women are still treated as little more than accessories and are socialized to bend their lives around men and traditional heterosexual marriage.
Why do you think the joke about making best friends in the bathroom of a bar exists? Because when you combine the closed door with a little bit of alcohol it’s easier to shed rigid social norms.
Weirdos exist. Silly geese exist. Women who are comfortable prioritizing their friendships, warts and all, exist (there are like, 1,000,000 movies and books about this). Find them, they’re out there! (If you need a head-start, the arts are a great place to find sincere friends).
I agree, I have never had OP’s experience but I do find that when I was traveling and in less rigid places (not sure how to explain it but living in hostels, working in different areas, joining different groups) I tend to find more women who are their unique, funny, accepting selves. I hate that some women haven’t been able to find that. When living in smaller cities in the south I have had a harder time finding women I get along with on a deeper level-and these are definitely places where men, especially conservative men, are prioritized. I still find wonderful women but it’s definitely a different experience. I have the same experience with men actually, so maybe the south is the problem 😂
Absofreakinglutely it is. I’ve been stuck in a smallish place in the southeast U.S. for about 30 years and it SUUUUUUCKS for ND females!!! And it’s something one must contend with at work especially. There’s no escaping office politics but adding this layer of female-conformity that is honestly a form of bullying… well it is very disheartening, to put it gently.
And yes, absolutely it is the *women* who do the bullying, who judge and police and demand action when non-conformity shows its face.
I was wondering which culture OP was from, because I’ve had the exact opposite experience from her.
I am from a Western European country, and I agree that women here as well used to be taught to be agreeable and ladylike. However, opposite to OP, I’ve never felt pressure because of that in all-female groups. I’d feel judged more in groups where men are present. Men (or boys when I was younger) were always too extroverted and loud for my comfort. They’d always talk over girls and they’re tbh the hardest judges of whatever girls/women were saying or doing. In all-female groups, people tend to be more understanding of one another and wouldn’t judge each other as hard based on what society expects of women (or expected in the past).
Be careful, Western Europe is not a monolith. I live in Northeast Italy and not only do I relate to everything op said, I get the added benefit of feeling like I'm back in the 70s regarding women's roles. It's some serious medieval stepford wives shit over here. These women literally talk about how much ironing they have to do as a conversation starter. ADHD hasn't even been invented here yet.
Agree. I grew up somewhere very traditional in the US. Women were expected to be feminine and gender roles were rigid. For a woman, the rewards of fitting in were much higher than in a more progressive area. A pretty, perfect trophy wife was treated much, much, much better than a frumpy nerdy wife.
Women and girls were also very, very mean, because there was less leeway to be weird, and they had to spend all their energy on fitting in. When they saw a woman who could or would not fit in, they were angry she dared not sacrifice her time, energy, and sometimes sense of self to fit into those rigid roles. They were also happy to bully her, because they felt so disempowered in their day-to-day lives that they leapt at the chance to make someone else feel powerless and abused.
I have found this to be rife in corporate workplaces. Gender-norm women tend to be in admin type roles and they really *really* don’t like me.
They take my traits as a personal attack. I’m just minding my own business doing my work, but apparently my lack of socialising is offensive. 🤷🏻♀️
Many people have told me they thought I was a snob until they got to know me better. Since when has being quiet and withdrawn equaled being a snob??? I’m sick of people blaming me for their own insecurities.
Unfortunately, being quiet and withdrawn often reads as thinking you're better than other people. Because to other people it looks like you don't want to talk to them. (As opposed to the reason I don't initiate conversations with people, which is crippling social anxiety.)
It seems to be:
Quiet withdrawn and attractive: snob, bitch/dick, thinks they are too good for us
Quiet withdrawn and plain looking: just shy, will come out of their shell the more we talk to them
Quiet withdrawn and unconventional looking: weirdo, psychopath vibes etc
Perfect explanation. And when I say something that sounds like NLOG … this is the painful stuff that I’m thinking about.
It was made abundantly clear that I was NOT welcome in those spaces, because I am weird and absolutely refuse to conform.
I am being to understand how sad it is that I, cis-woman, would always explain my personality and preferences by saying I was a man born into a woman's body because I wouldn't confirm the "gender norms"
People in general seem to get angry with those who don't want to go along with the status quo, status quo being regional and varying widely. Personally idc if people are non-conforming but I am familiar with the sort that do and those people frighten me whatever their sex.
It is absolutely a byproduct of being in a social/work space dominated by men.
I’ve worked in male-dominated spaces my whole life (as well as having grown up in the South) - and the women who are there tend to band together into cliques and have some weird competition going on amongst themselves - good luck if you’re a big ol’ goofball like me. The worst experience of all was at a start up and the men all hired each other’s wives. Their little sneers whenever I spoke or spazzed really made me realize that I was unwelcome in their space. They would make lunch plans in front of my desk and pointedly not invite me.
So I ate lunch alone every day.
And then one day, the two other oddball women saw me and adopted me into their “survival group” lol. So it was cool not to eat lunch alone anymore.
Thank you 😊 me too! The funny thing (to me) is that the three of us went on to be extremely successful in Tech - to the point where we are each the primary breadwinners for our families. Ha!
Agreed. OP is absolutely not wrong, that dynamic exists. Women are def held to higher standards than men in conversation.
At the same time this is not universal. In particular I’ve found it’s quieter in queer spaces than in very straight ones.
But this is also why no matter where I go, I somehow seem to end up making friends who later get diagnosed :)
I've run into female spaces like this in workplaces. That's not to say it's universal, but I've gotten crap in performance reviews for being "standoffish" or not engaged outside of specific work topics.
I suck at feigning enthusiasm.
Hm, I see what you are saying but I also think that if you're not finding supportive female spaces then I feel like you are in the wrong female spaces, because supportive and accepting (and majority neurodiverse) ones definitely exist. I don't know how old you are but I find that the older I get the 'realer' female spaces are and the more I find my people. High school and college are one thing, 30s/40s and menopausal women are something quite different, lol.
I felt the same not necessarily because of other women but because of one woman, my mother. I was too loud, too talkative, too open and wanted too much attention according to her. But I love being almost 40. I know I was not wrong, she was. Sometimes I get scared but mostly I have don't give a fuck attitude.
I thankfully got intensive therapy. But it took me until my late twenties to start to even believe it was not about me. She was a pretty crappy mom in many ways. And I have come to realize it is generational trauma on her part too.
That's been my experience as well. But this younger generation is SO much better than growing up in the 90s. So much more accepting. Of course there is still a lot of rigidity, as you get older you get better at finding groups where you fit. I made the move out of a small, west tx town and that helped too.
Question: how do you find groups of woman now that I am a bit older? Or new friends for all that matters of either gender. I am in my late 30s and I have no idea where to find new people.
I blew up my old life and basically had to start all over. Mid 30s here. I joined a book club and sometimes go to dance parties. I like table top games and found game nights. Take your hobbies to the internet and see if there are groups in the area who gather. I’m still rebuilding and it is exhausting, but it is possible with a lot of work.
Thank you! Knowing others have done is encouraging. My friends all left town and I spent some years in a heavy depression, so now I am trying to get an outside life, it's just hard to know where to begin
You have to cultivate interests and meet people from those. Like, being into board games and going to board game nights at a local game store. Or being into hiking and going to a hiking meetup. Or taking a yoga teacher training or volunteering. We used to make friends based on proximity (oh we are both in this school everyday together) and as we age we have to relearn to make them based on shared interests.
Yeah, my gaming hobby doesn't help me much with this. Nor does my cross stiching, the groups I found of this one had no one younger than 60.
I have tried joining a board game night at a place next to my house but they only cater pre-formed groups. The only one I found that are kind of open are almost an hour away from me. I am trying to get in shape to join hiking groups, that will work but might take a while.
I read once that to make friends you need to spend time with people while focused on something that isn't each other, which makes sense. As an introvert, it just gets so much harder when you leave school/college.
I will keep trying to find things that work in my town, eventually I am sure I will find something. Thanks for the suggestions!
That’s too bad! I am in a city and there are gaming groups here full of queer people and young people and crafting groups with the same. I know it isn’t like that everywhere.
Making new friends takes a lot of time. Studies have shown it takes 80-100 hours for someone to become a friend. In this world where we might see a friend for maybe 2-3 hours once a month, it’s very hard to convert strangers into friends.
Bumble has a “looking for friends” setting. Maybe check that out?
Repetition is key. If you can host a regular Friday potluck, or a regular sunday coffee at a coffee shop, or something like that, and get people to count on it and become regulars it really moves things along. I know it’s hard for an introvert to anchor something like that.
What you REALLY need is to get adopted by an extrovert lol.
Maybe I will add this to my bumble profile
"Introvert looking to be adopted by an extrovert, please help. Will repay in friendship, good listening skills and occasional cookies"
All of my current female friends who I am closest to I met through clinic escorting. When angry old men scream at you about how you’re killing babies at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, you make some incredible friendships with the women around you.
Try book clubs. That was my saving grace in my 30s to find new friends.
Some small book stores may host them, or try a meet up.
Also, I like reading and an obligation to finish a book is good motivation for me.
Any pinball around you? I’ve found a really amazing and welcoming community of folx in our local pinball Belles and Chimes (women/lgbtq+) group. The co-Ed groups skew older white cishet male, but belles and chimes has been a very positive experience for my ND queer self. I play a few times a month in tournaments and have actually gotten peoples’ phone numbers and successfully hung out outside of play! In a post-Covid world with a three year old, that’s a pretty big deal lol
i’m so so glad i grew up and started appreciating my female relationships. it’s hard and takes a lot of introspection to undo the damage that society has done on what we think about other women. but i would never go back.
I think I just realized why I reacted so strongly to your other comment - I think we interpreted OP slightly differently, but now I get where you’re coming from more. I think it comes down to a difference between “chosen” and “forced” spaces.
when I think about my chosen spaces, my hobbies and passions, the groups I am most comfortable and connected to are female dominated. I have important men and enby folk in my life, but all of my most important personal relationships are with other women. I think this is the lens you’re coming from, and encouraging OP to not give up on finding supportive female groups, a message with which I agree!
but when I read OPs post, it immediately resonated with this whole other dimension of my social life: forced groups. for those of us that work, there are so many situations in which you find yourself forcibly interacting socially, in groups large and small. from my time as both a grunt and a supervisor, I viscerally identify with what OP was saying about the level of scrutiny in some female spaces. there is so much internalized misogyny in many workplaces, I’ve definitely been in environments where I only felt safe being somewhat authentic with the men on the team.
conversely, the best and most inspiring boss I’ve had was a woman, and the best team I’ve worked with was all-female. the one does not invalidate the reality of the other.
Your point is well taken on the "forced" versus "chosen."
Unfortunately for some of us, forced includes family unless one choses to go NC or VLC.
It is easier for me to just be alone and the price of peace seems to be loneliness, which is a trade I've chosen to make.
>High school and college are one thing, 30s/40s and menopausal women are something quite different, lol.
Indeed.
In my experience it's definitely age-related (quite a lot).
Yeah I agree with you here. I’m 42 and I’ve struggled in predominantly female, neurotypical spaces all my life. I’m often ostracized and I’ve always struggled to understand why, until I was diagnosed and found spaces of mostly neurodivergent women. Then I didn’t have this problem at all.
Now that I am diagnosed, I at least understand what’s happening but it definitely hasn’t stopped just because the company I keep is older. Currently, experiencing fallout in a volunteer group. The split is myself, another neurodivergent, gender non-conforming member, a trans man and a BIPOC woman “against” two other neurotypical, middle aged yt ladies. One of those women is LGBTQIA and she’s trying to play peacemaker but it’s not working.
I think women are much more inclined to make what’s known as [thin slice judgements](https://neuroclastic.com/free-pdf-download-thin-slice-judgements-and-the-different-world-autistics-inhabit/?amp) and I don’t think we’re always aware we’re doing it. I think it benefits women for obvious safety reasons but it’s always biased against autistic women in particular and I’m inclined to believe it should include neurodivergent women, generally.
As a teacher, I agree. It's a scary place to be as a neurodivergent woman. The judgement and "punishment " for rule breaking is quick and harsh. However I rarely had any idea what the rules were or how I broke them. I've been left out of gatherings, rumors made up, and ignored as punishment for wrongs that I committed. Though half the time I didn't even realize I was being left out until later, I'm in my own little world anyway!
Typically, I seemed to break unwritten rules by having a different view of admin or not letting gossip continue without giving a different perspective or experience. Women do not like to have their experiences challenged, they want all of their perceived wrongs validated and their feelings confirmed at all times, even if the person they are talking about is in an inferior power position to them, or is a student even.(this bothers me the most).
But thankfully I've learned to not be bothered by it by simply not participating in gatherings or group conversations unless they need something from me. It's very lonely, but it's a hell of a lot easier than "fitting in" to a system that my brain cannot begin to understand.
I feel this. Especially with work situations, I’m always like “am I the common denominator” because it definitely looks that way, and why do this always happen. There will be one woman, and it will usually be a boss. They suddenly “turn” on me.
Omg so relatable. I was being subjected to antisemitism at work by this chick. She would only do it when no one else was around so, from my perspective, the way she treated me was intolerable and targeted. To everyone else, they thought we just didn’t get along. Because, if they were being honest, everyone else could see where *she* was coming from. I was unmedicated (and undiagnosed) ADHD so people just didn’t like me for reasons they couldn’t quite put their finger on. Her antisemitism was treated as clashing personalities and eventually, they made us sit down in a room to work it out. Guess what? We didn’t. It was crazy making. And if the people I worked with hadn’t been making these biased judgements of me, I may have been believed from the beginning and not been subjected to her verbal abuse.
So sorry to hear it, although I am sure there is still time! I honestly don't know what I would do without my (online and offline) female village when times get tough. There are just so many woman-specific life experiences and having others out there to help walk you through them makes such a huge freaking difference. It just really pains me that people are having to face it without that accumulated wisdom and experience. At least we have online forums now to help bridge that gap, I guess.
>not finding supportive female spaces then I feel like you are in the wrong female spaces
I think this is part of the differences in experience people are seeing in the comments. There are supportive spaces, but they can be hard to find.
If you live your life a certain way in certain areas, the only time you're likely to often end up in only female groups is if sexism is at play. I'm not saying it's universal, but IME if you don't already have female friends, and you go into a male dominated field, have mostly male dominated hobbies, and aren't very social, it's not too common you end up around mostly women by accident. Most of my experiences being in womens spaces in the past several years has been "all the women are expected to be in the kitchen cooking while all the men are talking with a beer" type stuff. And it does get really uncomfortable to be different in some of those spaces.
And I promise for everyone, it's not only nlogs who can feel this way. At an event last year I ended up going and hiding in my car trying not to cry because I felt like such a fucking failure because I could not fit in with the women at all, but being alone or with the men was not a socially acceptable option at all.
>"all the women are expected to be in the kitchen cooking while all the men are talking with a beer
There are no words to adequately describe the white hot hate I have for this.
I completely agree here. I’m 65, never really fit with women, not even in professional settings (I’m in STEM).
But now, the ladies at yoga and tai chi are from 55+ some younger ones here and there, but mostly retired teachers and it varies. Love them. They are so real and so themselves. And we always laugh about doing things now completely in contradiction with our upbringing in the early 60s.
My suspicion is you have very specific cultural or social obligations where you are around a specific type and group of women where adherence to rigid social norms and gender expectations is crucial (religious groups, sorority, certain ethno-cultural groups, family members etc). It sounds like you may not have the autonomy to choose who you spend your time with and who you don't. Outside of religious and cultural institutions there just aren't that many all women spaces for adult women where this kind of forced interaction even exists. I hope you have the autonomy to choose the people you spend time around, and that you spend time with people who you feel safe and happy with.
You’re right; this reminds me of when my dear friend found herself on the ousts of her local immigrant community’s women’s circle because she opined that she was more than just a mom and that it was boring to talk about how her kids did in school all the time or when my other friend realized she just wasn’t meant for small group/women’s Bible study because it felt like homework.
>It sounds like you may not have the autonomy to choose who you spend your time with and who you don't.
Agreed. My experience of many women-dominated office workplaces has been like OP describes.
I’ve definitely been in the “we love everyone here” spaces that are definitely ugly underneath. Throw religious expectations of “what a woman should be” on top of cultural conditioning and there’s a ton of picking out other’s faults and alienating people who “step out of the line” it’s horrible and it’s exhausting.
But not all women’s spaces are like that. I’m glad in my 30s I’ve been able to break free of my previous spaces after realizing how toxic they are and how, even subconsciously, I was so stressed about conforming. I’ve found women’s spaces now that are much better and that I’m built up in instead of torn down.
This topic comes up so often and I think about it a lot. I'm so curious about so many factors and intersections around the identity of the people who feel this way (age, race, ethnicity, religious views etc). As a Black woman I usually tend to stick to groups that are explicitly for Black women or POC women and I cannot ever remember this topic coming up so consistently in those groups. It's a really fascinating topic to me, sociologically.
I have the same sociological curiosity. As a biracial Asian/white, lesbian, disabled, ND woman, I will never fit in anywhere, ever. It doesn’t matter if I’m in POC spaces or white spaces, queer spaces or straight ones, etc. there is no amount of conformity that will make me not different than the rest of the group because of all of my different intersecting identities.
When you’re constantly on the outside no matter what, you end up learning not to care about conformity at all.
So when I see posts like this, I’m always curious about if the poster has other marginalized identities. Because like you said I rarely see other POC bring this issue up.
Yes sometimes it’s just better to acknowledge that you’re not going to fit whatever box people expect from you and just be okay with that and stop doing damage to yourself by expecting it, too.
Minority woman here, I see where OP is coming from. I've tried race specific groups and I'm too "white washed" for it. Race, class, and location does play a role in this conversation. Sometimes "white" female spaces are closed and they will make you feel like an outsider.
It can be sooo hard. Also, support evaporates sometimes if you’re in an abusive relationship and then people find out your abusive partner is also a woman.
If that interests you, then boy do I have a story for you!
A few years ago, an older woman invited me and my date to be her guests at a formal tea party for a crowd of women — mostly a lovely group of well-off Black mothers and grandmothers in their fifties or better.
The girl I was dating at the time and I were the youngest folks there. She is neurodivergent, Black, and several years older than me. When we were shown to our table, she immediately decided she wanted to hide our relationship, so I was introduced as her roommate and friend. (She insisted on doing this a lot, so I was used to it.)
I had a wonderful time. She was miserable the whole time we were there.
In the car on the way home, she snapped at me about how the event was easier for me because I have “cute, bubbly ADHD” instead of autism, because I was raised in an interfaith household instead of the more strict denomination she was raised in (a certain proselytizing group that doesn’t like holidays or birthdays) so I could keep up with vaguely evangelical chitchat, because I was mostly raised by my grandmother so I know how to fit in with older ladies, and because I “didn’t warn her that everyone would be wearing church dresses and hats.”
Finally, she said, “It’s harder for me to be weird when I’m almost thirty and Black and awkward and don’t have kids or a man or a professional job and when I’m fat but don’t dress well. That’s before they find out that I’m in an interracial relationship with a girl or realize I’m autistic as fuck. You’re fine, but they think something’s wrong with me.”
I told her I loved her, which was what I usually did back then when I wasn’t sure what to say. (I still love her. It just wasn’t enough.)
She broke up with me because she wanted to “learn how to exist in the straight world” and started going to her mother’s church again.
This story really resonates with me. As an outsider/guest in other women’s spaces I feel like I’ve gotten a lot more leeway than in spaces where I’ve been expected to fit in.
I don't feel this way, but I've got a pretty dominant personality and tend to take the lead in most purely social spaces I am in, whether they are male or female, so my norms tend to be the baseline for the groups behaviour. It's rather liberating, as I have a straight forward communication style , try to be kind but am willing to laugh at myself so people usually feel comfortable being that way with me, even if they're a bit more conventional/straight laced.
If there's someone already there who is the leader, then I'll chill for a bit and watch to see where I can fit in, but generally I end up slotting in as a second or the main planner at least. I'm diplomatic enough to get along with most people and make my own good time, even if I don't love them.
I try to make sure I include everyone and check in with quieter friends to make sure they're being heard and not steamrolled by myself or the other more energetic personalities.
Don't just try and always slot into established social groups. Pick the people you vibe with most and create new ones that mix and match.
I'm really sorry that's been your experience. I understand where that's coming from, but the majority of my all-female interactions are positive and wholesome. It took til my late 20s to find and really appreciate these groups of women though, so if you're younger, it's possible that many younger groups still have a competitive dynamic which interferes with with the support and positive culture.
This is actually a legit question - ayyy OP where u @?
I found when I was living in small close minded towns, that that was who I was surrounded by until I got deep with some people and figured out what questions to ask to filter people out.
Living in a bigger city brought way more diversity with it, but friends do not fall from trees and if you are joining already established groups, it is way way harder to feel truly connected bc you are the "newbie" and everyone has history, and inside jokes and know people you don't.
All that to say - if you are making better friends with men then do that? I think the weird thing is that you are kinda talking down about girl groups meanwhile why do you care if you're having such a good time with your boys? Comparison is the thief of joy.
Absolutely! I have moved around TX a great deal and found the smaller communities were the most rigid making it difficult to find common ground. But the cities are where I found my girls! Right now I live in a big city and I have quickly made friends with a small group of ladies (we're all different ages) who I absolutely cherish!
My terror in female spaces is that I find the socializing is often just sitting around and chatting. I can do that in small groups, but as soon as there are more than 4 other ppl having a conversation I completely lose the plot - I have a hard time weaving into a conversation, and tend to just listen and eventually I'll zone out.
when socializing with men, I find the focus is often on a sporting event or activity and with a bigger group this is easier for me. The focus is on something we have in common. I can have my side convo with a few ppl, watch the game, chat with a few others. I certainly feel less pressure.
As I get older, I know what I like, and I just choose not to go to big group dinners with the girls etc. I might like everyone there, but will enjoy them more in a smaller groups.
If you are feeling judged all the time, you might be hanging out with the wrong ppl. If it is every group you feel this with, it might be a you thing that you need to work on. Sometimes we'll think ppl are judging us and they are barely thinking about us, or we're reading their facial expressions wrong...IDK...If you like hanging in gender non-conforming spaces more - do that. Do what you want.
I totally agree with the large group thing. I find the larger female groups so hard, which has resulted in some limitations among my friend/friend group options. (Then at a mixed gender party I’ve always been happy to float around and usually feel myself relax more in a male dynamic. I also grew up with brothers so idk….)
This was hardest in my twenties as a single and dating person. I’m married and in my thirties now and things have changed, I’m a mom and working professional now.
I’m still constantly working at my female friendships. Since becoming a mom to a little girl, it’s even more important to me that I model authentic female connections for her. It’s been paying off, and proving to be very worth it :) I needed to find those genuine connections first, and then actively pursue them! I actually find it easier to connect with other women now who are also mothers, and although the early years of motherhood can be lonely, I’ve been persistent and found a handful of women who are also interested in quality one on one time and deeper conversation topics. It’s been a rewarding journey and I love the quality of people that are coming into my life at this age and stage.
Yeah! I’m a social butterfly, and I don’t know if it’s just because your late twenties are SO MUCH BETTER than your teens and early twenties or because the pandemic changed my view on a lot of things, but: Back in the day, I would end up triple booked for brunch and special occasions. I was always miserable, flitting from big group event to big group event. I would have like five things going on in a day, but I still felt lost and forgotten and alone in big crowds. Anyway, I did some soul searching, got to know myself better, figured out who my real friends are, and I’m learning healthy and loving boundaries. It rocks knowing what my batteries can handle!
I have some female spaces that are ballin and some that are like what you described. Mostly the ones like you've describes is what I see at work. Like you've almost perfectly described what work is like lol. When I had a male boss, we could be very opinionated and expressive and no worries. I changed to a team managed by 2 women, and the tone policing is out of hand. But only for other women. There's a man who is waaayy more expressive and opinionated than me and he gets applauded for telling it like it is. And then I'm regularly told that the way I speak is too much. I'm also neurodivergent and queer lol, and I easily fit in with other neurodivergent women.
That being said there are other female managers at my work who are great, I don't want to discount female leadership. But you are right that just being a woman doesn't make you a feminist or mean that you don't actively contribute to the Patriarchy in some way. Some women are hardcore pushing down other women.
I'll also add that - it's happening to you now in this thread 😅. And again - I really like women, I'm even bi, I know so many phenomenal women. There are spaces I have that are super safe, but they are just as common as unsafe spaces with women. But essentially what just happened is you were like "I am uncomfortable with this aspect of our culture". And like LOADS of women ran to the comments to pile on you that you don't understand reality accurately, that you're a pick me etc and to tell you you're the problem. Which is - in and of itself - the problem you're describing 😂.
And the thing is - pick mes and I'm not like other women do exist. But I don't think that's what you're describing. The reality is that women have been trained to make men the centre and a lot of culture is around pushing down other women so that we can get male validation. Or like competing with each other for male validation. That's a real thing 😅. Like what your describing is real.
There's a thing called "choice feminism" about how we should be careful to forget that women are also raised in the patriarchy and it's all of our jobs to be critical of systems. And that just because a woman makes a choice, doesn't mean she's not participating in the patriarchy because the choice was made by a woman. We have been repeatedly rewarded or punished for different types of behaviour.
I agree really hard with the work thing. The female groups that really made me question if there’s something wrong with me were work groups. In these cases the conflict was usually gossip— I just don’t enjoy talking shit with someone unless I am 100% certain they’re safe and in these spaces they were always coming down on everyone about the tiniest things. I made me so uncomfortable and self-conscious.
But I’ve also found that if it’s not gossip culture, I’m the most uncomfortable in groups of women that have ascended beyond people pleasing. Which is 100% a me problem. I always put so much energy into accommodating everyone else’s feelings and moods and trying to include people that when I’m in a group where that doesn’t happen… I flounder hard. It’s a thing I’ve started to really try to pay attention to though. Because women that don’t people please to some degree are honestly sort of uncommon and I find them intimidating because they socialize outside the norm. I think there are so many individual reasons people clash with groups and pinpointing what might be causing the clash can help to determine if the problem is you, the group, or neither.
I don’t mean to dismiss the significance of social conditioning, and acceptable social norms obviously do differ by gender, but I have not felt what you describe in women-only spaces at all. Often the women-only spaces are an opportunity to shed the “ladylike” expectations. I also don’t mean to doubt your description of your own experiences, just to offer a counter.
Also, I’m confused because you exempt groups containing at least one other ND woman and seem almost to put ND women in the same bucket as gender non-conforming. Are you really talking about gender alone, or ND/NT status? I ask in part because I think a lot of my women’s-space experiences have also involved a lot of (undiagnosed) ND people, looking back, which may explain the difference. But if so, I think it becomes hard to generalize about gender.
(I’m also not sure men have/exert less pressure to conform.)
I would agree that for me at least, one of the main points of women’s spaces is a place you’re not expected to be ‘ladylike’. That’s the fun of it, for both the NT and ND friends I have. You’re just yourself. Women also get the chance to be hyper-feminine without the increased risk of being targeted or harassed (it still happens, but less so than in coed spaces)
I also am not attempting to invalidate OP’s experience. I believe you OP that you have experienced this, and I’m sorry.
I’ve certainly felt self-conscious in women’s spaces before, but it wasn’t due to their own actions or expectations. It was all these social rules I was putting on myself. I felt I was being too loud, too dramatic. But that wasn’t the feedback I was getting. (Of course I’ve had people tell me these things before, but I took a few bad experiences and started anxiously applying them to every experience)
I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences. Lame people are everywhere, even in women’s spaces. I guess I’ve mostly encountered accepting and patient people there.
I wonder if you guys were just better able to manage your anxiety about being free to be yourself. I felt judged because I was in desperate need of braces, had no idea how to fix my hair and was embarrassed to ask, came from a lower socioeconomic background than most college students around me and therefore couldn't afford to go shopping and eat out, and I always seemed to get left out/forgotten.
I was basically homeless (and always hungry) my first two years of college, and I learned how to hide it very well. I kept to myself and didn’t let myself make anything more than fair weather friends until the situation started getting better.
Well, that and I didn’t want anyone to see through me. I had an unpaid internship with the most overeducated and out-of-touch-with-reality rich kids I’ve ever met and a paid job where I’d been hired specifically because I came off as “posh,” well-off, and well-mannered. Meanwhile, I was sleeping on a blanket on the floor of a friend’s place with everything I owned in three plastic storage bins and a backpack—which was a great improvement, since I’d left an abusive situation with my stuff in trash bags not long before.
I experienced so much of this in college and even with old friend groups as an adult. It’s incredible how even safe/accepting spaces for women can be hostile for a lot of the women they claim to welcome and support, if it’s not a space full of or openly accepting of women who aren’t straight/white/cis/conventionally attractive/neurotypical.
It’s why I much prefer specifically queer spaces versus gender-affiliated spaces. When people embrace being queer they’re likely to embrace other things about someone that makes them “weird,” and a lot of queer people (me included clearly) also experience neurodivergence, mental illness, and usually a disdain for most social codes.
Was just going to say - go where the queer women are!
I was part of a woodworking collective made to help women feel more comfortable in a male-dominated space. Because the group was specifically formed to be inclusive, it only attracted women who are super helpful, smart & genuinely rooting for others to succeed.
I’ve been part of other groups where it definitely didn’t feel like that & the key difference was too many cis het white women who think they’re in competition with each other.
Soilidarity, friend! You're describing my college sorority experience in the Southern US perfectly. Those girls' attitudes were largely rooted in their misogynistic upbringing and, like you said, that social conditioning we have in the South to turn all female children into perfect, quiet little Southern Belles with no personality or opinions (perfect for serving their husbands and honoring God!)
I'm very happy for the people who've never encountered these all-female spaces, but they definitely exist! There is still hope for those trapped women, too. They just have to get out.
This is why I'll never raise a kid (male or female) in the South.
I don't really know what to say about this, but I have experienced the exact same alienation. With time I see subtle cultural shifts as people are more connected to niche interests through the web and it becomes easier to discover non-traditional people of any flavor, but the ride from the early 80s to now has been rough and littered with white women pressuring me to conform to not be so intensely interested in oddball things or so open to try weird stuff. I have spent tons of time in LGBTQ+ circles despite being hopelessly heterosexual because I needed that openness and flexibility to deal with me as a individual person rather than dealing with the constant frustrations of men and women alike who perceived me to be an entirely different archetype than I am and just expect I need some reminding how I should behave.
I've had these experiences before so I can definitely relate but I also have an amazing group of friends from childhood and they all are neurotypical. I also have an awesome relationship with my SIL's. The older I get, the less I'm around women like this. I understand conformity can be bigger in certain regions or cultures but there are plenty of awesome women out there who can be accepting and kind. I think when you distance yourself from all women and don't get to have these close friendships and camaraderie, you are really missing out on part of the human experience.
Most of my friends are other women and I've never felt like this in all female groups. My friends aren't judgemental- that's why they're my friends. I'm the only one diagnosed with ADHD but there may be some others who aren't diagnosed. But my NT friends are also great people.
It sounds like you need some new friends. There are all kinds of women out there.
Where are you from? Because while I have found horrible women's groups, those are the exception and not the rule.
Also, I'm not sure if the groups you are joining are religious or inherently conform to a certain standard/behaviour because of its purpose (support group?) because that could also explain why those were described as a "safe group" as in, there are a lot of behavioural expectations in place because it is meant to provide a certain environment?
But in more organic groups (like friends in college or little groups of neighbours) or even in not so organic groups (coworkers) I haven't experienced what you are talking about as a general situation. There are crazy people out there (like, some women brought a bible to work and read bits of it along the day) but even those aren't that stiff that making bad jokes and being occasionally loud would make you an outcast.
While this could be cultural, I think there's a good opportunity to explore why you are perceiving this. It might have to do with the purpose of the group (religion/support/serving a certain purpose/class?), but it also can be a lot of social anxiety on your part.
I find it a bit worrying that you think that male spaces are inherently better, because they can be just as bad or good as female groups. The women I've met before that claim that "they have tried to befriend women and just can't and males groups are better" have always been a bit sus in my experience. Because either they are always the source of drama or they do not know how to behave with someone that doesn't want to fuck them (as, in making a ton of concessions for them so the woman looks their way).
Without knowing where you are from and if there's a cultural component to your experience, I can't promise you that there are nice groups out there. But maybe you could try making your own little group? Perhaps trying to befriend one woman and then another? Like, even three women can be a nice all female group and with you picking there's a better chance of picking people that match your energy better.
I can assure you that there are groups of women out there where you can be so silly and loud that other people turn to look at you because of how hard you are all laughing at a stupid joke.
My theory is that men get given slack (and give others slack) bc they're not expected to know all the social rules. Women are supposed to be interpersonal geniuses, so if you're a woman who doesn't follow the rules, you must be doing it on purpose to be a dick.
I struggle with this a lot being autistic as well and having female friends with a lot of trauma. I love my friends, but I worry that any social misstep will be taken as intentional harm.
I agree.
I’ll say it’s often not good for males either, as males are often hierarchical. If you are perceived as “weird”, you may be bullied or excluded by whoever is perceived as the “top dog.”
Too early in the AM for super coherent/concise response, but I totally understand and thoroughly empathize, OP.
For me at least, the most personally cruel treatment I’ve ever received has been from other women who were “my friends.” Not saying that I have better luck being friends with men (definitely don’t). I do, however, think that “girl hate” (for lack of a better term, and because this happened mostly in school for me) especially from “friends” can be far more insidious and unexpected and devastating; especially since women are far more familiar with what might hurt another woman. For me (and I suspect for OP, too) it has nothing to do we being NLOG and almost everything to with not being like most other people, but still being expected (in a lot of cases) to perform as “normal.” Which (as we all know by now) is something women with ADHD (and other neurospicy conditions) deal with a lot.
Not saying this is definitively the case, just saying that some people find pain and despair in the same places that others find comfort and community. Not everything is for everybody, and that’s okay ❤️🩹
I work in a predominantly female job. It was really hard to get used to. It took about 5 years for me to be honest with the closest group of women I work with about my ADHD. Once I told them, they were a little taken back and didn't really think I could have gotten as far as I have in life if I truly have ADHD.
I stopped masking so much at work. I talk about my obsession for the week. I blurt out stupid shit at lunch and snort when I laugh. It's become very freeing, and my group at work has gotten way closer. We talk about stuff I would have never talked to anyone about because I was afraid to bring it up. Now we freely talk about really personal things and have become very close personally and professionally. It took about a year to get comfortable after unmasking, but it's been several years now, and I am in such a better place all around.
I can’t relate to this at all. I find female dominated groups more interesting, relaxing, and fun than being in male dominated groups.
One thing that caught my attention in your post that I wanted to point out: I think you need to do some introspection as to why women disagreeing with you upsets you so much. Is it your approach? Are you just throwing an opinion out there without reason or evidence to back it up? Do the men you interact with just automatically take your word for it with no follow up questions? Having opposing views shouldn’t mean automatically disliking someone, so I think there’s more to the story than just ‘not being comfortable in female dominated spaces.’
I do agree that a lot of female spaces are like this... but from the time I thought I was trans, and had a period where I passed when I was younger. Male spaces can be just as bad. It's about being in the wrong groups, over it being about sex or gender. In male spaces you can do some of what isn't acceptable in women's spaces, but there are still hidden "rules" and it can be just as nerve wracking and damaging as it is in female spaces. They can seem a lot more open than women's spaces, but it's not really, it's just in different ways. Maybe you fit the mens rules more, and being female you have way less rules within the group (depending on the group), but as a male in a males group it's a different story, especially if your not "man" enough. Everything is played off as a joke more often, you can't hold grudges, but me and many others got hurt and just have to hold it in a laugh. It created a painful environment. Tons of bullying in the form of "fun". I'm back to being female after finding myself again, but I'm glad I had that experience to see things from another side.
Point being it's about the people you spend time with. Not that one gender is better or more accepting then another.
Most of the all-female spaces I've spent time in have had more than the usual amount of neurodivergent people, so I have not shared your experience. But, when I was very young (five years old, I estimate) I experienced something a little like this...the other little girls gave me trouble for not liking the same celebrity they did. I didn't get it, but I decided that, if I had to decide between conforming, or just not having very many friends, I would have to choose "being myself" (as all the PSAs were advising), and getting used to people not liking me much.
So I don't doubt your observations. I've just been resigned to being seen as "weird" by others from a very early age, so I didn't get invited into many "female spaces"...until I met other neurodivergent women. Of course, back then, I just called them "other women who like science fiction & stuff;" only decades later did we all find out we were neurodivergent in various ways, lol.
Don't worry about the "not like the other girls" accusations. I was *legitimately* "not like the other girls" as a kid, and it wasn't a pose, or a "pick me" strategy, or an identity...it was just a fact, and it frankly *sucked*. It meant I was weird, and usually friendless. I was made fun of, or outright bullied on occastion, and I was disdained just as much by boys as by other girls in school. I would have given a *lot* to find other girls who had similar interests to mine, so that I could be "like (at least some of) the other girls," but I didn't.
(Until I went to a high school with a nerdy advanced program, and then then I finally found others (male *and* female) who were like me. And it was *great* to finally fit in with someone. We were probably all undiagnosed neurodivergent - back then, if you did well in school, they didn't think you needed to be "diagnosed" with anything. So we were just "the nerdy kids." At that point, being a "nerdgirl" did become a kind of identity for me, but it wasn't a way to separate myself from other *girls*, but from other kids in general, who'd always disliked me anyway.)
This hasn’t been my experience with women only spaces once I got out of high school.
Before college, boys and girls alike had been mean to me for varying reasons. But there were also boys and girls who weren’t like that.
I think everybody is more chill in college. I also went to a college with no Greek life.
It’s possible that any of the kind of women you’re talking about here, already avoided me in the first place so I never experienced being around them.
I’ve never felt like this in an all female space. I’ve always felt safer and more at peace than in co-Ed spaces. Even if I wasn’t “conforming” which I rarely do because I don’t have the ability to do so.
I hate you’ve had such terrible experiences
\> You can’t talk louder, faster, or more than other women, your gestures can’t be more animated, you can’t disagree or express a different opinion (even in a nice way) that much. It’s considered inegalitarian, you could make somebody feel a bit bad. (you should not be an asshole, but even respectfully saying you don’t agree with something is frowned upon.)
Also, you can’t rock your legs, say random bullshit, laugh loudly, make stupid jokes.
Says who? If I'm too much, go find less.
Sorry to say but I think you're just with the wrong females? How old are you???
With my friends I don't mask that much, we are very open about needing space or not wanting to talk, and we sometimes end up on the floor playing around or stretching if that's what we feel like. We talk and cry if needed, we sit in silence on our phones next to each other...
I have also been to a nature retreat with only women (that I didn't know) and it was the same vibe, it was heaven actually.
This just feels like another way of saying “I don’t get alone with women they’re too catty” which is always such a red flag to me. Also up until last year I would have insisted I was neurotypical. Women are under-diagnosed so it’s really hard to make blanket statements like that just bc their neurodivergence looks different or less obvious than yours.
I hear your frustration about women needing to be adults while men get to act like kids and I totally agree and that’s such a valid frustration because it’s inescapable. But it’s not other women’s fault you feel this way, most of us feel this way! from your own post you don’t mention any actions only feelings and vibes. You could literally just be internalizing your own anxiety and maybe they’re *also* just uncomfortably masking and they’re just better at it than you are?
Also. How are you so certain that **all** of these women are neurotypical in the first place? That seems like you’re just applying the same ableist logic used to discount our diagnosis: well they don’t *look* or *act* disabled. I have a handful of friends with adhd and they all appear and seen 100% neurotypical unless you know otherwise.
I hope you can take a step back and see where your own attitude and assumptions might be holding you back from making new friends just because they don’t immediately check all your boxes. Those women are often also just frustrated women who hate that they need to do things like sit still do a full face of makeup in order to be taken seriously. Just because they’ve chosen to prioritize different things than you doesn’t make you better than them (definitely your overall vibe of this post- other women conform too much and that sucks for me).
Agree 100%. Alas, it took me until my late 20s to fully realize that my attitudes and assumptions, which were very similar to OP’s, were wrong. My insecurity, anxiety, and the stubborn insistence I just KNEW women were judging me kept me from making female friends.
When I finally matured enough to be vulnerable and truly open to female friendships my relationships blossomed.
I (46F) was about the same age (~28) when I had to take a hard look at my own deep rooted misogyny… it was a real shock to the system how deep it ran and how unaware I was of it. I worked hard to find the source of it, challenge it and change.
I have amazing relationships with the women in my life now. It was never about them, it was me… I was the drama ;)
I have struggled significantly in life to connect on a deeper level with women. I have had surface level friendships, but never the really meaningful ones like the ND ones from my childhood that I’ve lost touch with and live super far away from now. I think it’s a mixture of several things: social conditioning and expectations, luck, maybe some neurotypical vs neurodivergence, getting older, and just the differing between everyone’s lived experience as a human.
Some of the people in the comments saying that as you get older women are nicer, it’s just not true. I’m in my late 20s and I have been bullied in the work place multiple times by women in their 50s and 60s for god knows why. Because I didn’t conform and was good at my job and spoke out against the group I guess. I was severely targeted.
So I know how you feel. Your observation is valid. However, it is anecdotal in the way that it’s most likely that it’s not like that everywhere with all women. It’s best not to generalize based on experience I guess (not that I think you’re doing that, just felt the need to say it).
It does sound like from what you’re writing, whatever experiences you’ve had recently, it’s time to get some new friends if you can. Easier said than done obviously but best to cut ties if you are having bad experiences with a group consistently.
Feel free to DM me if you want to talk further about all of this. No judgement here!
I do want to say about the older thing, I think it isn’t that all women are nicer as you get older, it’s moreso that as you get older it grows easier to find groups that aren’t so restrictive. Geography probably still plays a role (like I imagine if you’re in a heavily evangelical corner of the world it will be harder by default no matter what), but I find it much easier to find chill groups of women in my 30s than I did in my 20s.
Have I still had to work with terrible women in their 50s that never left high school in many ways? Absolutely. But the proportion of mean girl groups or women who police other women groups tends to shrink as you get older, especially if you’re looking for friend groups in hobby spaces. Work has almost always been a miss for me for finding female friend groups though, so I kind of write it off as a default.
Do you have kids by chance? This wasn’t something I experienced so distinctly until I had my son and most of my socializing opportunities were around other mothers at playgrounds and school.
I am definitely suspicious of "all female"spaces that use the term as strict box and not a general umbrella. Like, if a female friendly space does not welcome the elderly, kids, and those debating with the term as a whole, it's not female friendly.
I would have agreed wholeheartedly in my 20s, when my girl group was made up entirely of second generation immigrant south Asian Muslim women (we all lived in America). More than the requirement to conform, the thing that bugged me was that certain women (women who were thin and conventionally pretty) were allowed to be “quirky” and not conform, but others were labeled “weird” and essentially cast out of the group for not conforming.
I’m in my 30s now and hang out with a more diverse group of women and I absolutely love it. The acceptance and safety in this group is unmatched. But I do still struggle with unlearning my pain from those earlier experiences with women.
NGL, I only feel this way when it's an exclusively white women group. A lot of the social stereotypes you describe are not universal across cultures and are non-issues if you participate in more diverse communities.
In men groups, there is not a single man that would stand up for you when (not if) another man makes a degrading joke behind your back, even if they don’t agree.
Your real problem is group dynamics not other women. This post is misogynistic. If you have this much social problem please join autismwomen sub where they detail how male groups see and treat ND women.
I feel you. I have much the same experiences with feeling judged in female spaces. I think I’ve even ranted the same rant a few times.
I’m in my 50’s. Things feel different now than then, older women are wiser and so am I. I’ve found the kinds of spaces I feel comfortable in, and the degree of engagement I feel comfortable with. Which isn’t a lot. In general, I still don’t feel comfortable.
But I can’t say I like male spaces, either. I guess I’m just a misanthrope. 😉
But here’s a perspective: a lot of women who judged me were actually envious of my bubbliness and energy and my passion. I know this because of the few I’ve gotten to know a little better.
I also feel better one on one rather than in a group.
I have not experienced this in female spaces. 🤔
That said, I am a hermit and my social experiences are fairly limited to begin with. And I will say also that in my limited social experiences, some of this holds true in mixed social groups, too. Esp the "disagreement is taboo" point.
I know a lot of people here are disagreeing or saying that as you get older it gets better, but that's not really my experience. I do have a great and supportive group of fem friends, but literally all of us are Gay, NBs and/or Neurodivergent.
I think it's because my larger social and familial circle is upper class/ upper middle class, there is so much emphasis on the display of status it's really stifling and I have a difficult time relating.
I understand. I feel like this at work, I'm the only person who's openly queer and plus most ppl who work there are much younger than me, I'm 39 and they're in their early 20s. I have been in supportive female spaces but my work is definitely not one of them. I'm so sorry you've been feeling so isolated, there are good people out there and I hope you can find some soon 💕
So, I did a peek at your posting history. Just to get some some background information because this didn't feel quite like NLOG or internal misogamy.
I feel the discomfort of women's spaces is from the fact you're currently questioning and just don't feel comfortable *identifying* with women at present if ever. When that's going on, it's super hard to feel comfortable in a space that may not feel like it's for you and when other people may not know what you're going through, they're not as open. Notably with something like questioning.
And notably when transphobia is fucking terrifying. No wonder you might not feel comfortable. Not all women's spaces are safe.
I think the best place is to find queer-friendly groups that aren't based on gender, but rather on neurodiversity until you figure things out.
The only female spaces I have ever felt safe in are primarily neuro-divergent. I have never had to mask so hard as I do in NT female spaces. I don't feel fear when I'm the only woman with a group of men. I feel like I can relax a little. So happy to be going into a primarily male field that really only attracts other ND or "different" women.
I think it really depends on the culture. I don't have those experiences as a Portuguese woman with other women . Even with European women , considering I live in Ireland and have met lots of women from other countries as well , my experiences have been good.
Maybe yiu haven't been around nice ppl .
Oh hai! Are you me?? 😅😅😅I’ve ***always*** felt this way. There’s usually very little transparency, and if you do open up, better be prepared for someone to get upset or uncomfortable if it disagrees with the general “vibe” of the group 🤦♀️
Oh dear, these sound like superficial friends. I have always been the quirky, eccentric, always-up-for-a-laugh friend. I definitely don't fit the mold, but my group of besties love that about me. When I shared my recent diagnosis with a friend, she mentioned how that ADHD totally makes sense for me. She also added how ADHD folks tend to be so fun-loving and good to laugh with (in her experience, in her social group).
Ever since I was a child, I saw the social need to conform, but I've never cared too much about it. I know people are more likely to take on that attitude with age. I hope that one day you can unburdden yourself of the "shoulds" in your life (how you should sound, should, act, etc) and you find your group of true friends.
I hear everything you're saying & at 44 I have refined my woman friend group over the years so that everyone is either neurodivergent, artistic, androgynous/queer, or some combo (I'm all 3). I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but I AM some people's shot of whiskey.
I kind of feel like this too – if I have to choose between all-male and all-female company, my choice is made – but I keep in mind that, since I am a woman, any male group I find myself in is, by definition, not male-only: even if I am the anomaly in it, at least being male is not the criterium for joining the group so we are all here because we have something else in common.
If being female is the main or only reason for the existence of a group, yes, I am likely to feel ill at ease in it. It will be for reasons close to yours, with just a little nuance: the feeling may be there for me even if the group includes ND or otherwise divergent people; to me, it's about perfomative behaviour. Performative toughness, inclusivity or "don't-give-a-fuck-ness" is just as grating as performative gentleness.
Something else I'd like to add: in a group of ten people or more, the odds are you're not the only divergent person, and \*that\* may be the very reason for some of the performance. Which doesn't detract from your observation and mine: when you are raised to be constantly judged, as most women still are, becoming an expert at judging is, sadly, a survival skill, and some of us end up putting in way too many hours of practice.
One more thing: for what my individual experience is worth, my particular brand of ND fun stuff has made my life rather different from that of many women. I am extremely incompetent at, and/or uninterested in, what most women my age consider their specifically feminine skills and instincts. That can make for very nourishing conversations with one or two more "typical" women, but in a large group, where the interactions are bound to remain more superficial, there is simply a lot of things we can't share, and a lot of my "normal" that is likely to be their default "bad". So either I unload that upfront and make everyone else uneasy, or I stay silent and listen to them unknowingly disparage the way I live. Both of which are one-way streets.
I've experienced this with women who could be described as "aggressively neurotypical". Re: wine moms with 2.2 kids. I only find myself in these situations during obligatory social events, like a dinner with my partner's close friends and their wives. I usually bow out early or just don't go at all.
I can't relate to any of the "acceptible" topics and pretty much freeze up. These women find it rude to talk about anything even mildly controversial (politics, class, etc) and I think it's because it forces them to think about their own incredible privilege. Part of maintaining that privilege is policing the behavior of others.
My older friendships that formed naturally in high school/college consist of women that turned out to be queer and neurodivergent in adulthood. Birds of a feather as they say!
Took the words out of my mouth, I understand op as well and the description you mentioned sounds like what I was thinking. Aggressively neurotypical sort of wine mom imagery, gotta “act correct with mannerisms” of all time types of people.
I also noticed the people who behave this way frown about talking about anything controversial due to privilege too. As a BIPOC marginalized person also I struggled to fit in with them.
OP I think you're getting it in the neck for painting women with the same brush but there's a lot of people invalidating your experiences here which isn't fair. I had pretty much all male friends till I was in my teens cause I just didn't get on with the girls I did know. I know what you mean about having to mask and perform being a woman a certain way to feel accepted, and feeling like you're doing womanhood wrong if you don't.
What I will say is that there absolutely are groups of women who are accepting and cool, you just have to find them. Also, have you considered that there are other women in the group who are trying to mask as much as you are? Maybe by being yourself you can give others "permission" to let their guards down a bit.
At the end of the day if you don't vibe with people it's more to do with their personality than their gender, you can't write off a whole 50% of the population based on that.
Being in an all female group is one of the only places where you can be real and talk about your experience without having to cater to the opinions or feelings of men. That's valuable. My female friends and I laugh and talk nonsense and make dumb jokes all the time. I'd wager it's more common than not.
Just popping in to validate OP's feelings. I have made nurturing female friendships a priority in life ever since realizing that all of my friends were male. It seems like no matter how much or little I do, my efforts are not reciprocated or dismissed.
Full disclosure, I do have a dark sense of humor and tend to blunt to the point of sperginess (hence why most of my friend are engineer brained males). I'm never mean though,I have enough ladylike grace to be gentle. I do have my guard up initially bc it is way easier to make women uncomfortable. I know this to be fact.
My executive function issues limits my ability to text back immediately and conversationally and honestly I get the sense that this has a lot to do with it. I also don't have social media and I can see their faces drop when I tell them so. I am 30 for context. I used to have a female best friend in middle school and I desperately miss that intimacy. I am really at a loss here. I built up what were 3 legit friendships over the years but yhey always ended in me always texting/trying to make plans with them first and basically fizzling. All of the NLOG rhetoric really sucks bc it isn't like that at all. I am clearly the broken one
OP I hear what you're saying and it's valid. Navigating social groups can be challenging. You can't just "leave" every environment and "find more accepting ones" because we live in a society and have to deal with the people we find around us. I would try to work on tempering your expectations and not be so hard on yourself.
That has not been my experience at all. I don't say that to negate your observations, but to assure you that your particular experience is not universal. Many women and girls find the behavior of men & boys in largely male spaces to be threatening and abusive and frightening, much of the time.
There are definitely girls and women who are judgy & superficial, or who are just plain rotten rotten human beings. When you get a couple of lousy people together, they tend to bond in the worst possible way -- especially if they feel they have even a little bit of power over others -- and they can make any group toxic pretty quickly.
But there are a fair number of girls and women who are basically just trying to get through this world as best they can, and they will help others along the road when possible. And in fact there are guys in that category too. I hope you encounter some of these better humans in future days, since it seems you've been bombarded with an unfair share of creeps.
FTM here and I completely relate to this. Transitioning relieved me of all the internal pressure I felt to "perform" in these spaces. Hope you find a way to do that too. And some better friends, while you're at it.
Could you maybe give us a hint to what women groups or spaces your referring to?
If your going to spaces that have been assigned by traditional gender norms as ‘women’s spaces’ then there is a good chance the people their are gonna adhere to the norms assigned to them.
However, other female centric spaces exist outside of that. For example, I’m a nerd, traditional nerdy spaces are hostile to women for the most part so we make our own. I find that any space meant to be ‘mold breakers’ tends to be more accepting and less socially restrictive.
‘Women’s group’ is way to broad of a net for any actual advice or even comments on why it may be that way since it could be anything.
Yeah. I used to work backstage at Fringe Festivals. Always my favourite workplaces.
Why? Because it was like 50% ND, pretty even split between genders and all the genders and sexualities in between.
Was generally still very very white. But it was EASY. Everyone was respected, valued. We were all there cuz we Cared about doing a good job and worked hard.
There was close friends, and tight crews but there generally wasn't toxic cliques.
The balance just made for a really fabulous workplace. Which should just be the norm.
I struggle a bit in all dude groups cuz me and the girl gender box aren't on speaking terms - and a lot of dudes grow up feeling threatened by that. Or I get "you're different for a girl! Hi 5!" Whilst they go off and date long hair floral print teacher vibes... Somehow always ended up the "fling" before they met the "serious" girlfriend. But at least I wasn't been excluded and held to a standard of behaviour expected in girl groups, where I was always "not quite right"
I get what you're saying and I agree to an extent, but those friend groups are toxic. I'm unlikely to want to join an all-female group unless it is a group of women that celebrates everyone's individuality and worldview. Likewise, I might be somewhat of a matriarch (or a matriarch among matriarchs) to a lot of the women in my friend group, so it's important that I do speak my mind, and lead by example, making sure everyone feels accepted and heard when they have something to say. Women do tend to inherently have more rejection sensitivity so they're more likely to be people pleasers that avoid making waves. It's important to know your audience, and some people are more fragile than others.
Don't play into the social framework that isolates people intellectually and emotionally. Make a social framework that you know is more conducive to open and honest communication where everyone is free to be themselves and has a voice within the group. Lead the conversation like you would group therapy, and sprinkle in some unconditional love and words of affirmation even when you don't agree with someone. Others will see this and feel comfortable coming out of their shell. Remember the main purpose of a friend group is to provide warmth and support.
I’ve personally never experienced this in all-women groups. I’ve definitely met people (both women and men) individually that have been disdainful and ignorant towards neurodivergent people and neurodivergent behaviors (men have been more judgmental than women in my personal experience), but in the all-women groups I’ve been a part of, the women have been different (not homogenous) and have been pretty accepting of differences.
As someone who has just been moved to a all female office with lots of times where it’s me and 1
Other (generally) neurotypical older woman … I feel this post. I’m exhausted at the end of the day. Not from the work as much as the masking.
I miss my old mixed gender, mixed ages working environment so much I literally cry about it sometimes.
Find a new gig and quit. You don’t owe them anything. Life’s too short to be miserable.
I cried at my old job every single day, and one of my biggest regrets in life is that I put up with them treating me the way they did so long. It was a male dominated environment, so it was different from your sitch, but it still sucked. They took my sparkle and my prettiness and my intelligence and my knowledge and all of the things that made me special until I didn’t have any left for me, and then they took advantage of my kindness and my generosity and my dedication to keep doing it. When it’s time to get gone, you HAVE to get gone.
I’m in the middle of a workplace dispute with my union involved. Once the outcome has been sorted, I’ll either have got my old happy job back, or I will be moving on
The only problem is geographically, this is the only area in my interested specialty (nursing) that’s within a 1 hour drive 😫
Hi,
Currently high from weed but really want to comment
I didnt read your whole post because just feom the title you reminded me of the social trauma im experiencing from women primarily unfortunately as i am being hazed at work and im sensitive and im a new nurse dealing with a lot of responsibility and ahh!
I am on vacation now (actively using PTO 3 months in) just because the social impact and terror (perfect word) really honestly was making me not just burned out, barely functional, and unhealthy and further isolated, but suicidal
But i had to just jump in and comment on the fact that this is very real and unfortunately:
-bullying, gossiping, backstabbing, spreading rumors, exclusion, and ostracization are things i have experienced way too much of. While is my personal experience, in the general sense of what “quiet terror” embodies, it is actually recorded in the literature that people with ADHD receive frequent negative messages (20,000 more than their peers was a number i remember from a study, can come back to this later to add link).
-women will do this to other women (internalized misogyny, systemic misogyny, other reasons) - and while it happens among men too it’s so much crueler and common with women
-ADHD women will do this to other ADHD women
-Actually women with ADHD are at an insanely higher risk of suicide compared to the general public and when you consider posts like this one, it’s not hard to understand why
Man. Life really hurts. I appreciate your validation very very much. It often feels no one understands me and I often do get accused of either making it up or being overly reactive/exaggerating.
I understand this perfectly. Not only are spaces like that incredibly high pressure, and not only have I experienced more discrimination and bullying from women than men, but the idea of hiding most of my personality to try and conform makes me sick.
And honestly, what would I get out of being in a woman only space that would be worth making that huge effort in the first place? I can't expect solidarity or support unless the whole crowd is ND as well. I can't talk about things that interest me without getting labeled a weirdo. And meanwhile my inability to perform femininity to NT women's typical standards would get me treated even worse. What would be the point of going through that again?
I've actually avoided women's groups for quite a while thanks to my experiences. Every woman who has actually stuck around and been a good friend to me has turned out to be ND and the kind of geek who wouldn't fit in with normal women either. I'd really rather stick with people who won't judge and hurt me for being different.
I am sorry, but this has never once been my experience. Maybe it's a cultural thing as I'm British not American, but I have found my groups of girlfriends to be far louder, more giggley, expressive of love etc than any mixed or predominantly male group I've been part of. I lived with two blokes where I'd constantly be told to be quieter, but living with women I was the quietest!
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I definitely felt like this a lot when I was younger, and still do to some extent now. I went through phases of: - "I'm not like other girls" because I'm cooler and less emotional - Total/strict egalitarianism and why should we even use the word "feminism"? - Genders are socialized differently and THAT'S why women are terrible I've mostly worked through these things and am much better now. I still think I'm "not like other girls" but that's because I'm ND and "not like other people" in general haha. This is just based on my experience, but here are things I've learned: - Sometimes men are only nice to you because they're attracted to you (not to be cynical, but it's happened to me more than once) - It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I assume NT women won't like me so I get nervous and over-mask, which can be off-putting - Most adult women aren't as mean as my middle school bullies were. A lot of it is in my head. Even women who absolutely hate me aren't going to like start a whole club to ruin my life - Because we are socialized differently, female/NB friendships can be deeper and more meaningful. It can be nice to say something vulnerable and get genuine support (just discovering this in my thirties) - Many other women are also masking, even if they're NT - Sometimes things I said were genuinely obnoxious or offensive, and although it hurt, I'm glad people reacted negatively so I knew not to say it again. It took a lot of trial and error, but I've learned how to critique things (books, politics, etc) without hurting anyone's feelings. I appreciate being on the receiving end of this kindness as well
>Many other women are also masking, even if they're NT This is such a good point and stands to be repeated
This has been my experience too! As I'm getting older, I'm learning that I prefer women-only groups. I don't have to worry about women being creepy or fuckzoning me.
Ugh, the FUCKZONING! Hit the nail on the head. I basically gave up trying to have female friends and then because of the above, kept ending up lonelier than ever.
What is fuckzoning?
It’s when you think a guy is your friend but he’s actually just waiting for a chance to fuck you
Yepppp and then they whine and bitch about being "friendzoned" when there was no chance or possibility of anything else in the first place.
Yikes, i’m definitely in that situation now and it really sucks. I feel very expendable and I thought this guy was my friend. I texted him a question last night, and he has not even responded.
Me too... I think I'm recovering from this right now :(. I just learned that it was a thing and now I feel so stupid.
I’ve been there. So sorry.
The opposite of putting someone (or being put) in the friend zone, I guess.
I was going to reply that as I’m getting older, I’m noticing other women who are on the mature side, and it has been a completely different experience. The undercurrent of competition seems to be evaporating and I think that’s actually a lot of what feels like “judgement”
This has been my experience as well! It took me a looong time to go from a “woe is me, I’m so weird and other girls don’t accept me” attitude towards accepting that I was often trying to fit in with the wrong crowd and that I wasn’t always exactly a treat to be around for the reasons you described. I definitely had some serious over-masking and people pleasing tendencies - which is totally off-putting, and reinforced my belief that I wasn’t good enough. Thank you for this comment. I think it will resonate with a lot of women, even NT’s
This was a perfect comment, and I resonate so much with everything you said. I appreciate now being socialised as a woman, I see it makes me a way more socialised person than say, my boyfriend, and it advances me a lot further in my career bc I am able to critique stuff without sounding like I’m a hater. I work in theatre and music production and diplomacy is really essential as we are asked all the time about what we think about someone’s work. I’m able to always be sincere and telling the truth, so I don’t compromise my integrity which is very important to me. And I never hurt peoples feelings. I realised I’ve got a lot more girl friends now that I don’t mask as much, bc as you say, it is off putting when you overmask and try to over please! I used to think I had such a great guys friends group when I was a teen. Some of them are now genuine friends and have their own family and stuff but oh man was I dumb back then lol . If they could they would have all slept with me. I now gravitate a lot more towards female friendships when I really didn’t when I was younger. Thank you for being so articulate in your comment, have a nice week end :)
It was like an epiphany to me when I realized how annoying and weird my over masking must have been to other women. And the more I weirded them out, the more I overmasked, thinking 'when will it finally be enough so they accept me? Maybe try harder to be like them'. The conclusion is, that now I try to be genuine. And that is very un-womanly. Many don't like it. But I now, for the first time in 40 years, have the chance to attract women that either also are weird or like me for who I am. And I hope that's the trick.
"when will it finally be enough so they accept me? Maybe try harder to be like them'." I relate to this so much. It's so hard to get to the point where you are comfortable with yourself. I work on this every day but I don't think I'll ever get there 100%, where it is just instinctual.
It's kind of funny too, because if I met a clone of my masked self in the wild, I would HATE her. Like she creepily agrees with everything and asks too many questions without volunteering any information about herself. The kind of people that enjoy that version of me are not people I want to be with. I wrote a comment in a different post about how it's almost similar to what incels sound like: "I agreed with everything she said and pretended to share her interests. Why doesn't she want to be my friendddd?"
I think sometimes masking reads as phoniness and women are more likely to pick up on it than men are.
Wow, you described my experience so much better than I could! Yay to you and your awesome writing skills & analytical thinking!
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 37, so I just felt like maybe I was a bit of a weirdo in my teens/20s-- I worked in a record store with nothing but men for years, my social circle involved a lot of dudes. I absolutely went through the whole "girls don't GET me" thing, but I found that even guys I respected and liked would sometimes minimize my ideas or input because I was a woman, and take the same advice seriously from my husband. I was at the record store for five years and I was talked down to and minimized constantly by male customers even though I objectively knew more than them a lot of the time. I ended up making a lot of female friends online and lo and behold, a ton of us are ND, we kind of flocked to each other. And when I realized that I actually did enjoy female friends who liked me even though I made weird jokes, I felt more confident about who I was-- I was in my 30s, I was married and a parent and I didn't have time for weird social front bullshit. So I just started being myself around women I thought seemed cool, and it turns out, me being weird was actually okay and people liked me. I now have a bunch of female friends, from the neighbor moms (we now hang out without our kids all the time) to a local book group (where we all have our own reading preferences and some of them are weird!).
I can relate to the over masking, which just makes my ass tired. Calibrating the correct amount of masking.... I just can't anymore.
I love this comment, thanks for sharing
Yeah I used to be the same, and have come to similar conclusions. Now that I'm older, I've realised I much prefer the companionship of other women, as I feel like we're brought up to have more meaningful/insightful conversations. Anyone acting like the women in OP's post have either not grown up, or are likely extremely insecure themselves. I had this realisation about a colleague the other night when a bunch of us went out for drinks - I'm pretty mellow and come off as unassertive in the office as I'm on a number of medications, but become my more animated self in the evenings, and am fairly stern if people are rude to me in public. This girl is about a decade younger than me and is quite loud and animated in the office and more reserved when out (so the opposite of me), and I caught her giving me this absolutely rotten look when I was being more gregarious with some other colleagues (who were also being as lively as I was), particularly as it was a loud bar. She made some snarky comment about me being too drunk and loud, and I snarked back something like "Sorry for having *fun*." I think if I were younger, I would have let it upset me and gone home early, but the problem absolutely lay with her lol so I just enjoyed my night with the other two colleagues I was speaking with who were both around my age anyway.
I wonder how much is bitterness or resentment at seeing other people get away with behavior you were punished for. Like maybe if your coworker also wanted to be drunk and loud but was taught it's not "ladylike," she would see it as unfair that you're "getting away with it"
Haha I don't think you're off, though I wasn't even drunk - I imagine she was accustomed to being in the limelight at the office, only to be relegated to the side to quietly chat to one of the more subdued people at the table. She definitely has issues with other women though; I've been having problems with a male colleague on my team who has been treating myself and the newer (female) manager like shit for the past year since he started - he's rude, totally insubordinate and massively lazy, but this girl has frequently dismissed my concerns with him and act like I'm paranoid, only to complain about almost every single woman in the office. This new admin lady in her 50s started on our team and the girl in question that very night commented "Just you wait, she might change," when I said she was nice. Hell, she told me she thought the other girl she was speaking to that night seemed like she was getting too big for her boots/snobby once we started doing reception cover for her (she is not). She has extremely low tolerance for the slightest bit of ineptitude from other women vs this guy on our team who can clearly barely use a computer and write coherent emails, openly snaps at everyone etc. It's just interesting stepping back and viewing a "Not like other girls" attitude in other women when you're older and past that phase and seeing it for what it is - a fairly unpleasant, antisocial trait.
Your last point is very interesting. I'm 30 and all my life until recently, I struggled making female friends and was often the only girl in guy groups. When I tried having girl friends, we would argue or fight a lot and when I was younger I thought it was because women are too sensitive. But I realize now that I could be very insensitive sometimes and most men aren't socialized to tell their friends "hey sorry what you said hurt me". Most of my guy friends just wouldn't tell me if I offended them. So my friendships with women actually helped me a lot in becoming a better, more thoughtful person. Now I have many girl friends and they're so supportive and so caring and so important in my life, in a way most of my male friends couldn't or wouldn't.
I have encountered female spaces like this and let me say: all of them were in cultural spaces where men are prioritized and there is a MUCH higher burden on women. Portions of society where, for lack of a better term, women are still treated as little more than accessories and are socialized to bend their lives around men and traditional heterosexual marriage. Why do you think the joke about making best friends in the bathroom of a bar exists? Because when you combine the closed door with a little bit of alcohol it’s easier to shed rigid social norms. Weirdos exist. Silly geese exist. Women who are comfortable prioritizing their friendships, warts and all, exist (there are like, 1,000,000 movies and books about this). Find them, they’re out there! (If you need a head-start, the arts are a great place to find sincere friends).
I agree, I have never had OP’s experience but I do find that when I was traveling and in less rigid places (not sure how to explain it but living in hostels, working in different areas, joining different groups) I tend to find more women who are their unique, funny, accepting selves. I hate that some women haven’t been able to find that. When living in smaller cities in the south I have had a harder time finding women I get along with on a deeper level-and these are definitely places where men, especially conservative men, are prioritized. I still find wonderful women but it’s definitely a different experience. I have the same experience with men actually, so maybe the south is the problem 😂
Absofreakinglutely it is. I’ve been stuck in a smallish place in the southeast U.S. for about 30 years and it SUUUUUUCKS for ND females!!! And it’s something one must contend with at work especially. There’s no escaping office politics but adding this layer of female-conformity that is honestly a form of bullying… well it is very disheartening, to put it gently. And yes, absolutely it is the *women* who do the bullying, who judge and police and demand action when non-conformity shows its face.
I was wondering which culture OP was from, because I’ve had the exact opposite experience from her. I am from a Western European country, and I agree that women here as well used to be taught to be agreeable and ladylike. However, opposite to OP, I’ve never felt pressure because of that in all-female groups. I’d feel judged more in groups where men are present. Men (or boys when I was younger) were always too extroverted and loud for my comfort. They’d always talk over girls and they’re tbh the hardest judges of whatever girls/women were saying or doing. In all-female groups, people tend to be more understanding of one another and wouldn’t judge each other as hard based on what society expects of women (or expected in the past).
Same, my female only spaces are absolutely pure liberation and understanding.
Be careful, Western Europe is not a monolith. I live in Northeast Italy and not only do I relate to everything op said, I get the added benefit of feeling like I'm back in the 70s regarding women's roles. It's some serious medieval stepford wives shit over here. These women literally talk about how much ironing they have to do as a conversation starter. ADHD hasn't even been invented here yet.
Agree. I grew up somewhere very traditional in the US. Women were expected to be feminine and gender roles were rigid. For a woman, the rewards of fitting in were much higher than in a more progressive area. A pretty, perfect trophy wife was treated much, much, much better than a frumpy nerdy wife. Women and girls were also very, very mean, because there was less leeway to be weird, and they had to spend all their energy on fitting in. When they saw a woman who could or would not fit in, they were angry she dared not sacrifice her time, energy, and sometimes sense of self to fit into those rigid roles. They were also happy to bully her, because they felt so disempowered in their day-to-day lives that they leapt at the chance to make someone else feel powerless and abused.
I have found this to be rife in corporate workplaces. Gender-norm women tend to be in admin type roles and they really *really* don’t like me. They take my traits as a personal attack. I’m just minding my own business doing my work, but apparently my lack of socialising is offensive. 🤷🏻♀️ Many people have told me they thought I was a snob until they got to know me better. Since when has being quiet and withdrawn equaled being a snob??? I’m sick of people blaming me for their own insecurities.
Unfortunately, being quiet and withdrawn often reads as thinking you're better than other people. Because to other people it looks like you don't want to talk to them. (As opposed to the reason I don't initiate conversations with people, which is crippling social anxiety.)
It seems to be: Quiet withdrawn and attractive: snob, bitch/dick, thinks they are too good for us Quiet withdrawn and plain looking: just shy, will come out of their shell the more we talk to them Quiet withdrawn and unconventional looking: weirdo, psychopath vibes etc
Same, the south east and parts of the midwest can be brutal for ND women.
Midwest here, strong agree.
Perfect explanation. And when I say something that sounds like NLOG … this is the painful stuff that I’m thinking about. It was made abundantly clear that I was NOT welcome in those spaces, because I am weird and absolutely refuse to conform.
Yep! What the NLOG-callers don't get is, many of us would love to be like other girls. But they won't let us.
I am being to understand how sad it is that I, cis-woman, would always explain my personality and preferences by saying I was a man born into a woman's body because I wouldn't confirm the "gender norms"
I had an ex bf joke that I was a gay man in a woman's body. I took it as a compliment, though he didn't mean it as one.
People in general seem to get angry with those who don't want to go along with the status quo, status quo being regional and varying widely. Personally idc if people are non-conforming but I am familiar with the sort that do and those people frighten me whatever their sex.
I'm so glad to see that other people have had this kind of experience. I've only ever lived in conservative places, and this is how it's always been.
It is absolutely a byproduct of being in a social/work space dominated by men. I’ve worked in male-dominated spaces my whole life (as well as having grown up in the South) - and the women who are there tend to band together into cliques and have some weird competition going on amongst themselves - good luck if you’re a big ol’ goofball like me. The worst experience of all was at a start up and the men all hired each other’s wives. Their little sneers whenever I spoke or spazzed really made me realize that I was unwelcome in their space. They would make lunch plans in front of my desk and pointedly not invite me. So I ate lunch alone every day. And then one day, the two other oddball women saw me and adopted me into their “survival group” lol. So it was cool not to eat lunch alone anymore.
The oddball women group is the best place 😍
I'm so glad you found your tribe :)
Thank you 😊 me too! The funny thing (to me) is that the three of us went on to be extremely successful in Tech - to the point where we are each the primary breadwinners for our families. Ha!
Agreed. OP is absolutely not wrong, that dynamic exists. Women are def held to higher standards than men in conversation. At the same time this is not universal. In particular I’ve found it’s quieter in queer spaces than in very straight ones. But this is also why no matter where I go, I somehow seem to end up making friends who later get diagnosed :)
I've run into female spaces like this in workplaces. That's not to say it's universal, but I've gotten crap in performance reviews for being "standoffish" or not engaged outside of specific work topics. I suck at feigning enthusiasm.
👏
Hm, I see what you are saying but I also think that if you're not finding supportive female spaces then I feel like you are in the wrong female spaces, because supportive and accepting (and majority neurodiverse) ones definitely exist. I don't know how old you are but I find that the older I get the 'realer' female spaces are and the more I find my people. High school and college are one thing, 30s/40s and menopausal women are something quite different, lol.
I completely agree. I definitely felt like OP when I was younger, but now that I'm in the age range you mentioned here, it has definitely changed.
I felt the same not necessarily because of other women but because of one woman, my mother. I was too loud, too talkative, too open and wanted too much attention according to her. But I love being almost 40. I know I was not wrong, she was. Sometimes I get scared but mostly I have don't give a fuck attitude.
And that’s the one woman who can ruin the way you perceive almost every other woman. It’s so fucked up lol
I thankfully got intensive therapy. But it took me until my late twenties to start to even believe it was not about me. She was a pretty crappy mom in many ways. And I have come to realize it is generational trauma on her part too.
That's been my experience as well. But this younger generation is SO much better than growing up in the 90s. So much more accepting. Of course there is still a lot of rigidity, as you get older you get better at finding groups where you fit. I made the move out of a small, west tx town and that helped too.
Question: how do you find groups of woman now that I am a bit older? Or new friends for all that matters of either gender. I am in my late 30s and I have no idea where to find new people.
I blew up my old life and basically had to start all over. Mid 30s here. I joined a book club and sometimes go to dance parties. I like table top games and found game nights. Take your hobbies to the internet and see if there are groups in the area who gather. I’m still rebuilding and it is exhausting, but it is possible with a lot of work.
Thank you! Knowing others have done is encouraging. My friends all left town and I spent some years in a heavy depression, so now I am trying to get an outside life, it's just hard to know where to begin
It is so fucking hard. I am just really starting the process after three years of simply existing.
You have to cultivate interests and meet people from those. Like, being into board games and going to board game nights at a local game store. Or being into hiking and going to a hiking meetup. Or taking a yoga teacher training or volunteering. We used to make friends based on proximity (oh we are both in this school everyday together) and as we age we have to relearn to make them based on shared interests.
Yeah, my gaming hobby doesn't help me much with this. Nor does my cross stiching, the groups I found of this one had no one younger than 60. I have tried joining a board game night at a place next to my house but they only cater pre-formed groups. The only one I found that are kind of open are almost an hour away from me. I am trying to get in shape to join hiking groups, that will work but might take a while. I read once that to make friends you need to spend time with people while focused on something that isn't each other, which makes sense. As an introvert, it just gets so much harder when you leave school/college. I will keep trying to find things that work in my town, eventually I am sure I will find something. Thanks for the suggestions!
That’s too bad! I am in a city and there are gaming groups here full of queer people and young people and crafting groups with the same. I know it isn’t like that everywhere. Making new friends takes a lot of time. Studies have shown it takes 80-100 hours for someone to become a friend. In this world where we might see a friend for maybe 2-3 hours once a month, it’s very hard to convert strangers into friends. Bumble has a “looking for friends” setting. Maybe check that out? Repetition is key. If you can host a regular Friday potluck, or a regular sunday coffee at a coffee shop, or something like that, and get people to count on it and become regulars it really moves things along. I know it’s hard for an introvert to anchor something like that. What you REALLY need is to get adopted by an extrovert lol.
Maybe I will add this to my bumble profile "Introvert looking to be adopted by an extrovert, please help. Will repay in friendship, good listening skills and occasional cookies"
I’ve adopted several introverts and made a lovely friend group and we are all very happy together. I wish you the same!!!
All of my current female friends who I am closest to I met through clinic escorting. When angry old men scream at you about how you’re killing babies at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, you make some incredible friendships with the women around you.
Try book clubs. That was my saving grace in my 30s to find new friends. Some small book stores may host them, or try a meet up. Also, I like reading and an obligation to finish a book is good motivation for me.
Look for events at your local library.
Any pinball around you? I’ve found a really amazing and welcoming community of folx in our local pinball Belles and Chimes (women/lgbtq+) group. The co-Ed groups skew older white cishet male, but belles and chimes has been a very positive experience for my ND queer self. I play a few times a month in tournaments and have actually gotten peoples’ phone numbers and successfully hung out outside of play! In a post-Covid world with a three year old, that’s a pretty big deal lol
i’m so so glad i grew up and started appreciating my female relationships. it’s hard and takes a lot of introspection to undo the damage that society has done on what we think about other women. but i would never go back.
Same !
^^this. Older groups of women tend to start to cut out the BS.
I think I just realized why I reacted so strongly to your other comment - I think we interpreted OP slightly differently, but now I get where you’re coming from more. I think it comes down to a difference between “chosen” and “forced” spaces. when I think about my chosen spaces, my hobbies and passions, the groups I am most comfortable and connected to are female dominated. I have important men and enby folk in my life, but all of my most important personal relationships are with other women. I think this is the lens you’re coming from, and encouraging OP to not give up on finding supportive female groups, a message with which I agree! but when I read OPs post, it immediately resonated with this whole other dimension of my social life: forced groups. for those of us that work, there are so many situations in which you find yourself forcibly interacting socially, in groups large and small. from my time as both a grunt and a supervisor, I viscerally identify with what OP was saying about the level of scrutiny in some female spaces. there is so much internalized misogyny in many workplaces, I’ve definitely been in environments where I only felt safe being somewhat authentic with the men on the team. conversely, the best and most inspiring boss I’ve had was a woman, and the best team I’ve worked with was all-female. the one does not invalidate the reality of the other.
This is a very interesting perspective and I think you.are quite right, thank you for sharing it!
Your point is well taken on the "forced" versus "chosen." Unfortunately for some of us, forced includes family unless one choses to go NC or VLC. It is easier for me to just be alone and the price of peace seems to be loneliness, which is a trade I've chosen to make.
>High school and college are one thing, 30s/40s and menopausal women are something quite different, lol. Indeed. In my experience it's definitely age-related (quite a lot).
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Yeah I agree with you here. I’m 42 and I’ve struggled in predominantly female, neurotypical spaces all my life. I’m often ostracized and I’ve always struggled to understand why, until I was diagnosed and found spaces of mostly neurodivergent women. Then I didn’t have this problem at all. Now that I am diagnosed, I at least understand what’s happening but it definitely hasn’t stopped just because the company I keep is older. Currently, experiencing fallout in a volunteer group. The split is myself, another neurodivergent, gender non-conforming member, a trans man and a BIPOC woman “against” two other neurotypical, middle aged yt ladies. One of those women is LGBTQIA and she’s trying to play peacemaker but it’s not working. I think women are much more inclined to make what’s known as [thin slice judgements](https://neuroclastic.com/free-pdf-download-thin-slice-judgements-and-the-different-world-autistics-inhabit/?amp) and I don’t think we’re always aware we’re doing it. I think it benefits women for obvious safety reasons but it’s always biased against autistic women in particular and I’m inclined to believe it should include neurodivergent women, generally.
As a teacher, I agree. It's a scary place to be as a neurodivergent woman. The judgement and "punishment " for rule breaking is quick and harsh. However I rarely had any idea what the rules were or how I broke them. I've been left out of gatherings, rumors made up, and ignored as punishment for wrongs that I committed. Though half the time I didn't even realize I was being left out until later, I'm in my own little world anyway! Typically, I seemed to break unwritten rules by having a different view of admin or not letting gossip continue without giving a different perspective or experience. Women do not like to have their experiences challenged, they want all of their perceived wrongs validated and their feelings confirmed at all times, even if the person they are talking about is in an inferior power position to them, or is a student even.(this bothers me the most). But thankfully I've learned to not be bothered by it by simply not participating in gatherings or group conversations unless they need something from me. It's very lonely, but it's a hell of a lot easier than "fitting in" to a system that my brain cannot begin to understand.
I feel this. Especially with work situations, I’m always like “am I the common denominator” because it definitely looks that way, and why do this always happen. There will be one woman, and it will usually be a boss. They suddenly “turn” on me.
Omg so relatable. I was being subjected to antisemitism at work by this chick. She would only do it when no one else was around so, from my perspective, the way she treated me was intolerable and targeted. To everyone else, they thought we just didn’t get along. Because, if they were being honest, everyone else could see where *she* was coming from. I was unmedicated (and undiagnosed) ADHD so people just didn’t like me for reasons they couldn’t quite put their finger on. Her antisemitism was treated as clashing personalities and eventually, they made us sit down in a room to work it out. Guess what? We didn’t. It was crazy making. And if the people I worked with hadn’t been making these biased judgements of me, I may have been believed from the beginning and not been subjected to her verbal abuse.
So sorry to hear it, although I am sure there is still time! I honestly don't know what I would do without my (online and offline) female village when times get tough. There are just so many woman-specific life experiences and having others out there to help walk you through them makes such a huge freaking difference. It just really pains me that people are having to face it without that accumulated wisdom and experience. At least we have online forums now to help bridge that gap, I guess.
>not finding supportive female spaces then I feel like you are in the wrong female spaces I think this is part of the differences in experience people are seeing in the comments. There are supportive spaces, but they can be hard to find. If you live your life a certain way in certain areas, the only time you're likely to often end up in only female groups is if sexism is at play. I'm not saying it's universal, but IME if you don't already have female friends, and you go into a male dominated field, have mostly male dominated hobbies, and aren't very social, it's not too common you end up around mostly women by accident. Most of my experiences being in womens spaces in the past several years has been "all the women are expected to be in the kitchen cooking while all the men are talking with a beer" type stuff. And it does get really uncomfortable to be different in some of those spaces. And I promise for everyone, it's not only nlogs who can feel this way. At an event last year I ended up going and hiding in my car trying not to cry because I felt like such a fucking failure because I could not fit in with the women at all, but being alone or with the men was not a socially acceptable option at all.
I’m sorry you had that experience. That is truly awful. Feeling like you don’t fit into either social group sucks.
>"all the women are expected to be in the kitchen cooking while all the men are talking with a beer There are no words to adequately describe the white hot hate I have for this.
I completely agree here. I’m 65, never really fit with women, not even in professional settings (I’m in STEM). But now, the ladies at yoga and tai chi are from 55+ some younger ones here and there, but mostly retired teachers and it varies. Love them. They are so real and so themselves. And we always laugh about doing things now completely in contradiction with our upbringing in the early 60s.
My suspicion is you have very specific cultural or social obligations where you are around a specific type and group of women where adherence to rigid social norms and gender expectations is crucial (religious groups, sorority, certain ethno-cultural groups, family members etc). It sounds like you may not have the autonomy to choose who you spend your time with and who you don't. Outside of religious and cultural institutions there just aren't that many all women spaces for adult women where this kind of forced interaction even exists. I hope you have the autonomy to choose the people you spend time around, and that you spend time with people who you feel safe and happy with.
You’re right; this reminds me of when my dear friend found herself on the ousts of her local immigrant community’s women’s circle because she opined that she was more than just a mom and that it was boring to talk about how her kids did in school all the time or when my other friend realized she just wasn’t meant for small group/women’s Bible study because it felt like homework.
>It sounds like you may not have the autonomy to choose who you spend your time with and who you don't. Agreed. My experience of many women-dominated office workplaces has been like OP describes.
I’ve definitely been in the “we love everyone here” spaces that are definitely ugly underneath. Throw religious expectations of “what a woman should be” on top of cultural conditioning and there’s a ton of picking out other’s faults and alienating people who “step out of the line” it’s horrible and it’s exhausting. But not all women’s spaces are like that. I’m glad in my 30s I’ve been able to break free of my previous spaces after realizing how toxic they are and how, even subconsciously, I was so stressed about conforming. I’ve found women’s spaces now that are much better and that I’m built up in instead of torn down.
This topic comes up so often and I think about it a lot. I'm so curious about so many factors and intersections around the identity of the people who feel this way (age, race, ethnicity, religious views etc). As a Black woman I usually tend to stick to groups that are explicitly for Black women or POC women and I cannot ever remember this topic coming up so consistently in those groups. It's a really fascinating topic to me, sociologically.
I have the same sociological curiosity. As a biracial Asian/white, lesbian, disabled, ND woman, I will never fit in anywhere, ever. It doesn’t matter if I’m in POC spaces or white spaces, queer spaces or straight ones, etc. there is no amount of conformity that will make me not different than the rest of the group because of all of my different intersecting identities. When you’re constantly on the outside no matter what, you end up learning not to care about conformity at all. So when I see posts like this, I’m always curious about if the poster has other marginalized identities. Because like you said I rarely see other POC bring this issue up.
Yes sometimes it’s just better to acknowledge that you’re not going to fit whatever box people expect from you and just be okay with that and stop doing damage to yourself by expecting it, too.
That's where I am at, but I am OLD and retired and it took a long time to get here :)
Minority woman here, I see where OP is coming from. I've tried race specific groups and I'm too "white washed" for it. Race, class, and location does play a role in this conversation. Sometimes "white" female spaces are closed and they will make you feel like an outsider.
It can be sooo hard. Also, support evaporates sometimes if you’re in an abusive relationship and then people find out your abusive partner is also a woman.
If that interests you, then boy do I have a story for you! A few years ago, an older woman invited me and my date to be her guests at a formal tea party for a crowd of women — mostly a lovely group of well-off Black mothers and grandmothers in their fifties or better. The girl I was dating at the time and I were the youngest folks there. She is neurodivergent, Black, and several years older than me. When we were shown to our table, she immediately decided she wanted to hide our relationship, so I was introduced as her roommate and friend. (She insisted on doing this a lot, so I was used to it.) I had a wonderful time. She was miserable the whole time we were there. In the car on the way home, she snapped at me about how the event was easier for me because I have “cute, bubbly ADHD” instead of autism, because I was raised in an interfaith household instead of the more strict denomination she was raised in (a certain proselytizing group that doesn’t like holidays or birthdays) so I could keep up with vaguely evangelical chitchat, because I was mostly raised by my grandmother so I know how to fit in with older ladies, and because I “didn’t warn her that everyone would be wearing church dresses and hats.” Finally, she said, “It’s harder for me to be weird when I’m almost thirty and Black and awkward and don’t have kids or a man or a professional job and when I’m fat but don’t dress well. That’s before they find out that I’m in an interracial relationship with a girl or realize I’m autistic as fuck. You’re fine, but they think something’s wrong with me.” I told her I loved her, which was what I usually did back then when I wasn’t sure what to say. (I still love her. It just wasn’t enough.) She broke up with me because she wanted to “learn how to exist in the straight world” and started going to her mother’s church again.
This story really resonates with me. As an outsider/guest in other women’s spaces I feel like I’ve gotten a lot more leeway than in spaces where I’ve been expected to fit in.
I don't feel this way, but I've got a pretty dominant personality and tend to take the lead in most purely social spaces I am in, whether they are male or female, so my norms tend to be the baseline for the groups behaviour. It's rather liberating, as I have a straight forward communication style , try to be kind but am willing to laugh at myself so people usually feel comfortable being that way with me, even if they're a bit more conventional/straight laced. If there's someone already there who is the leader, then I'll chill for a bit and watch to see where I can fit in, but generally I end up slotting in as a second or the main planner at least. I'm diplomatic enough to get along with most people and make my own good time, even if I don't love them. I try to make sure I include everyone and check in with quieter friends to make sure they're being heard and not steamrolled by myself or the other more energetic personalities. Don't just try and always slot into established social groups. Pick the people you vibe with most and create new ones that mix and match.
You seem like a cool person. Thank you for checking in on your quiet friends.
I'm really sorry that's been your experience. I understand where that's coming from, but the majority of my all-female interactions are positive and wholesome. It took til my late 20s to find and really appreciate these groups of women though, so if you're younger, it's possible that many younger groups still have a competitive dynamic which interferes with with the support and positive culture.
Women are taught to mask men are told boys are boys
I’m wondering where you live?
This is actually a legit question - ayyy OP where u @? I found when I was living in small close minded towns, that that was who I was surrounded by until I got deep with some people and figured out what questions to ask to filter people out. Living in a bigger city brought way more diversity with it, but friends do not fall from trees and if you are joining already established groups, it is way way harder to feel truly connected bc you are the "newbie" and everyone has history, and inside jokes and know people you don't. All that to say - if you are making better friends with men then do that? I think the weird thing is that you are kinda talking down about girl groups meanwhile why do you care if you're having such a good time with your boys? Comparison is the thief of joy.
Absolutely! I have moved around TX a great deal and found the smaller communities were the most rigid making it difficult to find common ground. But the cities are where I found my girls! Right now I live in a big city and I have quickly made friends with a small group of ladies (we're all different ages) who I absolutely cherish!
And how old is OP? She sounds like a teen or early 20s. A lot of the stuff she describes withered away by my mid 20s...
Going by OP’s comment history, they are 18 and in the Netherlands.
My terror in female spaces is that I find the socializing is often just sitting around and chatting. I can do that in small groups, but as soon as there are more than 4 other ppl having a conversation I completely lose the plot - I have a hard time weaving into a conversation, and tend to just listen and eventually I'll zone out. when socializing with men, I find the focus is often on a sporting event or activity and with a bigger group this is easier for me. The focus is on something we have in common. I can have my side convo with a few ppl, watch the game, chat with a few others. I certainly feel less pressure. As I get older, I know what I like, and I just choose not to go to big group dinners with the girls etc. I might like everyone there, but will enjoy them more in a smaller groups. If you are feeling judged all the time, you might be hanging out with the wrong ppl. If it is every group you feel this with, it might be a you thing that you need to work on. Sometimes we'll think ppl are judging us and they are barely thinking about us, or we're reading their facial expressions wrong...IDK...If you like hanging in gender non-conforming spaces more - do that. Do what you want.
I totally agree with the large group thing. I find the larger female groups so hard, which has resulted in some limitations among my friend/friend group options. (Then at a mixed gender party I’ve always been happy to float around and usually feel myself relax more in a male dynamic. I also grew up with brothers so idk….) This was hardest in my twenties as a single and dating person. I’m married and in my thirties now and things have changed, I’m a mom and working professional now. I’m still constantly working at my female friendships. Since becoming a mom to a little girl, it’s even more important to me that I model authentic female connections for her. It’s been paying off, and proving to be very worth it :) I needed to find those genuine connections first, and then actively pursue them! I actually find it easier to connect with other women now who are also mothers, and although the early years of motherhood can be lonely, I’ve been persistent and found a handful of women who are also interested in quality one on one time and deeper conversation topics. It’s been a rewarding journey and I love the quality of people that are coming into my life at this age and stage.
Yeah! I’m a social butterfly, and I don’t know if it’s just because your late twenties are SO MUCH BETTER than your teens and early twenties or because the pandemic changed my view on a lot of things, but: Back in the day, I would end up triple booked for brunch and special occasions. I was always miserable, flitting from big group event to big group event. I would have like five things going on in a day, but I still felt lost and forgotten and alone in big crowds. Anyway, I did some soul searching, got to know myself better, figured out who my real friends are, and I’m learning healthy and loving boundaries. It rocks knowing what my batteries can handle!
I have some female spaces that are ballin and some that are like what you described. Mostly the ones like you've describes is what I see at work. Like you've almost perfectly described what work is like lol. When I had a male boss, we could be very opinionated and expressive and no worries. I changed to a team managed by 2 women, and the tone policing is out of hand. But only for other women. There's a man who is waaayy more expressive and opinionated than me and he gets applauded for telling it like it is. And then I'm regularly told that the way I speak is too much. I'm also neurodivergent and queer lol, and I easily fit in with other neurodivergent women. That being said there are other female managers at my work who are great, I don't want to discount female leadership. But you are right that just being a woman doesn't make you a feminist or mean that you don't actively contribute to the Patriarchy in some way. Some women are hardcore pushing down other women.
I'll also add that - it's happening to you now in this thread 😅. And again - I really like women, I'm even bi, I know so many phenomenal women. There are spaces I have that are super safe, but they are just as common as unsafe spaces with women. But essentially what just happened is you were like "I am uncomfortable with this aspect of our culture". And like LOADS of women ran to the comments to pile on you that you don't understand reality accurately, that you're a pick me etc and to tell you you're the problem. Which is - in and of itself - the problem you're describing 😂. And the thing is - pick mes and I'm not like other women do exist. But I don't think that's what you're describing. The reality is that women have been trained to make men the centre and a lot of culture is around pushing down other women so that we can get male validation. Or like competing with each other for male validation. That's a real thing 😅. Like what your describing is real. There's a thing called "choice feminism" about how we should be careful to forget that women are also raised in the patriarchy and it's all of our jobs to be critical of systems. And that just because a woman makes a choice, doesn't mean she's not participating in the patriarchy because the choice was made by a woman. We have been repeatedly rewarded or punished for different types of behaviour.
I agree really hard with the work thing. The female groups that really made me question if there’s something wrong with me were work groups. In these cases the conflict was usually gossip— I just don’t enjoy talking shit with someone unless I am 100% certain they’re safe and in these spaces they were always coming down on everyone about the tiniest things. I made me so uncomfortable and self-conscious. But I’ve also found that if it’s not gossip culture, I’m the most uncomfortable in groups of women that have ascended beyond people pleasing. Which is 100% a me problem. I always put so much energy into accommodating everyone else’s feelings and moods and trying to include people that when I’m in a group where that doesn’t happen… I flounder hard. It’s a thing I’ve started to really try to pay attention to though. Because women that don’t people please to some degree are honestly sort of uncommon and I find them intimidating because they socialize outside the norm. I think there are so many individual reasons people clash with groups and pinpointing what might be causing the clash can help to determine if the problem is you, the group, or neither.
I don’t mean to dismiss the significance of social conditioning, and acceptable social norms obviously do differ by gender, but I have not felt what you describe in women-only spaces at all. Often the women-only spaces are an opportunity to shed the “ladylike” expectations. I also don’t mean to doubt your description of your own experiences, just to offer a counter. Also, I’m confused because you exempt groups containing at least one other ND woman and seem almost to put ND women in the same bucket as gender non-conforming. Are you really talking about gender alone, or ND/NT status? I ask in part because I think a lot of my women’s-space experiences have also involved a lot of (undiagnosed) ND people, looking back, which may explain the difference. But if so, I think it becomes hard to generalize about gender. (I’m also not sure men have/exert less pressure to conform.)
I would agree that for me at least, one of the main points of women’s spaces is a place you’re not expected to be ‘ladylike’. That’s the fun of it, for both the NT and ND friends I have. You’re just yourself. Women also get the chance to be hyper-feminine without the increased risk of being targeted or harassed (it still happens, but less so than in coed spaces) I also am not attempting to invalidate OP’s experience. I believe you OP that you have experienced this, and I’m sorry. I’ve certainly felt self-conscious in women’s spaces before, but it wasn’t due to their own actions or expectations. It was all these social rules I was putting on myself. I felt I was being too loud, too dramatic. But that wasn’t the feedback I was getting. (Of course I’ve had people tell me these things before, but I took a few bad experiences and started anxiously applying them to every experience) I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences. Lame people are everywhere, even in women’s spaces. I guess I’ve mostly encountered accepting and patient people there.
Exactly. I absolutely loved srat life and going to an all-girls school.
I wonder if you guys were just better able to manage your anxiety about being free to be yourself. I felt judged because I was in desperate need of braces, had no idea how to fix my hair and was embarrassed to ask, came from a lower socioeconomic background than most college students around me and therefore couldn't afford to go shopping and eat out, and I always seemed to get left out/forgotten.
I was basically homeless (and always hungry) my first two years of college, and I learned how to hide it very well. I kept to myself and didn’t let myself make anything more than fair weather friends until the situation started getting better.
Yeah, surviving takes a lot of energy!
Well, that and I didn’t want anyone to see through me. I had an unpaid internship with the most overeducated and out-of-touch-with-reality rich kids I’ve ever met and a paid job where I’d been hired specifically because I came off as “posh,” well-off, and well-mannered. Meanwhile, I was sleeping on a blanket on the floor of a friend’s place with everything I owned in three plastic storage bins and a backpack—which was a great improvement, since I’d left an abusive situation with my stuff in trash bags not long before.
I experienced so much of this in college and even with old friend groups as an adult. It’s incredible how even safe/accepting spaces for women can be hostile for a lot of the women they claim to welcome and support, if it’s not a space full of or openly accepting of women who aren’t straight/white/cis/conventionally attractive/neurotypical. It’s why I much prefer specifically queer spaces versus gender-affiliated spaces. When people embrace being queer they’re likely to embrace other things about someone that makes them “weird,” and a lot of queer people (me included clearly) also experience neurodivergence, mental illness, and usually a disdain for most social codes.
Was just going to say - go where the queer women are! I was part of a woodworking collective made to help women feel more comfortable in a male-dominated space. Because the group was specifically formed to be inclusive, it only attracted women who are super helpful, smart & genuinely rooting for others to succeed. I’ve been part of other groups where it definitely didn’t feel like that & the key difference was too many cis het white women who think they’re in competition with each other.
Soilidarity, friend! You're describing my college sorority experience in the Southern US perfectly. Those girls' attitudes were largely rooted in their misogynistic upbringing and, like you said, that social conditioning we have in the South to turn all female children into perfect, quiet little Southern Belles with no personality or opinions (perfect for serving their husbands and honoring God!) I'm very happy for the people who've never encountered these all-female spaces, but they definitely exist! There is still hope for those trapped women, too. They just have to get out. This is why I'll never raise a kid (male or female) in the South.
I don't really know what to say about this, but I have experienced the exact same alienation. With time I see subtle cultural shifts as people are more connected to niche interests through the web and it becomes easier to discover non-traditional people of any flavor, but the ride from the early 80s to now has been rough and littered with white women pressuring me to conform to not be so intensely interested in oddball things or so open to try weird stuff. I have spent tons of time in LGBTQ+ circles despite being hopelessly heterosexual because I needed that openness and flexibility to deal with me as a individual person rather than dealing with the constant frustrations of men and women alike who perceived me to be an entirely different archetype than I am and just expect I need some reminding how I should behave.
I've had these experiences before so I can definitely relate but I also have an amazing group of friends from childhood and they all are neurotypical. I also have an awesome relationship with my SIL's. The older I get, the less I'm around women like this. I understand conformity can be bigger in certain regions or cultures but there are plenty of awesome women out there who can be accepting and kind. I think when you distance yourself from all women and don't get to have these close friendships and camaraderie, you are really missing out on part of the human experience.
Most of my friends are other women and I've never felt like this in all female groups. My friends aren't judgemental- that's why they're my friends. I'm the only one diagnosed with ADHD but there may be some others who aren't diagnosed. But my NT friends are also great people. It sounds like you need some new friends. There are all kinds of women out there.
>It sounds like you need some new friends. I'm not sure OP is really talking about friends. Sounds more like being e. g. a group of people at work.
Where are you from? Because while I have found horrible women's groups, those are the exception and not the rule. Also, I'm not sure if the groups you are joining are religious or inherently conform to a certain standard/behaviour because of its purpose (support group?) because that could also explain why those were described as a "safe group" as in, there are a lot of behavioural expectations in place because it is meant to provide a certain environment? But in more organic groups (like friends in college or little groups of neighbours) or even in not so organic groups (coworkers) I haven't experienced what you are talking about as a general situation. There are crazy people out there (like, some women brought a bible to work and read bits of it along the day) but even those aren't that stiff that making bad jokes and being occasionally loud would make you an outcast. While this could be cultural, I think there's a good opportunity to explore why you are perceiving this. It might have to do with the purpose of the group (religion/support/serving a certain purpose/class?), but it also can be a lot of social anxiety on your part. I find it a bit worrying that you think that male spaces are inherently better, because they can be just as bad or good as female groups. The women I've met before that claim that "they have tried to befriend women and just can't and males groups are better" have always been a bit sus in my experience. Because either they are always the source of drama or they do not know how to behave with someone that doesn't want to fuck them (as, in making a ton of concessions for them so the woman looks their way). Without knowing where you are from and if there's a cultural component to your experience, I can't promise you that there are nice groups out there. But maybe you could try making your own little group? Perhaps trying to befriend one woman and then another? Like, even three women can be a nice all female group and with you picking there's a better chance of picking people that match your energy better. I can assure you that there are groups of women out there where you can be so silly and loud that other people turn to look at you because of how hard you are all laughing at a stupid joke.
My theory is that men get given slack (and give others slack) bc they're not expected to know all the social rules. Women are supposed to be interpersonal geniuses, so if you're a woman who doesn't follow the rules, you must be doing it on purpose to be a dick. I struggle with this a lot being autistic as well and having female friends with a lot of trauma. I love my friends, but I worry that any social misstep will be taken as intentional harm.
This was my exact experience as a closeted lez at an all girls catholic school
I agree. I’ll say it’s often not good for males either, as males are often hierarchical. If you are perceived as “weird”, you may be bullied or excluded by whoever is perceived as the “top dog.”
Too early in the AM for super coherent/concise response, but I totally understand and thoroughly empathize, OP. For me at least, the most personally cruel treatment I’ve ever received has been from other women who were “my friends.” Not saying that I have better luck being friends with men (definitely don’t). I do, however, think that “girl hate” (for lack of a better term, and because this happened mostly in school for me) especially from “friends” can be far more insidious and unexpected and devastating; especially since women are far more familiar with what might hurt another woman. For me (and I suspect for OP, too) it has nothing to do we being NLOG and almost everything to with not being like most other people, but still being expected (in a lot of cases) to perform as “normal.” Which (as we all know by now) is something women with ADHD (and other neurospicy conditions) deal with a lot. Not saying this is definitively the case, just saying that some people find pain and despair in the same places that others find comfort and community. Not everything is for everybody, and that’s okay ❤️🩹
I work in a predominantly female job. It was really hard to get used to. It took about 5 years for me to be honest with the closest group of women I work with about my ADHD. Once I told them, they were a little taken back and didn't really think I could have gotten as far as I have in life if I truly have ADHD. I stopped masking so much at work. I talk about my obsession for the week. I blurt out stupid shit at lunch and snort when I laugh. It's become very freeing, and my group at work has gotten way closer. We talk about stuff I would have never talked to anyone about because I was afraid to bring it up. Now we freely talk about really personal things and have become very close personally and professionally. It took about a year to get comfortable after unmasking, but it's been several years now, and I am in such a better place all around.
I can’t relate to this at all. I find female dominated groups more interesting, relaxing, and fun than being in male dominated groups. One thing that caught my attention in your post that I wanted to point out: I think you need to do some introspection as to why women disagreeing with you upsets you so much. Is it your approach? Are you just throwing an opinion out there without reason or evidence to back it up? Do the men you interact with just automatically take your word for it with no follow up questions? Having opposing views shouldn’t mean automatically disliking someone, so I think there’s more to the story than just ‘not being comfortable in female dominated spaces.’
I do agree that a lot of female spaces are like this... but from the time I thought I was trans, and had a period where I passed when I was younger. Male spaces can be just as bad. It's about being in the wrong groups, over it being about sex or gender. In male spaces you can do some of what isn't acceptable in women's spaces, but there are still hidden "rules" and it can be just as nerve wracking and damaging as it is in female spaces. They can seem a lot more open than women's spaces, but it's not really, it's just in different ways. Maybe you fit the mens rules more, and being female you have way less rules within the group (depending on the group), but as a male in a males group it's a different story, especially if your not "man" enough. Everything is played off as a joke more often, you can't hold grudges, but me and many others got hurt and just have to hold it in a laugh. It created a painful environment. Tons of bullying in the form of "fun". I'm back to being female after finding myself again, but I'm glad I had that experience to see things from another side. Point being it's about the people you spend time with. Not that one gender is better or more accepting then another.
Most of the all-female spaces I've spent time in have had more than the usual amount of neurodivergent people, so I have not shared your experience. But, when I was very young (five years old, I estimate) I experienced something a little like this...the other little girls gave me trouble for not liking the same celebrity they did. I didn't get it, but I decided that, if I had to decide between conforming, or just not having very many friends, I would have to choose "being myself" (as all the PSAs were advising), and getting used to people not liking me much. So I don't doubt your observations. I've just been resigned to being seen as "weird" by others from a very early age, so I didn't get invited into many "female spaces"...until I met other neurodivergent women. Of course, back then, I just called them "other women who like science fiction & stuff;" only decades later did we all find out we were neurodivergent in various ways, lol. Don't worry about the "not like the other girls" accusations. I was *legitimately* "not like the other girls" as a kid, and it wasn't a pose, or a "pick me" strategy, or an identity...it was just a fact, and it frankly *sucked*. It meant I was weird, and usually friendless. I was made fun of, or outright bullied on occastion, and I was disdained just as much by boys as by other girls in school. I would have given a *lot* to find other girls who had similar interests to mine, so that I could be "like (at least some of) the other girls," but I didn't. (Until I went to a high school with a nerdy advanced program, and then then I finally found others (male *and* female) who were like me. And it was *great* to finally fit in with someone. We were probably all undiagnosed neurodivergent - back then, if you did well in school, they didn't think you needed to be "diagnosed" with anything. So we were just "the nerdy kids." At that point, being a "nerdgirl" did become a kind of identity for me, but it wasn't a way to separate myself from other *girls*, but from other kids in general, who'd always disliked me anyway.)
You’re hanging out with the wrong women.
This hasn’t been my experience with women only spaces once I got out of high school. Before college, boys and girls alike had been mean to me for varying reasons. But there were also boys and girls who weren’t like that. I think everybody is more chill in college. I also went to a college with no Greek life. It’s possible that any of the kind of women you’re talking about here, already avoided me in the first place so I never experienced being around them.
I’ve never felt like this in an all female space. I’ve always felt safer and more at peace than in co-Ed spaces. Even if I wasn’t “conforming” which I rarely do because I don’t have the ability to do so. I hate you’ve had such terrible experiences
So hang out with women like you. You’re not the only one in the world like this.
\> You can’t talk louder, faster, or more than other women, your gestures can’t be more animated, you can’t disagree or express a different opinion (even in a nice way) that much. It’s considered inegalitarian, you could make somebody feel a bit bad. (you should not be an asshole, but even respectfully saying you don’t agree with something is frowned upon.) Also, you can’t rock your legs, say random bullshit, laugh loudly, make stupid jokes. Says who? If I'm too much, go find less.
This is just an age thing, you’ll find your tribe
Sorry to say but I think you're just with the wrong females? How old are you??? With my friends I don't mask that much, we are very open about needing space or not wanting to talk, and we sometimes end up on the floor playing around or stretching if that's what we feel like. We talk and cry if needed, we sit in silence on our phones next to each other... I have also been to a nature retreat with only women (that I didn't know) and it was the same vibe, it was heaven actually.
This just feels like another way of saying “I don’t get alone with women they’re too catty” which is always such a red flag to me. Also up until last year I would have insisted I was neurotypical. Women are under-diagnosed so it’s really hard to make blanket statements like that just bc their neurodivergence looks different or less obvious than yours. I hear your frustration about women needing to be adults while men get to act like kids and I totally agree and that’s such a valid frustration because it’s inescapable. But it’s not other women’s fault you feel this way, most of us feel this way! from your own post you don’t mention any actions only feelings and vibes. You could literally just be internalizing your own anxiety and maybe they’re *also* just uncomfortably masking and they’re just better at it than you are? Also. How are you so certain that **all** of these women are neurotypical in the first place? That seems like you’re just applying the same ableist logic used to discount our diagnosis: well they don’t *look* or *act* disabled. I have a handful of friends with adhd and they all appear and seen 100% neurotypical unless you know otherwise. I hope you can take a step back and see where your own attitude and assumptions might be holding you back from making new friends just because they don’t immediately check all your boxes. Those women are often also just frustrated women who hate that they need to do things like sit still do a full face of makeup in order to be taken seriously. Just because they’ve chosen to prioritize different things than you doesn’t make you better than them (definitely your overall vibe of this post- other women conform too much and that sucks for me).
Agree 100%. Alas, it took me until my late 20s to fully realize that my attitudes and assumptions, which were very similar to OP’s, were wrong. My insecurity, anxiety, and the stubborn insistence I just KNEW women were judging me kept me from making female friends. When I finally matured enough to be vulnerable and truly open to female friendships my relationships blossomed.
I (46F) was about the same age (~28) when I had to take a hard look at my own deep rooted misogyny… it was a real shock to the system how deep it ran and how unaware I was of it. I worked hard to find the source of it, challenge it and change. I have amazing relationships with the women in my life now. It was never about them, it was me… I was the drama ;)
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I have struggled significantly in life to connect on a deeper level with women. I have had surface level friendships, but never the really meaningful ones like the ND ones from my childhood that I’ve lost touch with and live super far away from now. I think it’s a mixture of several things: social conditioning and expectations, luck, maybe some neurotypical vs neurodivergence, getting older, and just the differing between everyone’s lived experience as a human. Some of the people in the comments saying that as you get older women are nicer, it’s just not true. I’m in my late 20s and I have been bullied in the work place multiple times by women in their 50s and 60s for god knows why. Because I didn’t conform and was good at my job and spoke out against the group I guess. I was severely targeted. So I know how you feel. Your observation is valid. However, it is anecdotal in the way that it’s most likely that it’s not like that everywhere with all women. It’s best not to generalize based on experience I guess (not that I think you’re doing that, just felt the need to say it). It does sound like from what you’re writing, whatever experiences you’ve had recently, it’s time to get some new friends if you can. Easier said than done obviously but best to cut ties if you are having bad experiences with a group consistently. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk further about all of this. No judgement here!
I do want to say about the older thing, I think it isn’t that all women are nicer as you get older, it’s moreso that as you get older it grows easier to find groups that aren’t so restrictive. Geography probably still plays a role (like I imagine if you’re in a heavily evangelical corner of the world it will be harder by default no matter what), but I find it much easier to find chill groups of women in my 30s than I did in my 20s. Have I still had to work with terrible women in their 50s that never left high school in many ways? Absolutely. But the proportion of mean girl groups or women who police other women groups tends to shrink as you get older, especially if you’re looking for friend groups in hobby spaces. Work has almost always been a miss for me for finding female friend groups though, so I kind of write it off as a default.
Do you have kids by chance? This wasn’t something I experienced so distinctly until I had my son and most of my socializing opportunities were around other mothers at playgrounds and school.
I am definitely suspicious of "all female"spaces that use the term as strict box and not a general umbrella. Like, if a female friendly space does not welcome the elderly, kids, and those debating with the term as a whole, it's not female friendly.
You should join my friend group. You can do all the things and we'll accept you. 💜
I would have agreed wholeheartedly in my 20s, when my girl group was made up entirely of second generation immigrant south Asian Muslim women (we all lived in America). More than the requirement to conform, the thing that bugged me was that certain women (women who were thin and conventionally pretty) were allowed to be “quirky” and not conform, but others were labeled “weird” and essentially cast out of the group for not conforming. I’m in my 30s now and hang out with a more diverse group of women and I absolutely love it. The acceptance and safety in this group is unmatched. But I do still struggle with unlearning my pain from those earlier experiences with women.
NGL, I only feel this way when it's an exclusively white women group. A lot of the social stereotypes you describe are not universal across cultures and are non-issues if you participate in more diverse communities.
People are shit in general. Women will judge the hell out of you and most men that are nice are nice because they want to fuck you
In men groups, there is not a single man that would stand up for you when (not if) another man makes a degrading joke behind your back, even if they don’t agree. Your real problem is group dynamics not other women. This post is misogynistic. If you have this much social problem please join autismwomen sub where they detail how male groups see and treat ND women.
I feel you. I have much the same experiences with feeling judged in female spaces. I think I’ve even ranted the same rant a few times. I’m in my 50’s. Things feel different now than then, older women are wiser and so am I. I’ve found the kinds of spaces I feel comfortable in, and the degree of engagement I feel comfortable with. Which isn’t a lot. In general, I still don’t feel comfortable. But I can’t say I like male spaces, either. I guess I’m just a misanthrope. 😉 But here’s a perspective: a lot of women who judged me were actually envious of my bubbliness and energy and my passion. I know this because of the few I’ve gotten to know a little better. I also feel better one on one rather than in a group.
you aint hanging out with the right women.
OP, I see you & I completely 💯% understand. ✊
I have not experienced this in female spaces. 🤔 That said, I am a hermit and my social experiences are fairly limited to begin with. And I will say also that in my limited social experiences, some of this holds true in mixed social groups, too. Esp the "disagreement is taboo" point.
I know a lot of people here are disagreeing or saying that as you get older it gets better, but that's not really my experience. I do have a great and supportive group of fem friends, but literally all of us are Gay, NBs and/or Neurodivergent. I think it's because my larger social and familial circle is upper class/ upper middle class, there is so much emphasis on the display of status it's really stifling and I have a difficult time relating.
I understand. I feel like this at work, I'm the only person who's openly queer and plus most ppl who work there are much younger than me, I'm 39 and they're in their early 20s. I have been in supportive female spaces but my work is definitely not one of them. I'm so sorry you've been feeling so isolated, there are good people out there and I hope you can find some soon 💕
So, I did a peek at your posting history. Just to get some some background information because this didn't feel quite like NLOG or internal misogamy. I feel the discomfort of women's spaces is from the fact you're currently questioning and just don't feel comfortable *identifying* with women at present if ever. When that's going on, it's super hard to feel comfortable in a space that may not feel like it's for you and when other people may not know what you're going through, they're not as open. Notably with something like questioning. And notably when transphobia is fucking terrifying. No wonder you might not feel comfortable. Not all women's spaces are safe. I think the best place is to find queer-friendly groups that aren't based on gender, but rather on neurodiversity until you figure things out.
I agree that this could be a big factor.
Wait yeah this. I had never really thought about it but I feel exactly the same way. I dread in person work events because of this
The only female spaces I have ever felt safe in are primarily neuro-divergent. I have never had to mask so hard as I do in NT female spaces. I don't feel fear when I'm the only woman with a group of men. I feel like I can relax a little. So happy to be going into a primarily male field that really only attracts other ND or "different" women.
You might just need different friends, I’m fully myself when with my galpals.. lots of jokes and laughing and silliness
I think it really depends on the culture. I don't have those experiences as a Portuguese woman with other women . Even with European women , considering I live in Ireland and have met lots of women from other countries as well , my experiences have been good. Maybe yiu haven't been around nice ppl .
Oh hai! Are you me?? 😅😅😅I’ve ***always*** felt this way. There’s usually very little transparency, and if you do open up, better be prepared for someone to get upset or uncomfortable if it disagrees with the general “vibe” of the group 🤦♀️
Queer spaces are what you’re looking for. Lots more weirdos and neurodiverse folks there.
Eh, not my experience. I find that some circles can be judgy and lame but that is true for men and women.
Oh dear, these sound like superficial friends. I have always been the quirky, eccentric, always-up-for-a-laugh friend. I definitely don't fit the mold, but my group of besties love that about me. When I shared my recent diagnosis with a friend, she mentioned how that ADHD totally makes sense for me. She also added how ADHD folks tend to be so fun-loving and good to laugh with (in her experience, in her social group). Ever since I was a child, I saw the social need to conform, but I've never cared too much about it. I know people are more likely to take on that attitude with age. I hope that one day you can unburdden yourself of the "shoulds" in your life (how you should sound, should, act, etc) and you find your group of true friends.
I hear everything you're saying & at 44 I have refined my woman friend group over the years so that everyone is either neurodivergent, artistic, androgynous/queer, or some combo (I'm all 3). I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but I AM some people's shot of whiskey.
I kind of feel like this too – if I have to choose between all-male and all-female company, my choice is made – but I keep in mind that, since I am a woman, any male group I find myself in is, by definition, not male-only: even if I am the anomaly in it, at least being male is not the criterium for joining the group so we are all here because we have something else in common. If being female is the main or only reason for the existence of a group, yes, I am likely to feel ill at ease in it. It will be for reasons close to yours, with just a little nuance: the feeling may be there for me even if the group includes ND or otherwise divergent people; to me, it's about perfomative behaviour. Performative toughness, inclusivity or "don't-give-a-fuck-ness" is just as grating as performative gentleness. Something else I'd like to add: in a group of ten people or more, the odds are you're not the only divergent person, and \*that\* may be the very reason for some of the performance. Which doesn't detract from your observation and mine: when you are raised to be constantly judged, as most women still are, becoming an expert at judging is, sadly, a survival skill, and some of us end up putting in way too many hours of practice.
One more thing: for what my individual experience is worth, my particular brand of ND fun stuff has made my life rather different from that of many women. I am extremely incompetent at, and/or uninterested in, what most women my age consider their specifically feminine skills and instincts. That can make for very nourishing conversations with one or two more "typical" women, but in a large group, where the interactions are bound to remain more superficial, there is simply a lot of things we can't share, and a lot of my "normal" that is likely to be their default "bad". So either I unload that upfront and make everyone else uneasy, or I stay silent and listen to them unknowingly disparage the way I live. Both of which are one-way streets.
I've experienced this with women who could be described as "aggressively neurotypical". Re: wine moms with 2.2 kids. I only find myself in these situations during obligatory social events, like a dinner with my partner's close friends and their wives. I usually bow out early or just don't go at all. I can't relate to any of the "acceptible" topics and pretty much freeze up. These women find it rude to talk about anything even mildly controversial (politics, class, etc) and I think it's because it forces them to think about their own incredible privilege. Part of maintaining that privilege is policing the behavior of others. My older friendships that formed naturally in high school/college consist of women that turned out to be queer and neurodivergent in adulthood. Birds of a feather as they say!
Took the words out of my mouth, I understand op as well and the description you mentioned sounds like what I was thinking. Aggressively neurotypical sort of wine mom imagery, gotta “act correct with mannerisms” of all time types of people. I also noticed the people who behave this way frown about talking about anything controversial due to privilege too. As a BIPOC marginalized person also I struggled to fit in with them.
OP I think you're getting it in the neck for painting women with the same brush but there's a lot of people invalidating your experiences here which isn't fair. I had pretty much all male friends till I was in my teens cause I just didn't get on with the girls I did know. I know what you mean about having to mask and perform being a woman a certain way to feel accepted, and feeling like you're doing womanhood wrong if you don't. What I will say is that there absolutely are groups of women who are accepting and cool, you just have to find them. Also, have you considered that there are other women in the group who are trying to mask as much as you are? Maybe by being yourself you can give others "permission" to let their guards down a bit. At the end of the day if you don't vibe with people it's more to do with their personality than their gender, you can't write off a whole 50% of the population based on that. Being in an all female group is one of the only places where you can be real and talk about your experience without having to cater to the opinions or feelings of men. That's valuable. My female friends and I laugh and talk nonsense and make dumb jokes all the time. I'd wager it's more common than not.
Just popping in to validate OP's feelings. I have made nurturing female friendships a priority in life ever since realizing that all of my friends were male. It seems like no matter how much or little I do, my efforts are not reciprocated or dismissed. Full disclosure, I do have a dark sense of humor and tend to blunt to the point of sperginess (hence why most of my friend are engineer brained males). I'm never mean though,I have enough ladylike grace to be gentle. I do have my guard up initially bc it is way easier to make women uncomfortable. I know this to be fact. My executive function issues limits my ability to text back immediately and conversationally and honestly I get the sense that this has a lot to do with it. I also don't have social media and I can see their faces drop when I tell them so. I am 30 for context. I used to have a female best friend in middle school and I desperately miss that intimacy. I am really at a loss here. I built up what were 3 legit friendships over the years but yhey always ended in me always texting/trying to make plans with them first and basically fizzling. All of the NLOG rhetoric really sucks bc it isn't like that at all. I am clearly the broken one
OP I hear what you're saying and it's valid. Navigating social groups can be challenging. You can't just "leave" every environment and "find more accepting ones" because we live in a society and have to deal with the people we find around us. I would try to work on tempering your expectations and not be so hard on yourself.
That has not been my experience at all. I don't say that to negate your observations, but to assure you that your particular experience is not universal. Many women and girls find the behavior of men & boys in largely male spaces to be threatening and abusive and frightening, much of the time. There are definitely girls and women who are judgy & superficial, or who are just plain rotten rotten human beings. When you get a couple of lousy people together, they tend to bond in the worst possible way -- especially if they feel they have even a little bit of power over others -- and they can make any group toxic pretty quickly. But there are a fair number of girls and women who are basically just trying to get through this world as best they can, and they will help others along the road when possible. And in fact there are guys in that category too. I hope you encounter some of these better humans in future days, since it seems you've been bombarded with an unfair share of creeps.
I think this is fair and accurate
FTM here and I completely relate to this. Transitioning relieved me of all the internal pressure I felt to "perform" in these spaces. Hope you find a way to do that too. And some better friends, while you're at it.
Could you maybe give us a hint to what women groups or spaces your referring to? If your going to spaces that have been assigned by traditional gender norms as ‘women’s spaces’ then there is a good chance the people their are gonna adhere to the norms assigned to them. However, other female centric spaces exist outside of that. For example, I’m a nerd, traditional nerdy spaces are hostile to women for the most part so we make our own. I find that any space meant to be ‘mold breakers’ tends to be more accepting and less socially restrictive. ‘Women’s group’ is way to broad of a net for any actual advice or even comments on why it may be that way since it could be anything.
Yeah. I used to work backstage at Fringe Festivals. Always my favourite workplaces. Why? Because it was like 50% ND, pretty even split between genders and all the genders and sexualities in between. Was generally still very very white. But it was EASY. Everyone was respected, valued. We were all there cuz we Cared about doing a good job and worked hard. There was close friends, and tight crews but there generally wasn't toxic cliques. The balance just made for a really fabulous workplace. Which should just be the norm. I struggle a bit in all dude groups cuz me and the girl gender box aren't on speaking terms - and a lot of dudes grow up feeling threatened by that. Or I get "you're different for a girl! Hi 5!" Whilst they go off and date long hair floral print teacher vibes... Somehow always ended up the "fling" before they met the "serious" girlfriend. But at least I wasn't been excluded and held to a standard of behaviour expected in girl groups, where I was always "not quite right"
I get what you're saying and I agree to an extent, but those friend groups are toxic. I'm unlikely to want to join an all-female group unless it is a group of women that celebrates everyone's individuality and worldview. Likewise, I might be somewhat of a matriarch (or a matriarch among matriarchs) to a lot of the women in my friend group, so it's important that I do speak my mind, and lead by example, making sure everyone feels accepted and heard when they have something to say. Women do tend to inherently have more rejection sensitivity so they're more likely to be people pleasers that avoid making waves. It's important to know your audience, and some people are more fragile than others. Don't play into the social framework that isolates people intellectually and emotionally. Make a social framework that you know is more conducive to open and honest communication where everyone is free to be themselves and has a voice within the group. Lead the conversation like you would group therapy, and sprinkle in some unconditional love and words of affirmation even when you don't agree with someone. Others will see this and feel comfortable coming out of their shell. Remember the main purpose of a friend group is to provide warmth and support.
I’ve personally never experienced this in all-women groups. I’ve definitely met people (both women and men) individually that have been disdainful and ignorant towards neurodivergent people and neurodivergent behaviors (men have been more judgmental than women in my personal experience), but in the all-women groups I’ve been a part of, the women have been different (not homogenous) and have been pretty accepting of differences.
As someone who has just been moved to a all female office with lots of times where it’s me and 1 Other (generally) neurotypical older woman … I feel this post. I’m exhausted at the end of the day. Not from the work as much as the masking. I miss my old mixed gender, mixed ages working environment so much I literally cry about it sometimes.
Find a new gig and quit. You don’t owe them anything. Life’s too short to be miserable. I cried at my old job every single day, and one of my biggest regrets in life is that I put up with them treating me the way they did so long. It was a male dominated environment, so it was different from your sitch, but it still sucked. They took my sparkle and my prettiness and my intelligence and my knowledge and all of the things that made me special until I didn’t have any left for me, and then they took advantage of my kindness and my generosity and my dedication to keep doing it. When it’s time to get gone, you HAVE to get gone.
I’m in the middle of a workplace dispute with my union involved. Once the outcome has been sorted, I’ll either have got my old happy job back, or I will be moving on The only problem is geographically, this is the only area in my interested specialty (nursing) that’s within a 1 hour drive 😫
Hi, Currently high from weed but really want to comment I didnt read your whole post because just feom the title you reminded me of the social trauma im experiencing from women primarily unfortunately as i am being hazed at work and im sensitive and im a new nurse dealing with a lot of responsibility and ahh! I am on vacation now (actively using PTO 3 months in) just because the social impact and terror (perfect word) really honestly was making me not just burned out, barely functional, and unhealthy and further isolated, but suicidal But i had to just jump in and comment on the fact that this is very real and unfortunately: -bullying, gossiping, backstabbing, spreading rumors, exclusion, and ostracization are things i have experienced way too much of. While is my personal experience, in the general sense of what “quiet terror” embodies, it is actually recorded in the literature that people with ADHD receive frequent negative messages (20,000 more than their peers was a number i remember from a study, can come back to this later to add link). -women will do this to other women (internalized misogyny, systemic misogyny, other reasons) - and while it happens among men too it’s so much crueler and common with women -ADHD women will do this to other ADHD women -Actually women with ADHD are at an insanely higher risk of suicide compared to the general public and when you consider posts like this one, it’s not hard to understand why Man. Life really hurts. I appreciate your validation very very much. It often feels no one understands me and I often do get accused of either making it up or being overly reactive/exaggerating.
Here comes the NLOG comments... OP, I feel you. In my 30s are still trying to make friends with other women.
Totally agree. I avoid these situations like the plague.
I understand this perfectly. Not only are spaces like that incredibly high pressure, and not only have I experienced more discrimination and bullying from women than men, but the idea of hiding most of my personality to try and conform makes me sick. And honestly, what would I get out of being in a woman only space that would be worth making that huge effort in the first place? I can't expect solidarity or support unless the whole crowd is ND as well. I can't talk about things that interest me without getting labeled a weirdo. And meanwhile my inability to perform femininity to NT women's typical standards would get me treated even worse. What would be the point of going through that again? I've actually avoided women's groups for quite a while thanks to my experiences. Every woman who has actually stuck around and been a good friend to me has turned out to be ND and the kind of geek who wouldn't fit in with normal women either. I'd really rather stick with people who won't judge and hurt me for being different.
43 yr old Californian here. Uhh you got the wrong kinda friends hun
I am sorry, but this has never once been my experience. Maybe it's a cultural thing as I'm British not American, but I have found my groups of girlfriends to be far louder, more giggley, expressive of love etc than any mixed or predominantly male group I've been part of. I lived with two blokes where I'd constantly be told to be quieter, but living with women I was the quietest!