I really appreciate your concern and understand how you read that into what I said. You're clearly a very caring person. However, my family are not even the slightest bit abusive. My family have loved and protected me my whole life, and I repay them by being autistic. What a fantastic daughter I am - not.

I am a bit worried by this:

Sickle Moon said:

I just feel defective, judged by everyone, and guilty for what I've done to my famil

Are you family actually judging you as defective and guilty of being in their life?

In that case it is very sad that your family are so discriminatory and abusive of you. You need to cut contact with them.

Call WomansAid

I think you are being abused and it erodes your self esteem and sense of self generally. You need to get away from that and rebuild yourself, push back.

It is always OK to be you.

If you are autistic, it is always OK to be autistic, because it is who you are. Love yourself.

If other people don't love and value you for who you are, it is their loss, they are toxic for you, stop contact with them.

If they are close family, you really need to kick them out of your life. They are not doing what family is for. Family is for unconditional love and support.

Hummmm? lol

The fact that you said that you wanted a baby to prove that you were a woman is what has many of us concerned. Things are obviously very difficult for you right now and I imagine that you are under a great deal of stress, it is none of my business but if I can offer an opinion I would say that having a baby under the conditions you describe would be an act of selfishness and I believe that your child would be adversely affected by being your sole source of validation, which, as your horizons seem to be set quite close to you is highly likely.  I apologise for being blunt but a child should not have so much expectation placed upon it-nor shoulder the responsibility for the level of your self-esteem.

Also, bringing up a bay alone is extremely hard work even for the most NT types who know how to navigate their way through the various hurdles of life by having circles of friends all with similar life experiences, we autistic people do not always pull that off and as the child can be very demanding many single parents spend a lot more time at home alone, so unless you are a very well-balanced and fairly confident woman this can be extremely depressing. 

I am not unsympathetic but I believe that you should talk to your Doctor-I do hope that it is a Female GP!-you need to find out what steps you can take to make your world into a more conducive place for a child to enter into and thrive. This will not happen overnight and will be hard-going but if that gets too much, being a single mum is infinitely more difficult.

So think very carefully before you go out looking for a sperm donor ( by the way, do you think HIV/AIDS is a thing of the past?) A baby will take over your life and you need to be on top of the job or it will wear you out and both of you will suffer-it would be worse for the child because none of it  was of their choosing but they will pay the price.

Sermon over.

Hello Sickle Moon ,  From what you have posted it does make sense that there is a lot to think about around becoming pregnant to be a mother !  There is nothing wrong at all in wanting to be a parent !    Have you talked to your GP about wanting to become a mother ?  Some of the things such as having unprotected sex with men ,  who as you said can be rough and hurt you , I honestly believe however difficult it is that you let your GP or Practice Nurse know this is happening ! 

well said!

Could be a lady boy but I must not discriminate against you because of the Equality Act 2010 

People think it's ok to be autistic because it IS ok to be autistic.

It's also ok to feel that you're judged by everybody and understandable to feel guilty about the behaviours autism prevents you from avoiding.

You're not defective though, you don't have a man's condition and your identity belongs to you and not others that mislabel you. Live your life your way.

Nice phrase Foxtrot Oscar Hahaha! I will have to make use of that.

Hold on a minute, everyone is unique and before you were diagnosed you were OK but now you are not.  You have unique talents that are strengths and just look at the diagnosis as one piece in the journey through life.  

Not every man/woman has empathy, some struggle to show/demonstrate love/care but that is how they are.  With our condition too we can take things literally, to heart, personally, guilty and put themselves down.  

I felt guilty for letting the Bullying Damagement make me a mental "basket case" but I now know I have the strength to stand tall and know I can change their world.

My philosophy has always been take me as I am or Foxtrot Oscar.

Take some baby steps, do what you enjoy and do best and build your confidence back up because with.without that piece of paper (Diagnosis) you are still the same person.

Maybe I'm a man then, I don't have kids, but last time I looked I wasn't. So if you think you are male because of your diagnosis then that means the rest of us females on here must be too?

This is quite possibly the saddest post I have ever read. You are femail and you can be as female as you want but to give your body to just anybody is so wrong how will you ever learn to love respect yourself when you continue to abuse yourself and let others abuse you.

Having a child is something I have never done and partly because I never met anybody I felt strongly enough about and partly because I didn't love myself either, its improving now but I get the feeling I am a lot older than you are.

If you cant love yourself or allow yourself to be loved how can you ever think you would be able to give a baby all the love and attention it needs.

Stop trying to fix yourself by abusing your body.

Reading this thread has really concerned me! I’m really sorry that no one wanted you to be a little girl when you were young, is sounds as though you’ve had to fight for your femininity for a long time. Being autistic doesn’t make you any less feminine or female though, you can still be as girly as you want to be. I’m also really sorry that you miscarried at 7 weeks, I’ve had 3 miscarriages and I know how rubbish it is when it happens. I am however really worried that you’re letting yourself get used by countless random guys just to try and have a baby. As well as allowing yourself to be completely disrespected you’re also running a very high risk of catching an STD, some of which are not curable and having such a disease would make it a lot more risky to ever have children. Children deserve to know where they have come from so they can have a proper sense of identity, it’s not fair for anyone to know they were the result of a meaningless one night stand, that could potentially cause all manor of emotional problems for them when they were older. Bringing up children is hard work too and it’s a lot harder on your own. I have 3 children, I had my eldest when I was very young and split from her father when she was a baby, he still saw her, he still sees her now but it was me that got ‘left holding the baby’ and it was really really hard work and I still sometimes feel that I failed my daughter because I was so young and inexperienced when I had her. With my younger two, it’s still hard work because children are hard work but it’s a lot easier having a husband to share the load with and I feel it’s a lot more emotionally stable for them too. I really feel that it would be wise for you to see  a counsellor or similar as it sounds like there are a lot of things bothering you and it would be beneficial to talk through these issues with a professional person.

Why do people think it's OK to be autistic?

Pragmatism. If you have a life long condition with no course of treatment and no cure you can either hate hate hate it and marinade yourself in anger and self-loathing or accept it and attempt to salvage your self-worth and keep on living. Abandon your ideas of gendered illnesses. Autism effects human brains, end of.

You are right, women can present very differently to men and until recently that was not recognised at at women were dismissed and misdiagnosed as the testing was designed around males. It is only now that it is starting to become known that women can be very different in presentation but there is still no male/ female test I know the university of Kent is developing one but at the moment it is still just a standard one that is open for interpretation by the professional performing it. 

This should take nothing away from your femininity my daughter is very girly and she is awaiting assessment, however my other daughter is the world's biggest tomboy and neurotypical so it is really down to what you believe about yourself, I'm not autistic but I'm certainly not what you would define as feminine! I am a woman but the unrealistic portrayal of femininity is beyond me I'm a bit more practical about things.

Hi Sickle Moon. You have an identity crisis, I can understand that. I first suspected I was "Aspie" when I saw a woman in a documentary about Autism and realised I was a lot like her. There are lots of us women in this forum, but as we are visual learners perhaps it would help for you to actually see images or videos of autistic women, to help you understand that being autistic and female is much more common than most people realise. There was a documentary on tv a while back featuring autistic women but I don't know if it's still available in the internet. Perhaps search on YouTube to find something similar.

I did find some photos and personal accounts of autistic women on the BBC website though - 

www.bbc.co.uk/.../women_late_diagnosis_autism

Have a look at them, it may help you come to terms with your own identity. Good luck.

I don't know if there are two different "tests", I don't think that they use different tests for male/female. Regardless of what you think aspergers affects both males nd females and it is a medical fact! You are the one that seems to have decided that it's a boys only thing, it's not, as I said and I miscounted I have 3 female friends that are diagnosed, 2 of them are as feminine as feminine gets.

I love kids, but I'd never want one of my own. wanting children is one thing, beaing able to care for them is another and as much as you love a child having one to prove you are a woman will not help either of you long term.

Make some space for yourself before you make space for anyone else, whoever they may be - one-night-standers, lovers, partners, babies.  Try to learn who you are first.  Don't try to sidetrack that.

It was no too long ago that being intelligent was seen as being unfeminine as women were not supposed to be exposed to education involving literature, maths and science - all because boys and men were the ones who were educated and then went onto established roles in society.  Women had to be quiet, submissive and demure - they had to be good at sewing, the arts and possibly music if you were luckily enough to come from an upper class background.  If that was today's benchmark for feminine, would you be aiming for this?

I am by no means feminine in the traditional terms, but I certainly class myself as a woman and I am 100% certain of my gender, therefore I don't feel the need to prove anything to anyone.

I would just sense check where this benchmark of feminine you are aiming for has come from?  If it is so hard to achieve in your eyes, then is it realistic and is it really you?

Acceptance and self-care would be a good first step and then takes things from there.