how and why to be ladylike (for women with autism)

Sun Feb 15 2026

being overtly sexy hijacks people’s attention on a level that they don’t have much control over–and the overt hate/dislike that they respond with is an attempt to wrest back some control over their responses. it’s simple epistemic hygiene. and the girls don’t like it bc they feel competed with and defected against and they feel it’s unfair and unpleasant. when they feel unfairly competed against sexually, they are going to respond by upping the social competition, and it will suck for ppl like us because we have already established we are not good at that

when you’re sexually attractive to a man you’re talking to, it hijacks some of his attention, and it’s not easy for him to wrest it back. sorry for sounding like a middle aged schoolteacher explaining dress code to you. overt tits and ass hit the hardest with this but showing lots of leg & fetishy shit does too. the thing is he won’t really mind when he feels like you might be having sex, but if it ever becomes clear that that’s definitely not happening, then frequently the tool he will use to wrest some of his hijacked attention back from you, is feeling negative feelings about you. another aspect is that he might feel that he could never hijack attention in the same way, that he could look good but what you are doing to him is something he’s incapable of–so the easiest, most available go-to negative is resentment, which is very poisonous. people don’t like feeling manipulated unreciprocally without payoff.

I think there is also a mirror of the strategies you laid out, but for men - by replacing "attractiveness" with "desire". For men, we can hide our desire - which is tempting because the desire seems embarrasing or risky. Or we can be really overt in our desire - which while authentic risks being creepy by forcing people to deal with our desire even when they don't want to. But better is to show desire in light, plausibly deniable ways that allow women to either engage with it or not as they please, and where it gradually escalates as she shows availability and interest, and de-escalates when she doesn't.