real girls + real boys

i am a real girl. Those are real boys.

Max Schneider is this really, really skilled comedy Tik Toker who makes every day neuroses of being a massive guy simp come to life for me. With the subtlest captions and enactments, he has so many, especially men, in their 20’s and 30’s in a chokehold of like, wow I relate to that and I’m a little hurt bro.

His Tik Toks tend to make nods to direct everyday experiences or neurotic thoughts that guys have while in the messy world of dating — when they’re in denial of the reality of a situationship, when they’re freshly getting to know someone and sussing out how it’s going, when they’re insecure about their appearance or hobbies etc.

He’s really quite funny, in a novel way, with how he sets the music and films the dramatization without going overboard. I noticed right away that thousands of people I’m connected to on IG follow Max, and any of his Tik Toks have a given number of likes from my mutuals. He’s objectively hit notes with a good number of what is a pretty diverse demographic of people I know. Quite great.

At first, I thought he was hilarious and wanted more. So I kept watching, and watching. I started off laughing, then I started crying. Because that stupid fucking voice is back! The voice that’s like, “This is about other girls, you are not in this demographic. You aren’t like other girls. Just roll over and die.” That voice that thinks it’s too good to be true to realize how sensitive men are, that they’re not just these avatars for various traumas that me and many women have shared.

For a moment, I gave in to that voice’s negativity. Again, I felt too uncool to be the kind of girl that would make a guy throw up his hands and fret over her being flown to Miami, be analyzed at every turn, be watched over and lusted after from thirst traps, be so obsessed with that the boys have to play it cool when she’s around. The memories came flooding in to reinforce this—

And then I laughed, really fucking hard, because I could see how hard I’ve worked to not be like other girls to cope with how hard it is to be fucking autistic and stop feeling like a loser who has to play another game.

FUCK THAT!

I realized I had to write a Substack about this and just be really fucking real with myself here. I’m sick and tired of questioning shit and enabling myself when it comes to dating. Because you know what? It’s not really about dating, after all. It’s about personhood, period, which I have a twisted relationship with. It’s about how without explicit, agonizingly detailed communication as an autistic person, it’s really fucking hard to get thrown into this world and figure out what’s going on.

It’s about acknowledging other people’s personhoods.

Max’s Tik Toks trigger me precisely because it reminds me of how men are real people and many, many women besides me don’t realize how often we forget this.

And for me, at least the wash of humiliation of turning it on myself every time — that I must not exist in the real world where plenty of real men I can’t read are! — gives me fodder to try to “realisize” (the opposite of romanticize) people. I’m now fully clued in to how disconnected and numbed out I am and dedicated to changing it.

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When I was 23, I wrote this piece called Call Me Sexy that got a lot of traction on Medium. (Wordpress link if you can’t read it) It was about my relationship to being sexy, to figuring out my relationship to attraction and romance and attention, to being desired. I want to be real to men, I would wail. I want to be real so bad.

Several lovers later, I figured out the problem with that essay (but not 23 year old me, she was doing her bestest) was it didn’t tackle the fundamental idea of well are men real to me. Like, I complain so much about shit, but I’ve never taken full responsibility for how much I live in my head when it comes to a lot. Especially with guys.

It might be worth writing some companion piece like, “If I Call You Sexy Do I Still Acknowledge You’re A Person, Hot Boy?” because I do think women objectify men all the time on the basis of not having rich inner lives of their own. And even if we try our best not to, and even if it’s not explicitly about physical lust etc. we really don’t have a great model of a guy’s inner world unless our dad was very present in our lives.

With a massive ton of guy friends now, I’ve been told I’m a “hyper social connector” in the year I’ve spent in New York, and some people are surprised I have such a hard time with dating when I have so many guy friends who are down to help. But trauma beat into you is here to stay — and it’s interrupted the part where I can model the guy I’m trying to date is possibly the same type of guy that my good friend who tells me everything about his dreams and fears is.

I’m pretty good at talking to people and listening to them, because when there’s zero stakes involved, I do believe men have feelings and don’t trip and fall on this basis. There’s no load-bearing reason I can’t afford to believe they do if it’s not a question of “it’s my ass or theirs.” Avoidant-ass me can completely front as a normal, friendly, open girl until the moment of truth arises and I have to believe that I am not alone in my experience of complex, intense feelings that often want comfort and validation and reassurance from a specific person and forget every defense mechanism I’ve put into place by myself over the years.

It took me forever to realize recently I’m allowed to crave the warmth of another when I’m at my lowest, and that men feel 100% this way too, possibly even about me, yet often have zero access to feeling free to express this. This inherent lack of extra padded benefit of the doubt, will leave you fucked up if you don’t model men correctly in your head, or view them as inferior because you haven’t checked your own humility.

I’ll turn right around and find myself still brainwormed as fuck by other women at times, and I try my best to not feel bad for feeling bad, yet everywhere I go on Twitter or Tik Tok or Instagram or even in the overheard conversations on the streets of NYC, I see women in the groupchats, the DMs, the tweets, the stories, all often being very mad at the men in their lives without a fair shake. I’ve also noticed it no longer is about whether you’re dating, situationship’d, friends with benefits, married — straight women simply take men at their word or their implicit signals crossing wires and are quick to think they don’t have rich inner lives. (Meanwhile I see way less content about how women interact with one another and the perils of our queen bee systems, because I guess it’s just a less mysterious and more complex topic).

To be honest, it’s really hard to get access to proper intel and advice because you can really only model things from explicit experience. Googling dating advice or asking your female friends you trust more often won’t work. Also, if you have 1:1 guy best friends who are on the level to where you can actually get valid advice, those will probably not be sustainable too, as opposed to if you get initiated into a collective of guy friends who know each other so there’s less pressure on specific female friendships, but may not be super honest with each other about helping each other learn the ways of the other gender. I actually believe guys and girls often can’t be 1:1 close friends on the basis that the distribution of pure intimacy makes needs misaligned, so even if it’s not explicitly about sex or romantic attraction, there is a gap missing of how fungible the girl and the guy are to each other. In theory, if there was a co-ed group of friends where people shared intimately with one another pretty evenly, I think 1:1 close friendships in that context work.

To be honest, I spent a good 6 years in LA without many guys in my life other than whichever situationship I was stuck in. I just didn’t really have access to men that wanted to connect and understand themselves enough to voice what was going on for them and also explain it. I’ve also never had guy friends as intensely reflective as the current ones I have, and I think it’s honestly a matter of age, intersecting interests, and the luck of the draw that I’m in a community where people are trying to figure out philosophy, psychology, and self reflection for sport anyway. It sucks, because I do legitimately enjoy them more sometimes precisely because it is less full of red tape to interact with them when my mommy issues flare up, yet when push comes to shove and I want to do their kind justice in romantic contexts, I find myself fumbling to say the right words with the good faith that I wish was intrinsic to my reflexes.

Does this excuse my inability to model men? No, but it highlights that I’m not alone but this problem is almost more in need of solving once the shame has melted away and I accept that fact.

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Anyhoo, I’ve journaled about my trouble modeling men for the better part of three years but made such little progress in fully internalizing the lived experiences of men who have feelings. It’s embarrassing to say this aloud, like yes I just celebrated my father’s birthday who I barely really feel seen by ever even if he didn’t abuse me uh huh… and I fear getting judged, but the truth is the average woman I talk to has even less of an understanding of this. That’s why there’s videos that parody toxic adages like, “If he wanted to, he would.” Heterofatalism and intrasexual competition has never been higher, and the commodification of dating apps has rendered people paralyzed with anxiety around connection, which is something Max’s content really gets at.

I’ve realized I will stop asking, “am I real to men?” when I myself accept I am covering up the question of, “do I believe men are real people like me?” And once I stop justifying it as, “well look I have so many male friends!”

It sucks to feel so bad, and like what, are my guy friends and lovers going to now be afraid of me because I admitted that aloud I have trouble not objectifying you guys? Well, if it helps, this is probably my biggest reason for why I don’t take personally if guys objectify my body… because I’m objectifying your hearts too…

Because over the course of watching Max’s Tik Toks, I started feeling very much like I was in middle school again. Which is funny, because the topics he’s covering are very much present day 2023, and zillennialcore, yet I suddenly felt terror wash over me as if I was standing in line at the cafeteria watching the popular boys talk about shit I didn’t understand, or as if I was again in front of a boy I liked who was dared to tell me he liked me and ran away when I excitedly said I reciprocated. All of these somatic feelings were flowing over me again from a time where deep intimate honesty was inaccessible, and I was so fed up from this happening yet couldn’t break through and use my voice in any meaningful way.

Over and over again, I hear this voice that’s like, “you aren’t real, no one cares about you.” I know it’s from the days I used to sit on the swings listening to only my own thoughts crying because I didn’t know how to play with other kids. Skill issue, but not inherent flaw.

What other thoughts are there now, though, that I think I’ve ignored? I listened closer. “What else isn’t real?” I asked this ghostly voice from 2005. It replied: “Boys. Boys aren’t real.” I squinted, crossed my arms, huffed, and sat with some things I haven’t let myself face in a very, fucking, long time. “If they were real, how could they have hurt me so bad?” The voice wails.

But then I think about it, and I’m very stern with the voice and I remind her:

“It’s okay if they hurt you, ya know. It’s okay to be hurt. Yet an eye for an eye will make the world blind.”

If boys aren’t real to me and I don’t try to believe anyway, why the fuck would one feel safe ever dating me?

If boys aren’t real to me, how have I acted in such ways that make me feel less accessible as a person and make me less real to other people?

Why should I punish boys for the mistakes of past boys?

It’s not about changing your behavior purely, looking for the guidebook of, “How to be a good girlfriend who doesn’t objectify her boyfriend, 15 tips to try today!” It’s more about, can you reconcile the person next to you is also a human? Can you put that as a seed into your internal world and let it grow into a vine of understanding you can bend to your will?

…Avoidant ass people are terrible at this, haha…

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Funny because after I literally binged all of Max’s Tik Toks over the course of a night while home alone, it hit me like a flight of bricks right in the autism that reifying things is going to have to stay a priority. It’s truly terrifying to realize how disconnected I feel from the average person’s human experience of me simply because I let trauma get in the way for so many years, to where I was watching actual content that applied to me without being able to fathom that there are men out there thinking these same thoughts as Max about me. I’m told I’m terrifying to piss off. I’m told I have a praise kink. I have probably made men light up and wilt based on how my tone shifts, yet I’m too busy thinking they’re just going to go off and hurt me if I let myself admit they’re attractive. Yet I can’t reconcile the view from the outside, of men feeling things about me.

I feel I can understand the concept of people respecting me, thinking good thoughts about me like, “Nice, she is good at talking,” or “Nice, she has a lot of friends.” Filling in the blanks that there are emotions about these facts, emotions about my actions, is going to take some time. Especially with men I have feelings for. But I’m working on it, and I yearn for reassurance that you would give me grace in the process and appreciate how hard I’m trying to beat the odds.

So now, every time someone in my head goes, “You’re not real, you’re not a real woman,” I’ll go, “The people looking at me are real men who want me to be a real woman. Do I want to join them?”

Real women can actually talk and say how they feel without getting ridiculed. Real men can listen to it and feel emotions — happiness, fear, intrigue — and no matter what they say or do, they’ll stay real to me.