'We all have masculine/feminine behaviours - that's a fact'

I have suspected ASD so I always come out as androgynous, and am dutifully told I need to develop behaviours that I know I cannot in order to succeed

I don't begin to understand what androgynous means in this context.

On a purely work sense there are behaviours everyone needs to develop to succeed. In my field technical ability is a given to get anywhere but there are softer social skills which are also important if one has a client facing role, or indeed just getting on with colleagues and fellow professionals. These are not masculine or feminine matters.

Then no, there are no behaviours that are male or female. What there is is a hierarchy of beliefs and behaviours that have at various points in time been designated masculine and feminine. So, taking your "putting on make-up for success" thing which would make me want to bite people at various times in history it was a masculine trait to wear make up, whereas now it is seen as feminine, no doubt this will change again in the fullness of time.

The "people with ASD lack empathy" thing pisses me off, especially as many studies are now suggesting that they have more empathy than NT people but have to mask it because who wants to feel what others feel all the time?

There are no such things as male/female behaviours, only behaviours to which a label has been attached, most likely as a form of social control.

ASD workshops are bloody irritating. I found amateur drama classes much more effective for learning neurotypical camouflage.

Entirely on your side, Albadross. I'd find it more than a little bit annoying, I'd be very pissed off. (Was this a workshop through your workplace?) I agree with Xenophile that there are heavily socialised behaviour patterns which I would argue are "real" in the sense of having real-world impacts (usually detrimental to women, and to men who aren't "hyper-masculine"), but aren't "real" in the sense of natural or innate.

And you can certainly find a 101 books of the Lean In variety telling women how to adjust their (socialised) behaviour to get on better in a man's world. The trouble is that not only are these often slightly ridiculous (learn to speak with a lower-pitched voice) sometimes they become contradictory - for instance the issue of whether to negotiate hard for salaries. It's often said that women bring low salaries on themselves by not negotiating at entry to a job - but at the same time studies show that women are penalised as "pushy ball breakers" when they do negotiate. It's the classic double whammy - you're told that to get on you have to adopt masculine behaviours, then when you display them (often to a lesser extent than the average man) you're sidelined for being too aggressive.

It's like a professional version of the Daily Mail sidebar of shame - thigh gap = anorexic, normal body shape = fat. We will screw you over which ever side of the arbitrary line you fall on. So, lower your voice, but not too much or you become absurd. Don't dress "provocatively" (whatever that means), but you must still look feminine, but not too feminine (or you become too fluffy to take seriously). Negotiate hard, but magically know exactly where to stop (somewhere short of the normal behaviour of the average male salesperson or manager) or you become ball-breaking.

Just asserting 'that's a fact' does not make it true.

I would find it more than annoying. Gender is designed to create a hierarchy with women and girls at the bottom. I want to get rid of that hierarchy.

What behaviours do they want you to develop? I'm an introvert and sometimes have been told that I need to change my behaviour to 'raise my profile' or something like that. It's just not realistically going to happen like that for me.

To be honest, I think ASD workshops can be a little bit alienating.

I remember being told a story at an Early Bird workshop about an ASD child throwing stones at a squirrel because unlike all the other children, he didn't understand 'how the squirrel felt'.

More accurately, nobody knows how a squirrel 'feels', but I suspect NT children pick up more easily on what behaviour is acceptable within a particular group. Certainly, plenty of children throw stones at animals and they aren't all autistic.

Who knows which skills are masculine or feminine? To communicate well you need to be able to decode a lot of micro communication - tone of voice, small facial movements. Maybe women are better at this than men, but it's difficult to tell how much of that is nature and how much nature. Certainly I suspect it's difficult to focus on micro communications if you have a sensory processing disorder.

However, even if the whole thing is deeply irritating, it's probably best to take what you can out of the experience. It doesn't sound like a good venue for discussing gender theory, even if you are right.

Well, masculine and feminine traits have been defined by psychologists, and they have demonstrated that people have both.

The problem seems to be that you are being asked to change your behaviour, not the acknowledgement that some traits are defined as masculine and some as feminine.

But I hope we do eventually move on from defining traits that way, and it becomes only a historical fact.

Yes. So called masculine versus feminine behaviours are a red herring if one is suggesting they are innate, there are however heavily socialised gender behavioural norms which are arbitrarily designated masculine or feminine, often due to the amount of power and social cachet they carry with them. Masculine behaviours tending to have the lions share of societally designated "positive" or "powerful" behaviours.