I'm starting to wonder if there are just too many differences between my beliefs and those of my friends

[BeyondPink]

If it were just one or two things then I'd work with it, but it seems I am constantly having to either disagree with a majority or leave things unchallenged. I'm annoyed, it's taken a lot for me to find a group I fit in with, but on some subjects I feel like I don't know them at all.

99.9% of the time I challenge, but I was already considering posting this thread the other day anyway about this, and I decided the way "around" it was to only challenge if it directly impacts my own DCs, cause I'm sick of the mental energy I am wasting on what feels like a lost cause.

The example that led to me posting today was someone saying to her son "boys can't like pink". Aren't adults supposed to know better than this?

I end up coming away from socialising feeling bloody lonely, and it's really wearing me down.

Trouble is, we don't know the full situation, OP. You might a) be a terrific intellectual snob who has always thought yourself to be a cut above the rest of the world or you might b) really live in a morass of the incorrigibly small-minded, who've never thought for themselves and wouldn't understand that someone might want to.
Or even both...
If a) well, there is more that unites us than divides us, and you don't have to agree with your friends about everything, and you are allowed to talk about the banal and everyday. So someone thinks a boy shouldn't wear pink? Well, she's being daft, but, you know, it's just convention, not necessarily any more sinister than putting little girls in skirts and little boys in trousers. It probably isn't worth falling out about. Look for the positive in people.. and in yourself.
If b) - to be honest, i do actually sympathise. I've been in workplaces where the women all talked about diets and crap telly all day and it can feel so horribly, horribly lonely. Can you find people to talk to who are linked by something other than having babies? Book group? Friends of the Park? Local activism on something or other? Perhaps you could work out what interests you, and follow that.
Actually, though, I've met some brilliant people at baby singing. The fact that it's a music group seems to weed out quite a lot of the boring ones.
I think we need to have friendships at different levels, from the banal everyday chatting acquaintanceships to the deep-and-meaningful-soulmate conversations to the intense intellectual debate. They all fulfil a particular role, and they're all valuable and valid, but not all relationships can be everything to you.

I have aspergers so have always struggled to feel a sense of belonging but I understand this too op. I didn't realise just how many people were fully subscribed to the boy brain, girl brain stuff before I had dd. It always seemed natural to me, for example, to not dress my dd in lacey/frilly items of clothing, partly because of asd related sensory issues of my own - I remember finding stuff like that incredibly itchy and uncomfortable when I was a child and hated being dressed that way, but also because I have never seen the point of it unless it's a special occasion (I know that second part is weird, I know a lot of people like to see kids dressed up) .. But I've had comments about her looking like a boy/wearing boys clothes. When imo she was wearing just normal stuff that I'd wear myself if it was in my size. And similarly I've bought her a range of toys and let her play with what she seems interested in. She went through a phase (well still ongoing) of loving trains and a friend said "that's a strange thing for a little girl to play with". I found her opinion really strange... I don't understand it.

And of the people I know the same ones who say things like "boys are naturally this way, and girls are naturally that way" are the same ones who wouldn't let their boy play with a doll or buy their girl a toy car, when the children do show an interest in them. I don't understand it at all. Is it a form of homophobia.. Are they scared the child playing with the wrong toy will be turned into a homosexual? Or maybe it's partly fear of standing out and not following what everyone else does.

I’m the same, OP. Both at work, with family, and friends outside. Tedious, is what it is. I mostly just spend time with OH, my pets, and feminists online!

Yes smiths, I wonder that myself - is it just me? Am I just being a snob, thinking everyone is beneath me, a grown-up female Adrian Mole?
I dont think so as there are people I connect with online, just not in my real life. But I do wonder...

Kat, I'm also autistic. That was probably something relevant that I've now dripfed 😬

Writers, yes it is tedious! And so draining. that you struggle to :(

I just told dh. He doesn't get it at all, which was a little surprising. I guess the difference in how I feel I have to hide myself and he doesn't is probably what makes this relevant to FWR

*struggle TOO

I will add kat, that I wonder if it is being autistic that contributes towards it being so hard for me to go with the flow with different viewpoints; maybe I'm being rigid where others might cope better. Hmm...

I will add kat, that I wonder if it is being autistic that contributes towards it being so hard for me to go with the flow with different viewpoints; maybe I'm being rigid where others might cope better. Hmm...

Yes actually very good point. I definitely struggle to go with the flow in that way.

You might a) be a terrific intellectual snob who has always thought yourself to be a cut above the rest of the world or you might b) really live in a morass of the incorrigibly small-minded, who've never thought for themselves and wouldn't understand that someone might want to.

In fairness, if there's someone still in the OP's environment who thinks that boys having any form of contact with pink will Catch the Gay (or whatever it is they actually fear -- who knows?), I don't think it's indicative that the OP is in any sense an 'intellectual snob'. It's hardly sitting about at baby groups quoting de Beauvoir and Cixous in the original French , is it?

I feel the same. A topic comes up, I always says “well I think blah blah blah”, they all look at each other like wtf is she talking about and it goes quiet. I am accused of overthinking things or being too stubborn in my ideals. I have friends who I can talk to about deeper issues but they are old friends and any topic can be discussed. Newer friends on the same wave length are harder to find.

Dh thinks I am depressed and catastrophising

beyondpink i have learned to pick my battles because otherwise I would always be disagreeing

I find others banal conversation quite depressing too and as a consequence stick to a few trusted friends and feel lonely at my kids school

OP, I have felt the same outside my work environment and have to travel to the nearest city to meet my 'tribe.'

One maybe unlikely environment to meet like minded women has been this scheme:
www.letsride.co.uk/breeze which I've become involved in. In my area at least it's turned out to be a hidden den of feminists and it's keeping me fit.

I play another team sport where I have to grit my teeth at the prosecco-type whatsapp chat and them all calling each other 'girls' (we're mostly all over 40).

@ArtBrut - i hear what you're saying, but, honestly, I don't know any mums at all who are able either a) to resist the allure of pretty dresses for their little girls or b) to put pretty dresses on their little boys. And all my friends are doctors and teachers and so on. I don't mean to say that there's any logical sense in saying "boys don't wear pink", I just mean that dress conventions are really entrenched within any society, and following them doesn't make you a dyed-in-the-wool anti-feminist. Anyway, we, the Mumsnet hive mind, don't actually know if that statement is actually typical of OP's friends or just something that someone said once. But I suppose that if it was just something that someone said once, it wouldn't bounce you into going off to a chatroom to tell everyone how crap your mates are.
@Lovelytreeoutsidemywindow - yes! You find hotbeds of like-minded people in unexpected places. Something like Breeze is great because it's a bit greeny, and a bit counter-cultural - but it's positive and celebratory. (And I am sorry to say that cycling is much more fun without men. They always have to turn it into a competition.)

Here for the off shore commune.
Mayhew