Alarajrogers is right about autism; I did a paper on this in college. Autism and Asperger's are indeed associated with strong moral sense. The world is parsed in terms of rules in a desperate attempt to make sense of all the overwhelming input. Moral rules are important.

Extremely high IQs (four standard deviations from the norm or more) are also associated with a strong sense of ethics. I say ethics rather than morals deliberately here: in childhood, there's a strong moral sense that appears much sooner than among their peers, but in adulthood choices may or may not be moral. Such a person can certainly change the rules they live by later in life. They will understand the ethics of a given situation, but they may not do what traditional morality finds right, or even what they believe to be "good." They are less invested in following rules than the autistic-spectrum genius might be, possibly because they don't grow up feeling threatened and overwhelmed by mere ambient auditory, visual, and touch sensory input.

As a semi-autistic, extremely intelligent female in the tech world, I can attest to the strong prejudice displayed by a significant minority of the male tech & science world. I've received my own online hate comments; my website has been hacked. I hasten to add: most of the men in this field are *not* like that. But the few sexists, of both genders, out there make it very, very difficult for women.

Issues I've encountered:

• Frequent sexist remarks such as, "What's a nice girl like you doing studying physics?" —asked by a male PhD. These have reduced in the physical world but not much in the digital (I've been conducting an inventory of them on slashdot for a research article).
• Emails and comments asking if I got my blog thoughts from my father/husband/son/professor. Emails threatening to put me in "the right place for a woman," etc. Notes on my car windshield to that effect.
• Two stalkers, one a physicist and one a physics major.
• Lack of family support in pursuing a science career. To be fair, they didn't really promote my artistic interests much, either. Roles such as teaching, counseling, and nursing have been recommended; physics was smiled at but not supported, and neurosurgery was not an option in my childhood.
• Testing from threatened males in the form of demanding I take an IQ test, answering "brain teasers," etc. There have been several instances of this over the years. Being the freak female with spatial skills better than 99.999998% of the population is unsettling to some. I've learned to hide things like my IQ, and not to solve problems in front of people.
• Great difficulty in the workplace. In addition to underemployment and financial inequality, the prejudice of female non-tech people can be as much a problem as that of male tech workers. An example:

  A female manager gave a brilliant and at the time highly innovative data design approach of mine to a male IT worker to "flesh out." She didn't ask or tell me until well after the fact. Because he lacked the proper systematics and cognitive science training to apply the approach, he was unable to instantiate it or even to describe it properly. (He did write an entertainingly ignorant high-level "white paper" about it; I did not correct his mistakes.) When I was asked by others to submit a paper on the subject to a global conference, I was prevented a day beforehand by that same manager from traveling to present it; instead the paper was offered online within the company.

  Her reason? "Men are better at that sort of thing." Yes, that's why a woman came up with the idea.

Being a female nerd can be tough at times. On the other hand, people who feel a need to hold back people smarter than they are, or to diminish women, already live out the worst punishment I can imagine: seeing the world from a narrow, twisted perspective. I'll take a fun, open perspective with a tough life over that any day of the week.

Could you show your significant other what you've written here?

I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,

LeCastor

Ben Dover/Tom Payne is a southerner. He is perfect and at the same time very flawed as are so many authoritarian southerners who are always proclaiming their masculinity like cowboy Bush. Ben Dover/Tom Payne is one of the Ted Haggard's on this board and throughout the south, just as are Bush, Cheney, Rice(a female version)Falwell, and Marion Gordon 'Pat' Robertson, Mark Foley, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions and the ever pusilanimous Orrin Hatch, Brownback, Santorum actually all of whom are pusilanimous excuses for manhood.

Only girly men threaten women.

She knows how I feel. This is no mystery to her. I am pragmatic, practical, direct and fair. Whether man or women, you work with or for me, I treat you as a man. We treat each other very well, but she is not my equal in our relationship, relationships are NEVER based upon equality, contrary to what some people vomit up about them. I have other responsibilities that take precedent over her. She is secure enough to know that I would give her the common courtesy of breaking up with her rather than cheat on her and to also know that I selected her when I had many other options. She also knows that anything that interferes with my career I remove including her, if necessary. She is quite beautiful and secure with herself and doesn't feel that a bat of the eyelashes, a smile, cleavage or swinging her ass were what connect(ed) us. There are things she would want me to do, but I refuse them as they are wholly unacceptable and uncharacteristic of me: I don't go shopping with her, she is not allowed to select bottles from my wine cellar, I don't visit her family in Texas (what a shithole uncivilized place!), I don't watch shitty chick TV, I don't tell her where to go or what to do (provided it does not interfere wiht my schedule and work, as these come first), etc. Sure, physical beauty is the 1st attraction but there are lots of beautiful women who have little to offer, but their hand in your wallet.