Hide your apartments: the hobosexuals are hunting

Brace yourselves, ladies: this hobosexual season is going to be one for the books.

A hobosexual is a person who enters into relationships with the primary goal of finding a place to live. Hobosexuals are often compared to vampires, as they should be. Both are charming and charismatic. Both are capable of completely upending, or straight-up ending your life, intentionally or through pure negligence. And, perhaps most importantly, both are rendered harmless so long as you never invite them in.

Most autistics and allistics have probably met one of these modern-day vampires, but it’s more likely if you’re into rock climbing or other outdoor hobbies, or live in a relatively warm area. Similar to people with narcissistic personality disorder, the Internet has mythologized the hobosexual into a morbid parasitic beast that walks among us, sucking the life from innocent young women. Unless he’s got his sights on you though, you’re more likely to experience him as a sort of ever-present, ever-pleasant party animal. He’s at every hangout, the “golden retriever” of the group. Most of his friends are women. He even claims he’s a feminist! How the hell is this guy single?!

Hobosexuals are never really single. If anything, they’re more like “outside cats.”

An outside cat’s family gives him all the love, care, and attention he needs — he’s fed, watered, picked up after, and snuggled, and when he’s ready to go outside, he pops out of the cat door and into the wild unknown, where he’s off to explore and…pop to his other family’s house. And the other. And the other.

Some outside cats are literally never home. Some go home only to eat. Still others have multiple families across the community, and none of them know about each other until suddenly your neighbor Catherine is on Nextdoor discovering that her “missing” cat’s been bundled up in the arms of another woman for months.

This isn’t to say that hobosexuals are inherently cheaters. Some choose not to “diversify their portfolio” and will instead pick a victim to siphon from, spending months or even years sucking her dry before vanishing without a trace.

The characteristics of a hobosexual

In case it isn’t clear, I have an intense vendetta against hobosexuals. They’ve essentially plagued my life since birth, beginning with my very own father, who popped in and out of my mother’s life whenever he pleased. As soon as I moved into my own place it quickly bled into my romantic relationships; first they're a little too excited to see I have a spare room in my apartment. Then, a month or two into dating, they'll start inviting themselves over. Suddenly they're hauling three or four bags into my home just to stay the night, and they're soooo tired in the morning; can't I let them stay in bed just a little longer while I cart off to work?

Ever since I started living alone I’ve been accosted by the exact same type of man:

• Can’t (or won’t) hold down a job. He may call himself an "entrepreneur" or perpetually "in between jobs," and if his parents didn't pay his way through college, he graduated from the "school of life"
• Is literally never home. If he's not at your place, he's at his best buddy's, a friend's, his auntie's, etc. anytime of the day or night. Where does he live? With his ex? Mummy and daddy? Who knows!
• Avoids contributing to anything whatsoever. He won’t pay a bill, hesitates to plan dates that cost money, and will whine or weaponize incompetence to avoid doing chores.
• Is a seasonal creature. Here in the US, these men mobilize closer to fall when the weather gets cooler. If you let him in, he’ll start packing up to leave by late March or early April. (If he starts picking random fights or acting up around this point, save yourself the trouble and release him into the wild)
• All his exes are “crazy” and he was definitely, totally the mature one. Bonus points if his relationships are short and he moves on quickly, but he was also so traumatized by each one that he needs to be by your side. In your home. All the time.
• Has exactly one (1) go-to “nice” thing he’ll do for you. It's most likely something incredibly convenient that costs him nothing to do, such as cooking dinner (using ingredients you bought) or sharing his family's Hulu login. If you complain about how little he does around the house— or in general—he will trot out his One Nice Thing and guilt trip you into eternity.
• Feels entitled to endless nurturing and care from women. If he isn’t poly or actively trying to cheat, he has a disproportionate amount of female friendships, and wants you to know about each and every one of them.
• Will absolutely lose his shit if you point out any of these characteristics. It is your job to baby him, and holding him accountable is not very "mommy" of you!

Essentially, what I and many other women deal with on a yearly basis is an onslaught of grown-ass man in search of a surrogate mother. They’re emotionally-stunted, highly dependent, manipulative, and horribly draining individuals who will break any social norm or rule to get a free ride for as long as they can.

Why are hobosexuals so dangerous for autistic women?

You might be thinking, “But Aubrie, lots of people are manipulative and weird. Why are you so pressed about hobosexuals?” Because they love autistic women more than any other demographic besides women too young to know better. It is not an understatement to say that I have been chased up and down the entire US West Coast by these clowns. I genuinely feel like not enough people are talking about the actual manipulative tendencies of the hobosexual and their impact of autistic women.

Let’s talk about intersections for a second. Have you ever tried explaining what sensory overload feels like to a neurotypical adult? How about a meltdown? Do they share your deep discomfort for open office settings or grocery stores, or do they tell you it’s “not that bad” and find a polite way to suggest your overstimulation is just a selfish, narcissistic lack of tolerance? Neurotypical women’s experiences are seldom believed or taken seriously, not even at the doctor’s office. Now add in autism, which most of Western society views as a disorder specific to children, with autistic adults being a sad, pitiable anomaly.

Living alone can be a powerful form of self-care and self-preservation as an autistic woman. Natasha Nelson from The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism said, “[t]he world is not built to allow us to feel safe, and we still have to live in this world, in the way that it is, and so having safe spaces for these autistic children, and autistic people, to be able to be themselves, to unwind, it helps with mitigating meltdowns, it helps with regulation, and it helps to give us a place to restore ourselves when we have to be out in the world.”

So in my mind, if we’re not taken seriously in the world as women, and we’re definitely not taken seriously as autists, those of us with the privilege to make our own money and live on our own should be able to carve out a safe space for ourselves in our own home, right?

Wrong! In fact, a 36-page report from the United Nations found that the most dangerous place for any woman is in her home; an average of 140 women and girls were killed each day in 2023 by their intimate partner or a close relative. And that’s before getting into the neurodivergent traits that mark us as ✨ extra special ✨ targets for abuse:

• We’re less likely to perceive covert manipulation tactics like love bombing as red flags. The creepiest men alive need to prey on younger and younger women because grown women won't put up with their shit. Autistic women, on the other hand, come off as "childlike" and naive, and are therefore prone to the same predation as children.
• We’re less likely to be comfortable setting and enforcing boundaries. At some point we all failed to pick up on some nebulous social norm and picked up a hefty bag of abandonment trauma for our trouble, on top of being women most likely conditioned to “let boys be boys.” As a result we may not have learned how to set boundaries early in a relationship, which would put us in a position to weed out manipulators.
• We believe rules are made to be followed. Neurotypicals…kind of don’t? Autists who’ve had the rules beaten into us wouldn’t dare to exploit someone else’s home or resources, but hobosexuals tend to have an encyclopedic understanding the of the social norms, rules, and laws they can exploit to get as much out of you as possible in the short time they’ve got your attention. We might not notice the loopholes until our lives and credit scores are down the drain.
• Our strong sense of justice leads us to empathize with underdogs (and/or predators). Women raised under patriarchy have been conditioned to dole out empathy and understanding to just about every man, which perfectly primes the autistic woman for any sob stories a predator decides to fling around.

Speaking from my own experience, people who fit the characteristics for a hobosexual generally do not have the self-awareness to realize they’re primarily targeting autistic women. But I really hope more research goes into how prevalent they are in our lives in the future.

So, how do we as autists protect ourselves from hobosexual season?

Here’s the most important skill you need to start learning YESTERDAY:

Practice setting boundaries!
Seriously. SET BOUNDARIES. I know it’s scary, but you have to do it. Everybody does, and everybody should!

If you’re not sure where to start, use the “no” test.

1. If they offer you something small, such as a favor or gift you weren’t expecting or didn’t want, politely decline it.
2. Observe their response.
3. Judge them based on their response.

That’s it. That’s the test.

Most men (and all hobosexuals) will fail it. I’m privileged to know many men who are respectful and can handle hearing the word “no,” but more often than not the average man will respond with pushiness, whining, aggression, or all of the above…and absolutely none of those behaviors are the stuff of a man you want in your life.

Practice on a suspected hobosexual, or any cisgender man. Let them show you who they are, believe them, and then act accordingly. Simple in theory, but can be scary in practice the first time around.

The most important, and most difficult, part of this test is walking away from behaviors you don’t like. Hobosexuals hate feeling judged. The last five(!) hobosexuals to try weaseling their way into my apartment got hysterical and said the exact same thing before dramatically slamming my door: “YOU’RE JUST LIKE MY MOM/DAD!”

And yes, they all texted the next day to see if I was going to panic and chase them. The way they tell on themselves is unmatched.

Want to learn about how to make your home (or office, or organization) more sensory-friendly for adult autistic women? Try reading Divergent Mind.