me_irl

I said men have experienced this pattern. That's not an absolute statement, but you claiming that it never happens is.

I'm not making assumptions, you revealed it yourself.

I'm not a danger to women either, but that doesn't stop women from thinking I might be. The whole point of the man vs. bear thing is that women can't exactly know whether man is dangerous just by looking at him. That's true, but I disagree with the apparent conclusion that people tend to draw from it, which is to assume every man is dangerous by default. In what other situation is it ever okay to make sweeping, prejudicial assumptions about an entire category of people based on an overgeneralization?

If you don't think that's a thing that happens, then apparently you didn't pay much attention to the discourse, so I wonder how much actual introspection and listening to women you even do...

The thing about skills is they are learned, developed, practiced, and maintained.

The thing about that is that the very foundation of social skills are learned during the formative years of cognitive development. There are enough long-term psychological studies on the disastrous effects of childhood isolation on one's long-term capacity to socialize and integrate later in life.

I was isolated growing up. Homeschooled, I didn't get to interact with my peers and develop social skills. By the time I started going to public school, it was already too late. People could sense that I was "weird," so I was bullied and ostracized. That doesn't help one learn to socialize, especially when one is already several years behind one's peers in terms of social development.

I spent years, decades even, trying to "catch up" on my social skills, but it's not that simple. Social scripts that just don't come intuitively to me. I've read books on social skills, I've been in therapy, but trying to learn these things as "techniques" is nowhere near the same as developing them naturally, and people can sense that. As a consequence, I've never really been able to interact with people consistently enough to even practice social skills enough to become natural.

I never said it's "the fault of women" as you suggest. I'm really tired of that worn-out strawman. But does it have to be "the fault of women" (as some general, abstract category; again, as you suggest), in order for me to say "Hey, maybe it would be alright if people treated me with the same basic dignity and respect as everyone else, even though I don't seem normal and don't have very good social skills."

But no, it's always degradation, derision, exaggerations, and accusations, exactly like what's going on in this thread here. You really think I'm not used to that by now?

I'm implying you shouldn't use your own awkwardness as evidence that women are incapable of being approached by any man without them finding something gross about them.

I'm not doing that. That's literally what the whole "man vs. bear" thing was about. Did you miss that whole discussion, or are we just pretending that didn't happen now?

You probably see a moral failing there because it is misogynistic to assume women will accuse a man of being misogynistic or objectifying just for approaching them.

No it's not, that's just basic pattern recognition and learning from experience. If women consistently make it clear that they don't want to be approached by men, how is there any other option available to a man other than to conclude that women don't want to be approached by men?

It seems anyone who hasn't reached this conclusion couldn't really be listening to the voices of women.

Even if they do, prove em wrong.

That's literally not an option. Once one says "no," then the only option is to walk away. There isn't a "prove them wrong" phase. This isn't a romcom from the early 2000s...

But I think the world's a little better when we humanize each other, and I bet you agree.

Yeah, I do agree with that. But I'm tired of being dehumanized, and I'm tired of being called a misogynist every time I mention how tired I am of being dehumanized.