me_irl

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?