Quote:
Originally Posted by Serpentine Leaf
When people feel insecure, some will go on the attack. I could go into a whole sociopolitical thing here but that would probably be inappropriate to this forum. Please remember that when they behave that way, it's about them, not you.
You're very wise to avoid those kinds of districts! There are so many risks, and listing them would become a novel-length post.
What you're facing is the local culture, not anything universal. There will always be people who judge, but it's their own insecurity that drives them. That applies to your extended family as well. They're your blood but they still have all the same foibles as those not related to you. You will fare better elsewhere, and keeping a mental barrier in place to protect you from family insult.
Woah, I never knew that about San Francisco, no wonder the culture is so awful! You'll do very well to get out of that nightmare. Just stay true to yourself until you can escape to a more suitable place. Even if no ASD support groups exist around there (though such a major city must have at least one), you have a path forward with your schooling. Focus on that, not what surrounds you.
Professional academics are no different from anybody else. Some are petty, looking down upon each other for specializing in a subject they view as "less than." Some hold onto rigid biases, or are hypocrites. For example, those who go to climate marches yet throw trash and recycling in the wrong bins on a daily basis and use Styrofoam cups for their coffee multiple times in a day. Yet some others are dedicated instructors and researchers. No group of any kind is a monolith.
I'm in southeast PA. It's a patchwork of mini-cultures around here. If you don't mind me saying, it sounds like your area really @@$%ing sucks. A good person can't be expected to thrive in an environment like that. I urge you again not to beat yourself up over it, and not to focus on it excessively. That will only harm your self-esteem and make you too focused on the negative. A lot of people, no matter where they stand in life, never actually grow up, they just grow older. That, unfortunately, is something that seems universal. In a new place where nobody knows you, there won't be gossip. You can get a totally fresh start.
STEM is overwhelmingly dominated by white heterosexual cisgendered males. Efforts to address this have had limited success. You are certainly not the only one to have put an academic career over a social life! No offense intended, but that's almost a cliche. Americans and Brits use the term "wonk." The Japanese use the term "otaku." It's common enough worldwide to have special names, so you most certainly are not alone in that regard!
I wish you the best in your studies. The medical profession is a noble one, so long as the doctor has empathy. I've known some awful ones, but also a few good ones. You will be one of the good ones. The higher percentage of women in your field is a good sign of hope! Most of them will also be likely to have put off the dating scene to focus on their careers. And you'll be alongside people with shared values and goals. Your current environment is full of those who are selfish and shallow. What you'll find in medical school should be completely different. Be prepared for meeting some who are there because of the money and status, or because their parents pushed them there, but just as many if not more will be there because like you, they want to help people become well.
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I kind of understand what you mean. I myself am heavily mixed-race, and do not fit easily to any one particular racial group. Based on my physical features, I can pass for all sorts of random ethnicities, like Mexican, Japanese, Arab, Uyghur, Persian, Brazilian, Turkish, etc. People seem to not like my unusual racial makeup since I always get asked about it then lambasted. So I probably seem like an easy target to make fun of to those people.
There is a saying that the women here in the city cooked up. It refers to the men. It is, "The odds are good, but the odds are good." This is a very loaded meaning, but it refers to the fact that San Francisco's gender ratio is heavily skewed towards males, such that like I had said before, in ages 20-40 males it is at least 70% male/30% female. In some areas it might be even higher than that at around 80% male. So the saying refers to the fact that mathematically speaking, women have a lot of choice since there are so many men. However the "goods are odd" part means that the "goods", i.e. the men, are "odd", as in weird. So it is like going to a store and saying that the "goods", i.e. like meat or canned products are "odd" or bad. In other words, the women have so much choice because men outnumber women heavily, but that all of the men are weirdos. I have heard several women tell me this. Not sure if they were hinting at me being odd as well, but I would not be surprised.
I see what you mean about scientific hypocrisy. There are actually those types exactly here: they fight climate change, attend climate marches, yet if you have seen the news, San Francisco is the most polluted city in the entire country. Walk around in the streets, you see rubbish, plastic, food, drink, even human faeces. There is no real sympathy for cleanliness despite San Francisco's heavy support for climate change. It makes no sense.
What also makes no sense is hearing from medical students that they just studied medicine or nursing for the money. I think that is a completely erroneous way of thinking. At least, when I think about why I want to study medicine, making huge sums of money is definitely nowhere near the top reasons for doing so.
I am not familiar too much with your area, as the only near place that I have visited in the general region was Philadelphia and some closeby part of New Jersey more than a decade ago. But you are right, this place has serious problems here. I think that the extreme competitive mindset is a combination of the IT industry, being surrounded by Stanford University to the south plus UC Berkeley to the east, the millionaire/billionaire Marin County to the North, mixed in with general West Coast Californian superficiality. If you ever visit here, I am not sure if you would notice it unless you stayed for a longer period, but you would definitely notice the high level of rubbish in the streets. Not exaggerating, there have been cases in the news where people have been infected by HIV due to stepping on syringes left back by drug addicts in Downtown streets. And they were wearing regular shoes. Imagine wearing sandals or heels.
I think that also what is a negative for me here as well is that my dating mentality is dissimilar to other guys. I feel much more comfortable when a woman approaches or talks to me, rather than when I try to approach. If I approach, I feel very awkward and extremely nervous, since I have had social anxiety since childhood. If a woman approaches me, it takes away a lot of the anxiety for me. So my dating mindset is a bit more like a woman's rather than like the stereotypical man's. This is why a lot of men (and even some women) call me p*ss˙ and other names because I feel uncomfortable doing straightforward approaching women to talk to them.
I think that medicine would be the first time since studying biology where women would outnumber men. I have been in very heavily male environments for most of my adult life. All of my 20s has mostly been in environments that were 90%+ male. Even meetups were terrible. Some meetups were even 100% male. Not once, not twice, but ten times in a row even. Women just never attended. I wonder if they just felt uncomfortable being around so many guys, many of whom were single, and some very desperate.
I do think that medical school in Europe, where salaries are a bit lower than in USA and universal healthcare is the norm rather than privatised healthcare like here, that perhaps the students in general studying there, which by definition extends to mean the women as well, are more sympathetic and more caring. I do not think that parents push their children to study medicine just for some sort of abstract "prestigious" title feeling. I had a vague dream of marrying a woman who were a doctor when I was younger, because I thought that the sympathetic factor would be a big plus. For example, my female doctor had asked me if I was sexually active. Not for the same motive as the women at meetups obviously, but she had to know and if I were at risk for STIs. I cannot imagine any of the women who made fun of me for being a virgin being a good doctor. I mean, what would they do if they were my doctor, I tell them I am a virgin, and then they laugh at me? It would be beyond ridiculous.
I remember one date in 2016 with a Venezuelan woman who was studying English here, where we had planned to go to a certain restaurant then a certain bar thereafter. However, upon meeting, she immediately changed plans and told me that we were going to some other places instead. I was completely baffled, and throughout the whole night I was just confused as to why she had done this. She was laughing on and off throughout, and made fun of me for being rigid and getting startled/confused by change. She told me in Spanish, "You really need everything organised like clockwork, eh?" then laughed at me. Later, since she had already known that I was an introvert who spent a lot of time alone at home, she said, "Well, I got you to get out of your cave this time." This is probably one of my "better" dates, compared to the other disasters. You may be right that the environment is not conducive to people like me. Not only the Asperger's, but the crippling social anxiety that was worse when I was a child, plus social awkwardness. It seems like acceptance is not really a prized trait here.