I (22M, American) was raised by a conservative family and taught traditional gender roles. I was told multiple times that that "gay" men (men who didn't conform to traditional masculine gender expression) were ruining society and literally deserved to die, and that people out in the real world do the dirty work of disposing of them through stochastic violence.
Unfortunately, I turned out almost exactly how I wasn't supposed to. I wanted to embody a cute and delicate masculinity, my true personality was caring, affectionate, and emotional, and I loved cute and pretty things. Ironically, I was so in love with feminine energy that I developed an emotionally intense heterosexual attraction to women, though in a way that was nothing like the typical straight model.
Long story short, I faced an entire childhood of ridicule and isolation and eventually developed an autoimmune disease with disabilities as a souvenir. I wanted to take my own life, but the Internet existed, so I numbed myself with endless slop content instead.
The progressive side of the Internet taught me that there are a lot of ways of being beyond the "conform or fucking die" model I was raised with. I learned that a minority of women actually could be attracted to me despite my utter disregard for the manliness rules, something I was blackpilled on before.
But I am still too scared to leave home. It is hard to motivate myself to do anything because the source of my fulfillment is to make people happy, but I can't meet anyone because I'm frozen in fear. I still feel like everyone will hate me for being too feminine, and that the occasional stray vigilante will try to put a bullet in me. Even if I could defend myself, it feels too risky: I have to win every single time, while they only have to win once. On top of that, I am now visibly disabled, so I have to deal with ableism on top of everything else.
I can't function this way. I'm not motivated to take care of myself or put effort into online college because I see no point to life if I can't be social and authentic IRL. I literally just want to make people smile and feel cared for, but it feels like I'm too alien for people outside of a progressive echo chamber to accept me, and life will be full of constant gender policing, harassment, and threats of violence (especially because this is the U.S. we're talking about). The most productive day of my life happened when I thought for a moment that I had a chance, but I fell back into my old habits once I started having doubts again.
It could be worth noting that I live in central Ohio, somewhat close to the city, so it's not like I live in the middle of a rural hellscape. I also saw a non-binary androgynous person working at a clinic the other day, which seems like a good sign? I went to school in a more rural area, but of all of the people who seemed to like me, most of them were closer to the city.
If you have faced a similar situation, how did you make it through?
I was in a similar spot - hated that I was so poorly skilled socially, felt like I couldn't read a lot of social signals (I suspect I'm somewhere on the autistic spectrum), and hated that I felt like I was destined to be alone.
Couple of things helped me with this. First, I researched how flirting works. As in, I started reading research papers about it online. This was a few decades back, so I'm afraid I don't have my notes anymore (and they'd probably be a little out of date now anyway); but I do remember that I got comfortable enough I could start experimenting with conversational approaches.
Next step was to practice. Any time I ended up in a socially comfortable setting with someone I didn't know, I'd try to do some small talk. Keep it low stakes, try it out on people you don't expect to see again, and see if you can get them to chat a bit. If it works, great! You've found a process that might work with others, and brightened someone's day! If not, well, they're not likely to remember you in two hours anyway.
After that, I started looking at online dating sites, and would practice the same process that I found worked for me - lighthearted jokes and expressing an interest in whatever they brought up, or what was on their profile; and following up with conversation about that. I have no idea if the same thing would work these days; I understand that the dating sites I used back then have gone downhill since. In my case, I had several first dates, ended up hitting it off with someone, and now we have two kids together!
I think the main thing is, to echo blarghly, see if you can get yourself comfortable interacting with people platonically. It's likely something you'll need to practice, and like anything else, it will be uncomfortable at first. Think of it as developing social muscles - it's painful and intimidating, but if you stick with it, you'll be able to do more and more with it.
(You mentioned you're interested in speaking with women - if you're a man, you might have an easier time if you know another woman who's up for playing wingman for you. A man who's already comfortably hanging out with a woman has a very different social profile from a "lone wolf"!)
The woman playing a wingman is probably easier anyway.
My guy friends suck at being a wingman and I suspect the autism has something to with that too.
The reality is I'm going to need to find someone neurodivergent that compliments my autism in order to have a chance at a healthy relationship and I have a strange relationship with numbers, probability, and an inability to accept things as they are.
I don't doubt that a guy can be a good wingman - but it seems like they'd have a harder time, because now it's two guys trying to loop her in. A mixed gender pair seems like it'd be much less intimidating.
As for finding someone neurodivergent - someone like that would probably compliment you well, but they're not the only possibility. Keep in mind that anyone who has a loved one who is neurodivergent will also likely already know how to interact comfortably with you, and a subset of those might compliment your personality as well in ways you might not expect. There are also more neurotypical people who just get along well with a lot of people, and they can be an unexpectedly strong match for you too.
What I would suggest is just practice making small talk, and maybe finding social groups you can join (clubs, friendly meetups, etc.) that are mixed-gender. The idea is to practice making acquaintances and casual friends, so you can figure out what works for you socially. Once you're comfortable with that - reassess. You might try a dating website or app, or maybe one or a few members of your new social circles might have other ideas. If you want to think of it as a numbers game, look at ways of increasing your exposure - that means talking to more people, and being around people. And even if someone isn't a good match for you, chat them up anyway! They might still be a good friend (or even winglady!), and at the very least, it's a chance to practice chatting.
I remember when I was still on dating sites, there was this one girl who kept seeming interested in me, but whenever I'd try to set something up, she'd cancel. After a few times of this, I figured there was something else going on; and from other context clues, I decided she probably liked the attention I was giving her but didn't want to commit to anything more for whatever reason. Normally I'd just move on - but instead, I started flirting more without trying to actually set up a date. And she responded well to this! So, we spent a fair bit of time flirting outrageously. I got to figure out how I flirt, she got the safe attention that she craved. We would have been a terrible match, but we both benefited from where we ended up. Point being, you can play to the numbers; but if you make yourself available, you can also find people you didn't know were options.
I don't know about dating sites.
It was one thing when I was fat, that I could see never getting any matches. I'm not in a big city, fine. But I lost a ton of weight and have that muscle factor now. So unless I'm like way uglier than I think (although I'm ghost pale, I will admit that, not much I can do there) or people see my 6.0' height and don't believe me or the possibility is that the apps don't actually work like you think they do and they are optimized to make money and not matches.
But the rest of your points are good and something that makes sense.
Yeah, my dating site knowledge is decades out of date! I wouldn't rule it out completely, but I'd ask around online or in person for current advice.
I will say, though, that my sister helped me revise my profile after I set it up. And it helped a lot - as I said, I found my wife that way. Originally I just had a kind of generic head shot of myself. At my sister's suggestion, I added a few pictures of me being goofy, and changed my profile information. My wife still remembers the pictures - one of the added ones was of me trying to ride a kid's Big Wheel, and the other was of me wearing a cereal box on my head while I excitedly opened something. My wife tells me that they definitely helped me stand out - women get a huge amount of thirsty messages, and looking like a fun person instead of DudeBro3327 can make a big difference! It's fuzzy now, but I'm pretty sure that after that I started actually getting responses.
I'm not saying that same process would work for you; but someone who knows you well and has some idea what women will respond positively to could probably help you out a lot.