Soft Skills as a Female Autistic

Depends. If you want a life where you are just left alone by sociaty that gets easyer. A lot of other social things get a lot harder. That my impresion based on talking to a very small number of trans men.

Life gets a lot easier if you start presenting as male.

Actually when you say soft skills I tend to think of soft 'sciences.' You know like sociology and political science. Basically 'sciences' that don't involve maths and or lab work. I assumed that's where the soft in soft skills came from.

Edit ---

So I did some digging. Apparently "The term "soft skills" was created by the U.S. Army in the late 1960s. It refers to any skill that does not employ the use of machinery." (wiki) and later came to apply predominantly to social skills "A definition based on review literature explains soft skills as an umbrella term for skills under three key functional elements: people skills, social skills, and personal career attributes."

So nothing to do with gender.

I was just thinking about my mum putting big hairy spiders in envelopes and posting them under the bathroom door when my dad was shaving. She was laughing so much at my dads scream...so much for men spider wrangling and soft  women !

Sexism goes both ways. As men have a lot of expectations on them too. I am sure some of the men would love to go out and arrange the cakes or whatever. 

As a woman myself , I actually like doing these kinda things. When it happened in old workplaces, we girls (and sometimes a guy or two) would go out and get the cakes etc and have a chat, and sometimes a wee sneaky coffee total skiving. It was a great way to get to know each other too. 

But yes I think that it needs to be mixed up a bit, so that it is more equal, so you are correct. 

some people like to do that sort of thing, some don't and that is what should be respected here. 

yes and why are 'soft skills' given the name 'soft' anyway? It used to be assumed 'females more likely to display them' in sexist eons gone by but nowadays in the business world it just means 'less direct'. I understand what Peter is saying though as I am also a civil servant and his explanation is exactly what this term means in the civil service and in many other corporate environments I've worked in. Even those environments have now moved on and colleagues now talk about 'communication skills'.  Who in your workplace is expecting you to do this stuff and saying it needs 'soft skills'? Seems bizarre and outdated to me.

This Person (Ottilie) said:

In the workplace it's expected that the female/female identifying colleagues will take care of the soft skill aspects of being in a team

What does this mean? I don't understand it. Do you mean that it is mainly women/female identifying people who usually arrange the colleague celebration life events? If ;you do, then that is not anything to do with 'soft skills' or 'being in a team'. It might just be that some people, who make an effort to understand their colleagues and life experiences are better able to cater for them. It doesn't mean they are expected to do them because of their sex.

I consider what you describe as 'soft skills' as nothing more or less than outright sexism. Either everyone should take their turn or nothing should be done. 

I think what she's actually referring to is a double standard in general not soft skills. Bringing in cake of colleagues birthdays is not standard practice. Some offices do that kind of thing some don't. If you're new you catch on soon if your work place does or doesn't. It doesn't take 'skill' to know that, just observation. The 'soft skill' is in recognising the double standard that women are expected to do this work and therefor you are expected to do it. Recognising double standards may be a soft skill but it's one you shouldn't need because there shouldn't be a double standard.

And I've since made discreet enquiries as to how often men are inclined to do that sort of thing in the real world.

No matter how much people try to pretend otherwise, men and women are not fungible and entirely interchangeable at a basic level.

I go into that at greater length below.

My o/h (f) & a friend (m) told me, quite close together. Then I recalled how over the many years of making a point of including my male friends on my Christmas card list none of them ever had sent me one that I could recall.  

I had look up what that means.

Really? How did you find that out? 

I learned recently that it's actually considered a bit "infra dig" for men to send each other Christmas cards...

Peter said:

That’s not really soft skills.

Soft skills include social skills and I think women are expected to have more social skills than men. It's more generally acceptable for men not to organise a birthday card or a gift for a colleague. I probably find social skills more difficult than a NT man but because I'm a woman I'm expected not to. The things you mentioned are soft skills too. Soft skills are defined as "personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people". 

This Person (Ottilie) said:

the soft skill aspects of being in a team. Team member has a birthday? Well you're expected to arrange flowers, cake, card, gift, lunch, dinner.

That’s not really soft skills. At least it’s not the kind of soft skills I was bad at at the civil service. Soft skills is finding ways to tell people no without actually saying no. And conversely is the ability to figure out when people are telling you no without actually saying no. Or indeed it’s the ability to predict when they would say no before you even ask the question and therefore don’t bother asking it.

soft skills is the ability to minute a meeting where people have been screaming at each other and vehemently protesting that the proposed course of action is completely unacceptable and make it sound like everybody was okay with the plan and everything can go ahead as expected without out right lying about what was said.

that is soft skills in the civil service.

I am really good at everything I need to be good at to pass as a capable woman. I'm as honest as is needed. I'm not passive, I've been labeled as subversive in my professional life for speaking up. I get that you are saying that I need to be assertive but it's not that is it? It's totally not that. It's not on me to correct assumptions. 

I can tell you something that makes this expectation even more pronounced. I work in HR, but not for the "people". I do well in technical skills. But soft skills? No thanks, bye. 

Are you being honest with people that this isn't something you are good at and that putting the expectation on you will inevitably mean they are disappointed? Or are you doing the thing we do that they call "masking" and trying to keep up with the expectation or trying to very passively get your point across?