I did a lot of research on creepiness. Are you autistic? I'm autistic. Behaviour that may be perceived as creepy I realised I did quite a bit of as a younger man and I learned the hard way - some people didn't want to be around me.

Luckily, I discovered something that worked for me, and naturally it came to me in a flash while doing cocaine in a pub bathroom with a 45 year old plasterer who had asked if I wanted to go halves on a gram: small talk is a really, really important skill for an autistic person to master if being judged less for some of your more odd traits is something that's important to them.

Looping back to creepiness, it's essentially when people cannot tell if you're a threat. Behaviour like too much or little eye contact, 'hovering' between groups, inappropriate conversation topics, being overly familiar or aggressively isolated and the list goes on; any autistic people in the crowd may have noticed one or two things.

My obvious autistic tic was very little eye contact, and I was very self conscious that a lot of women responded negatively to it. But I accidentally learned an important lesson while talking to a good mate's wife, just before her husband appears before us, in the busy pub, completely naked. What happened next isn't important. What was important was the thought 'What old mate just did was way worse behaviour, way worse than 'bad eye contact' but I was the one getting rejected and he's got a stunning missus'.

So I thought on it more, and I wondered why my reaction to the nude co-worker had been to laugh. All me and that guy had ever did was chat wass while drinking a coffee every now and again. Just small talk.

Being a competent small talker is easy to learn, there's no pressure when practicing it, and it's a skill that lets people know that you understand the social contract. You're the type of guy who knows it's appropriate to bullshit about the weather and the cost of milk these days. It's evidence that you're at least not obviously a sex offender. And if you're not making much eye contact, she's not going to feel unsafe because she's spent time with you, and you've demonstrated that you can be chill.

Hope this advice is useful for somebody but yeah obviously this is all just anecdotal dog shit from me, your favourite male feminist. Love you all, natch. Mwah.