Oh oh! I know! I'll write about how it's been working in the city with all the random men who walk up to me/sit next to me and try to pay me compliments/strike up conversations!
Execpt I won't act like it grosses me out like a lot of girls, because it doesn't.
Look, of course I get it; there's this really gross feeling you get when an ugly guy/older guy/guy you're generally not attracted to tries to check you out or come onto you. It feels nasty. Like ew. I think that must be where the idea of “vibes” comes from. It feels like he sneezed on his hand then asked to shake yours.
You suddenly feel dirty. Maybe not all the way to violated but you feel ugly. You feel undesirable. Flawed.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I've tried to figure out where this emotion comes from. At first I thought that any man complimenting me randomly would make me happy, especially when I was younger. A compliment is a compliment I thought. But then someone creepy would do something creepy and I would get this feeling like EUUUUUGHHHHH GET it OFFFFF me EWWWWWWWWWW.
Like why though? It's not his fault he's ugly. It's not his fault he's old.
Then I thought maybe it was the way they said it, like if he had just put the compliment nicely then it wouldn't creep me out. And that helps a little. Even when the man is old/ugly/gross in some way, the verbiage of the compliment can help with that. But if the guy is creepy enough, no amount of “You look lovely today” does it.
I think I figured out why that is though.
So, according to Professor Peterson, typically men will date down on ladders and women will date up. Social, economic, attractiveness and financial ladders tend to follow this trend. So I thought to myself, maybe when a person who seems to be very low on the social/economic/attractiveness ladder tries to come onto us, we instinctively receive a signal that says we as women appear lower on those spectrums than this man is.
This would also explain why even the creepiest of compliments seem fair from an attractive man – we aren't grossed out by the wording, we're grossed out by the implications.
It would also explain why men don't have this reaction to ugly/poor women coming onto them – since they date down generally, no one's forwardness can be an insult.
So, since I've been working in the city I've started having a ton more interactions with strangers, which of course is good for me. A lot – most – of these random interactions are with men. Some of them are perfectly fine and natural, and some of them are inappropriate and make me uncomfortable.
I thought I might talk a little about the difference. One of the things that has been making me scared for my generation is that girls seem not to know when an interaction is acceptable and when it's not. And of course, since they don't know, they're not helping their male counterparts know either.
When men are adolescents, they need to make clumsy approaches and learn what kinds of ways are acceptable to try to woo women, and women need to be here to slap them and never speak to them again if they do it wrong.
Two things are going wrong now, and it's contributing to the culture of unrest between the sexes:
Women are becoming too afraid/timid to reject men when they are behaving inappropriately. I have several friends who have talked to me about very uncomfortable situations they have recently been in, but they never told the boy that this made them uncomfortable. What does this solve? This boy is learning that these are acceptable behaviors. But they're not helping this person at all – they're setting him up to get the police called on him when the next girl has some self respect.
When women do put their foot down, it's at the extreme, the “You look at me wrong and you raped me” extreme. This is unacceptable. We need to be helping our male counterparts learn the difference between flirting and being creepy. How will they ever know if all we do is give them nothing to go on, or tell them they're all rapists?
Things I don't have a problem with, when I'm not in a relationship:
Men approaching me to start a conversation
Men telling me I look nice, am wearing something pretty, etc.
Men asking me if I'd like to go out with them
Men leaning forward for a kiss/making it physically obvious that they'd like to have physical contact
Men who are persistent to a certain, respectful degree (not the kind who you tell to buzz off and they won't, but men who will send a follow-up text if they don't get an answer).
Things I do have a problem with, relationship or no:
Men who can't read the signals that I am not interested (lack of eye contact, physically turning away from them, etc.)
Men who make rude/lewd comments at me
Men who don't have the balls to approach so just stare and try to make me uncomfortable (I can only assume that's what you're trying to do)
Obviously men who touch without permission.
This is a huge topic for me and I'm sure I'll write more. I think it would be good to have a rational discussion about what women as a whole are looking for from men, and what we should be providing them with in return.