I fully understand that because of the way i look (jeans and a t-shirt usually with thick "I Look like A Serial Killer" glasses and a thick beard), my size (6-4,275), and my gender I seem threatening even when I am trying not to be. So the best way for me to get around the problem is to avoid any sort of conversation other than the most mundane small talk. "Hi", "How are you" is about as far as this guy goes right here.

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, perhaps not. But I don't ever want to be one of those guys who are creepy and invading some innocent woman's personal space like she's just there for me to gaze at. So I figure that it's better for me to just completely shut myself down to the bare essentials of being a human being than to worry about whether or not my compliment about somebody's blouse will be treated as creepy guy on the street.

 Reply

Thge second scenario is more interesting to me: The deli guy is just being overly friendly. Perhaps he thinks this is doing his job, building a customer base. Depending on his age and background, this may be how he thinks he's SUPPOSED to behave. Or maybe he's bored and lonely. The thing is that for many of us, this friendliness is just as bad. I don't WANT to have a relationship with my deli guy that goes beyond a smile and a comment on the weather. It feels intrusive when there's any more to the conversation. This isn't a female or male problem, but it may be a particularly New York problem. We have too many of these encounters every day to want/allow them to be too friendly. There's an unspoken code of limited interaction here that we expect will be respected. I'm not sure it's a great way to go though life, but... it's a practical one, and it would be hard for most of us to change our innate or at least well-conditioned response.

 Reply

In "The Gift of Fear" De Becker puts it well. He says ask a male friend when the last time they feared for their lives and usually they have to think a bit. Ask a woman and they'll say, 'do you mean this month or this week?'.

 Reply

If it's a woman making the comments, then trying to disengage marks you as unmanly and possibly gay.

If it's a man, it's extremely hard to acknowledge that's what's happening -- that a man might be threatening your sexual boundaries.

I'm not saying it's a problem on the scale of what women face, or that it's even a big problem at all. Just that straight men have their own unique (if smaller) issues to deal with in comparable situations. Mostly you just have to stop worrying about people calling you gay.

 Reply

There's this man in my 12-step program who is one of the group "leaders" (he starts off and ends the meetings every once in a while) so you'd think he would know better than to flirt with me, a newcomer (i.e. someone vulnerable, on shaky sober ground). But ever since I joined he's acted really creepy towards me, making a point to sit next to me on this TINY bench during our smoke breaks, leaning onto me with his body to punctuate every statement. Calling me "honey" and patting me on the back.

"How long've you been clean now, honey?" *pat pat* *body nudge* "You look SOOO good today!" *looks up and down*

Ugh.

It fills me with dread as I approach the meeting place because I'm afraid he'll be smoking outside and engage me in conversation, alone... and he ALWAYS comes and invades my personal space afterwards. Sometimes I prepare a line in my head, like "Could you not pay so much attention to me? It makes me uncomfortable." Because you'd think you could be honest and straightforward in this kind of setting, where people usually lay out their secrets and feelings... but there's no way to say it without sounding, I don't know, crazy.

After reading all your stories, though, I realize I'm not crazy.

 Reply

I've tried to verbalize this to my friends in the past and haven't been able to and this is exactly why I love Jezebel. We can have this meaningful dialog about something that individually we've struggled to express. Thank you Sadie!!

 Reply

Get more flies with honey? I have no fucking USE for flies, asshole, that is why I don't make eye contact! Wise the fuck up! And yes, I AM a bitch - bitch is the new black, baby! Suck on that!

Fucking smile/flies. That shit makes me RANT.

 Reply

The girl at my grocery store started to smile and say hi and recognize me every time I came in. I thought she was cool so one day when she joked about writing my phone number down when I gave it to her for the discount (she did that twice), i actually wrote my phone number on the receipt and gave it to her. I tried not to make a big thing of it, and I didn't stick around or anything but I saw her put it in her pocket. She never called me though.

Now is it my responsibility to cool off and not be flirty with her anymore? Or instead do I say, "how about you give me your number since you never called me?" Which one works? How do I know? That's why maybe sometimes you should cut the guy a break.

Then again, some of the stuff you guys wrote here is freaking creepy... and wrong.

 Reply

As for dudes at the corner grocery flirting with me, if it's just words but they aren't checking me out the whole time I'm in the store it doesn't bother me and I assume they're being friendly. Only when they're eye-fucking me do I become uncomfortable and leave.

I do hate the guys who yell "Hey!" after me all the way down the street because if you say it once and I ignore you, after that it's a power thing for you. Like "I'm going to make you acknowledge me whether you like it or not. And the idea that someone would feel entitled to talk to me and try to force me to whether I want to or not is troublesome. Especially when I'm obviously in a rush and was walking fast before you said anything to me. It's like some of these dudes don't understtand the concept of having to get to work.

Some of them probably don't.

 Reply