approaching women

anewme wrote: »

Some very low quality "men" on this thread.

Thankfully, not the norm.

More like a gang of 16 year old's. Still, it would explain why birth rates are falling in western nations if this is the standard...

posturingpat wrote: »

Apologies if it's been mentioned already but I think it was a Gillette ad (the one about stopping toxic masculinity) . Seemed to show a man on the street going to approach a girl only for his friend to step in and stop him.
****e like that surely has young men fearing what will be made of them if they do approach a woman.
Sad way for the world to be.

Sad. Utterly heartbreaking. You poor men. How can you be expected to live your lives without making unwanted advances on women in the street who are just trying to get on with their lives.

"men fearing what will be made of them if they do approach a woman". Any thought for the women who might be just a tad fearful of men twice their size, coming up to them at bus stops, or as in that ad, innocently walking down the street. To leer at the them and tell them they're pretty. Like our self esteem is based solely on some total strangers opinion of us. And then of course we have to smile and appear to 'receive the compliment well' so he doesn't turn on us.

posturingpat wrote: »

So how do we go about the whole reproduction thing? Is there going to be designated places and times men are allowed approach women?

There are loads of ways to meet someone. People meet through work, hobbies, sports etc all the time. Get to know each other, like each other, go from there.

There's dating websites and apps and even real life match matching services if that's your thing.

And there's places that have been normalised as meeting spots like bars and clubs. I think most reasonable people expect that there will be people approaching others in those sorts of places. That doesn't mean you have to go there for that purpose or be open to it but it's a far more reasonable place than the street, the bus stop, the wine aisle in Tesco.

It would be the icing on the cake of course if everyone in those bars were respectful of each other and made their intentions clear in a polite way without uninvited touching or anything like that and then accepted a 'no thanks' as suggested by another posted (since deleted). Unfortunately in my experience, and the experience of many women I know, this is often not the case and a polite no thanks from me has been met with anything from verbal to physical abuse. But at least in club/pub you have people around and bouncers. On a quiet street or a bustop or some other random place you can feel a lot more vulnerable and find yourself smiling to avoid those reactions.

And before anyone says it, yes I know men can be victim of unwanted advances too and can met with a nasty reaction if they turn those advances down and that's horrible but I think on the whole, men have less to fear from a woman crossing the street to walk beside them, telling them they're handsome.