Totally agree with Oriah, Miharu Barbie, and ♡ Emily ♡ on everything said. Good points.
Quote from: Miharu Barbie on July 09, 2014, 12:40:58 PM
Well, this might sound odd, but I ALWAYS smile. Especially when I encounter another person; I automatically smile at everyone I meet. I just do.
I have a feeling that this kind of tension between random strangers on the street might, at least in part, be geographical. Living in Portland, Oregon, I have almost never had a street encounter with a random man that could not easily be managed with a smile, a "Thank you", and an "I gotta go".
It might just be that I'm a incorrigible flirt (I am), but I have a tendency in my life to treat everyone I encounter, however briefly, as if they matter. It isn't at all unusual for some random man to speak to me on the street or in some public place, and for me to stop for a moment and have a brief conversation, a laugh, a human moment with him. I find that, strange though it may sound, sometimes when strangers say something as random as, "You should smile", what they really mean to say is, "I'm lonely; won't you take a moment to acknowledge me and remind me of my humanity?"
In my own experience, I find that people respond well to me when I respond well to them. And when some random guy speaks to me, on the street or in a pool hall, in almost every case, taking just a minute or 2 to have a human to human interaction is enough to satisfy what it is in him that inspired him to reach out to me.
I'm sorry... just an alternative perspective on the subject.
Quote from: Oriah on July 09, 2014, 11:54:45 PM
It's not always about sex. Sometimes a compliment is just a compliment.
It doesn't make sense to me.....in this culture low self esteem is considered to be a terrible epidemic faced by millions of women, but then simple compliments are treated like dangerous sexual advances. When women start treating all men as creeps or potential rapists, a lot of innocent, well meaning men get truly crushed. Big secret girls: men are just as insecure and emotionally fragile as women.
Quote from: ♡ Emily ♡ on July 10, 2014, 02:19:10 AM
And this if fething wrong. I also want to get back on what Oriah just said about men being quite insecure and fragile and whatnot. If I would have waited till they get their wits together to make the initial advance or follow-up... I would still be waiting. Sometimes, nope... often they fear rejection or just cannot figure us out (just like we often cannot figure out them), so when You see something like that, You need to take soft but decisive action. A bit of mystery or flirting is totally appropriate, but if things between people need to be sorted out then somebody has to do it.
Whenever I'm out, be it work or shopping, if someone looks at me for more than just an instant I tend to give a smile, for me this is just me showing friendly acknowledgement (and usually about the best anyone'll get out of me showing any kind of initiative, that I actually made first response), kind of like a nod or a hello, nothing more to it, just a nice gesture to show that I'm not a scared rabbit (used to be) or rude stuck up bitch (I probably seemed like I was years ago). Sometimes I get a smile back, sometimes a nod or hello, but other times no response at all, 'shrugs that last one off, keep going about what I was doing.'
Our apartment complex is renovating the exteriors, siding, as well as fixing porches and balconies. All the guys have gotten used to seeing me when I go out to walk Snickers. When I pass by one or two I'll smile, they'll either smile back or say hello, in which I return the greeting. If standing around as a group, say when they were all taking a break yesterday afternoon, I noticed them looking me over almost in unison, some with cigarettes in their mouths, a few with smiles on their faces, but all eyeballs on me (undressing me with their eyes, oh no!, but then that's only if you are a paranoid feminist; I say let 'em look, that's completely harmless, and really for me, that's positive attention), talking amongst each other, hmm, what could they being saying (oh my god, they're thinking dirty thoughts! Okay, its possible just as anything is, meaning they could be thinking or talking about any number of things) but I merely smile, and once in in a while might exchange a few words. Yesterday one carrying a ladder stopped and said something about when Snickers was barking and growling that day they were in front of our sliding glass door window, then was telling me about that it was going to take a lot longer to finish all this work than planned and how after that they were going to do some work in another state and how he didn't think he'd want to, I listened, said a few things to that, and that was it, harmless human interaction (he's a man, I'm a woman, so what, he goes back to the task at hand, I continue on walking my dog). There's nothing wrong with being friendly, most of the time there's no ulterior motive, people just like to be acknowledged, that they aren't invisible. And of coarse some of these people will be men, they need attention to, so what if maybe they'd show my more than say another guy, that maybe the attention was directed more my way because he thought I was pretty, so what, no big deal, its not like something more will come of it. A smile or friendly greeting even as brief as it is can make the difference in someone's day, turning what could have been bad for them to actually making them feel a bit better.