The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Yesterday an adult woman was so distressed by my presence walking my dog at a park that she cringed and hid her face from me as we walked past each other. I had not looked at her or acknowledged her in any way. This is in a large major city park near-but-not-in a rough neighborhood where there are much scarier things than a bald bearded white guy in a Hawaiian shirt walking a dog at 1 pm. How the fuck does she get through her day?
The week before, I was leaving a bar on a Wednesday night, a woman was walking some distance ahead of me, and turned of her own accord down the same street I was parked on. 11 pm, safe sleepy neighborhood. I pulled out my key fob to flash the lights of my car. When I reached my car, she sprinted to the other side of the street and gave me a resentful, terrified look. Apparently, I am not allowed to walk to my parked car.
I keep being advised (by women) to meet women at "festivals" and parks and how cute my dog is and how I must get so many girls thanks to him (I don't). It seems irresponsible of them to encourage harassment.
I know I shouldn't take incidents like this so seriously, it just stirs up a lot of old pain.
Perhaps the takeaway here is to not take advice from women seriously, especially about dating and courtship, since dating and courtship are just things that magically happen to them like acts of God.
But yeah, no need to worry about the comfort and feelings of a random woman, for chances are she doesn’t give the slightest of fucks about yours. Maybe you can even amuse yourself by leaning into it, staring them down or walking faster toward them when you sense them reacting cuntily to your presense. Growth mindet!
Who? Whom?, as always. It’s not like they have a principled stance on Bayesian reactions to strangers. If you admit you put up a higher guard when walking past a black man than you do an East Asian man, the vast majority of women who complain about feeling unsafe around men in public will shriek that you’re racist.
Now I’m jokingly concerned that I can’t recall a time scaring a woman by my passing presence in public. Have I been too non-threatening-looking all this time, a la the now deleted “Guy who likes you, but you're not quite attracted to him starterpack: Somewhat cute, non-threatening appearance”?
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The woman in your example above is vomiting her emotional baggage onto random strangers and can be dismissed like other people who do the same.
I think more empathic guys will pick up on the anxiety of women in public spaces like the above. I used to feel guilty or ashamed when women would react that way when I was younger as if I did something wrong to cause them to be afraid (by neutrally just existing in a public space). Then I did some work and now I see it completely as the women's problem. I'm not responsible for their emotional response to completely predictable behaviour (eg that if women go to a public space they will encounter other people going about their business). I don't go out of my way as much as I used to to avoid close proximity to women in public spaces (although I do occasionally cross the street at night or the like to not follow women on deserted streets, but this is out of kindness rather than guilt.)
Try to look deeper into this issue so you don't feel any emotional pain when women act like the above (easier said then done I know). Give yourself permission not to change your behaviour to suit crazy strangers.
I have a hard time viewing these people as crazy strangers, since they've apparently been citizens in good standing, and anyone else I talk about this with gives me the "You just don't understand the threats that women face every day, hypervigilance, something-something patriarchy" speech, so I don't talk about it.
I'm also confused as to the cringing thing; wouldn't that piss off a threatening man and invite further harassment? In my case, it just crushed me emotionally. I'm apparently so unpleasant as to need warding-off, but not scary enough to avoid provoking. So scary that women sprint away, not scary enough that they don't try to get me to pay for their food or bilk me for attention.
Yeah, the responses to this kind of issue are really one sided. Female attitudes around this issue (at a societal level) will not change in your lifetime, so all you can do is change how you react to it.
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