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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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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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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