Hey Raena

Froosh

Yah, I agree with Nick. Interruptions when you are busy are never welcome, doesn’t matter what your gender or that of the perpetrator.

I would say though that women (in IT, or just using IT) have been treated by men in IT as a ‘resource’ rather than human beings, which would certainly colour the responses of women who have experienced that.

Pete

The part that you are studiously ignoring is that he approached a lot more people than just 2 women, and the rest of them were either happy to chat or not happy to chat, but didn’t look like they were going to call the Federal Marshals on him.

I know its tempting to paint women as victims yet again, but the fact is that women are entirely too quick to judge men. When a stranger approaches, the shield goes up. Men are much more gregarious and credulous.

In addition, he doesn’t have to be explicitly told to leave or have the cops called on him, we human beings have this thing called social intuition when we realize from the subtext of an interaction whether it is going well or not.

If it was an isolated incident, as I’m sure you wish it were, Russell wouldn’t have received such a response. Women, by and large, have become uncomfortable with men as a result of years of “men are rapists” propaganda.

It is very interesting, though, that you start off your blog entry first by insinuating that the Lenovo employee was sexually harassing the women, and that women are victims because he wouldn’t approach them after being given the cold shoulder by too many of them.

Lee

“That’s actually part of the point. He basically says that all the women he spoke to are assuming he’s a stalker.

ALL of them. Are you seriously accepting his idea that ALL of them are treating him this way?”

Raena, as you are a woman you cannot experience what a man does if both were to say the same thing in the same situation in the same tone and manner to a women out and about.

Over the past 50 years women have become nearly 100% distrustful of all men, in all public settings. It is the natural result of decades of propaganda and indoctrination that all men are potential attackers, stalkers and rapists. This is true across the English speaking world.

I have experienced this many many times myself, and at the age of 47 now just assume it part of my daily life.

-Single women will often turn around to look at me if the hear me walking behind them. -Suggesting a drink with a bank teller has her react as though I uttered a string of vile profanity. -Women who live in my own apartment complex turn around to see who I am, whilst we are inside the gated, secure compound that we have shared for years.

Western women in the Anglosphere have been fully indoctrinated to fear and suspect all men all the time. Unless you are tall, very handsome, rich, famous and recognisable you are just grist to be shot down and mocked. Being friendly towards you all is now virtually impossible, and Lenovo Guy’s experience is mirrored by millions of men.

You might learn how to turn down a man gently with grace and charm rather than a look of fear, suspicion and opprobrium.

“Thank you very much for the invitation, buy I am seeing someone…” with a smile, works wonders.

Not: “I have a boyfriend”.

Kim

I’m a bad person. I’m laughing my arse off at Lee and Pete and the Lenovo guy, and I know that’s not fair, if they really are as clueless as they’re portraying themselves, and not just being disingenous about wanting to get laid…

Here’s how it works, guys. If a woman (a) looks busy, or (b) looks away when she sees you looking at her, that’s a subtle signal that she doesn’t want to talk to (a) anyone, or (b) you. Most other women get that, and wouldn’t pester her (especially if she’s a stranger). Some men don’t pick this up as a cue, and then go barrelling in where they’re both uninvited and unwanted, and expect - demand - her attention. And quite often, because they lack the social skills to have picked up that she didn’t want to engage with them, these guys are the ones who are dateless, lonely, and desperate (because they’ve had a string of failed pickups, because they lack social skills, and they lack the ability to get to know people in a less intrusive and gauche way, because they lack social skills).

I wish I could bold that bit. It is the lack of social skills on the part of the male that leads to an encounter which pisses both participants off. The woman didn’t want to engage in the first place. Suddenly she’s presented with a situation which is a distraction from what she was previously engaged in doing (not good), has started out badly (lack of recognition on the part of the male that she did not want to engage, whch is an immediate indicator of the male lacking social skills) and promises to get more awkward (see: lack of social skills on the part of the man).

Given such a situation, the response of “I have a boyfriend” is a very valid out. It’s a show-stopper line, without having the emotional loading of a statement like, “Dude, piss off. I don’t know you. I don’t want to know you. I have no interest in you as a human being. If you died tomorrow, I wouldn’t care. I don’t want to know you exist”, which, even though she’s annoyed, she does not want to have on her conscience as having been something she has said to another person, even a stranger.

Whatever the man’s initial intentions, there are two very probable reactions to the “I have a boyfriend” statement - guy will get pissed at her (for several potential reasons), utter a variant of ‘fuck you’ and exit immediately; or guy will stutter out a, “Um… look, I wasn’t actually trying to pick you up…” and, embarrassed, leave immediately. (Less probable reactions might be something like, “Uh - look, I just wanted to let you know you have a bit of toilet paper stuck to your shoe,” which, if true, could lead to a shared laugh and genuine engagement.) But, back to the more probables - the end result of both probables is the same, and it is the woman’s desired end result. The encounter will have ended. Woman rolls eyes, settles feathers, feels relieved encounter has ended without her having to be overtly cruel, and gets back to whatever she was doing.

Man, on the other hand, is left a mess. Whatever his initial motives in beginning the encounter, he now feels rejected, flustered, upset. Again, because he lacks social skills, he can’t ‘parse’ the encounter and work out why it went wrong. He just knows he feels bad. His encounter with the woman has left him feeling bad. Attributing blame is a normal reaction - it makes sense of the encounter, which lessens the upset feelings. So, it must be her fault. The self-created knowledge that “she’d do this to any guy” lessens the feelings of rejection, and is such a comforting belief, because it puts the man in with a group of (imaginary) other men whom she has (in the narrative he is creating) rejected, and misery really does love company, even if it exists only in his own mind. And, sometimes, to keep his ego healed up, the man will continue to heap blame on, and attribute failure to, a woman or women who he has dealt with… leading to such oft-repeated statements as “(she needs to) learn how to turn down a man gently with grace and charm” (translated: “She has neither grace nor charm”) or, “she looked at me LIKE I WAS A RAPIST!!” (translated: “She hysterically overreacted”), or, the classic - “What a bitch!” (You don’t need a translation for that one, right?)

Dear oh dear, I’m writing an epic. Essentially, if you are someone who has had many encounters like this, stop blaming random people. (And that goes if you are male or female, or the random people are male or female.) This is a self-created problem, and it’s only hurting you. No-one is under any obligation to be tender towards your hurt feelings. Get thee to a psychotherapist. At best, you lack social skills for some reason, and a psychotherapist should be able to help you learn those behavioural skills. You could be on the way to a vastly improved life, where you can appropriately interact and genuinely engage people. At worst you lack empathy, which, though I am not qualified to fully understand, I would imagine will mean a lot more work, but, if you genuinely work on it with a qualified (and good) professional, maybe you can get to a stage where you can develop and maintain satisfying relationships.

Honest, I’ll try to be quick about the next couple of points.

Blaming “the Anglosphere” and “western civilisation” for “women’s inbred fear of men” is just daft, and again, it’s blame shifting. It is only a very recent change in the human history that any woman would be directly dealing with a male stranger in a social setting. Even two hundred years ago, women had to be ‘introduced’ before they could even (appropriately) acknowledge a man, and in the case of unmarried men and unmarried women, there should always have been chaperones. In villages and tribal societies, the men deal with male strangers. Our instincts process change a lot slower than our intellect. In this change of the last couple of hundred years, I would postulate that (generally) women have (generally) some measure of reserve toward unknown men in social settings because women’s instinct is still operating a couple of millenia ago. (Please note the ‘generally’, I am very much aware of the oversimplification of that last statement.)

But it is ‘reserve’ - it is not ‘fear’. I think the ‘fear’ that is shown is a mix of surprise at the unexpected engagement; anger which is not socially encouraged to be shown directly; and a genuine fear, but which is fear of not handling the encounter correctly, not a physical fear of being raped (while in a populous airport). Social embarrassment is a very real fear for everyone, and in a completely unexpected social engagement, people don’t have the chance to process (or ‘practise in thier heads’) the likely outputs of the engagement. Instead, in this scenario (suddenly having to deal with a stranger at an airport), the person has to immediately deal with it, and the immediate reaction, on being pulled away from what she was engaged in, is a moment of complete confusion, which can lead to a flash of panic because she has not had the chance to process the encounter beforehand and so, for a second, can’t think how to deal with it and this intimates the possibility of social embarrassment. That’s the ‘fear’ that’s really being shown, I think.

Now I just said that it is only recently that women would be directly dealing with a male stranger in a social setting. However, women have dealt with male strangers in a commercial setting for millenia, and with complete comfort. That is because of the implicit agreement between both men and women engaged in commercial dealings that during the commercial dealing, the gender of both is irrelevant, suborned to their roles of buyer and seller. (I’m talking about the buying and selling of bread and meat in the marketplace, where both genders accept that both have a place there, not about office politics, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.) Which is why Lee’s ‘let’s have a drink’ approach to his bank teller was just unacceptable. He was directly and aggressively noticing her gender at a time when it should have been completely subsumed by her role as seller (bank teller) and his role as buyer (client of the bank) She would not have been psychologically prepared to deal with a come-on. Taken so off-balance, dealing with the encounter would have been quite difficult, especially given the dictum that one cannot be rude to a customer. It is, frankly, a rotten thing to do to anyone, to put them in such a position.

I’ll shut up now Off soapbox! Great blog, though!