Well, you might see the range of opinions in this thread as to what is acceptable or not. Apparently some people feel that speaking to a strange woman for any reason is unacceptable. I think that’s too extreme. I’d consult the feminist Hive Mind for you but ultimately I think everyone needs to make up their own mind.
So I’m supposed to know that’s an innocent remark how, exactly?
The words? (There was no references to body parts!)
The tone? (There was no brashness?)
The attire of the speaker? (Homeless guy or suit?)
Because these things are impossible to imitate? Bullshit.
As a woman, if I am be called out to, by strange men in the street, my number one objective is avoid eye contact and keep moving purposely away from them. I’m not gonna bother to determine (by whatever unknown measure you’re privy to!), which is the innocent remark.
What would you want your fourteen year old niece to do? Smile back at all the ‘sweet’ remarks? I expect you’ll tell her to ignore them, avoid eye contact, and move purposely away without pause.
While it may be more true in big cities, When you call out to women you don’t know, in the street, you are kinda behaving like a creeper. Even if you’re doing it innocently.
I gotta wonder how all these men would feel about being the target of innocent remarks, like, “Hey, nice suit!”, if it were coming exclusively from gay men. Out on the street. In broad daylight. In front of everyone. Frequently through the day. Every other day.
If gay men behaved this way to straight men, they’d all get punched in the face, is my bet.
Hey Lady!
Hold on!
Excuse me!
Don’t run!
Wait a minute!
Lady?
You dropped your wallet…
Ibe actually had situations like that happen to me, and it sucks. It sucks that so many people choose to harass me on the street that I am automatically suspicious of anyone trying to get my attention.
For the record, I’ve never been punched in the face. And yes, I will smile, nod my head and say hello to random people on the street. Nothing more, nothing less.
I do greet “dudes” the same way when I pass them on the street. I nod and say, “Hi,” or “Morning!” (assuming it’s morning).
I wouldn’t want this video to go without comment, but the discussion can be framed in a number of different ways and I’m not sure the best way to frame it. The article itself doesn’t even seem sure of its message. What do you think, Bruce Wayne?
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I do greet “dudes” the same way when I pass them on the street. I nod and say, “Hi,” or “Morning!” (assuming it’s morning).
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In the vast majority of the places I have lived, that is normal, expected behavior, and is not interpreted as street harassment. YMMV.
The most interesting part of that post to me was when she noted that she feels uncomfortable initiating conversations with men and other women. She’s dealing with the current paradigm, and instead of trying to change that paradigm, she’s trying to do the best she can with what she’s given. I can’t fault her for that, but I don’t consider it empowered.
IMO, I don’t find her behavior empowering. To me, empowered is being able to talk with whom you choose about what you choose to talk about. She’s choosing to talk with men who choose to talk to her and hoping to change the topic from what they’re wanting to talk about.
Her behavior appears to me more thrill-seeking than empowering. If she gets overpowered by one of the men who catcalls her when she is talking with him because she miscalculated the risk, does she get to say that his advance is uninvited because she wanted to talk about peanut butter even if she knew that his opening line was a sexual invitation?
I’m really liking the Elon James White insights in the DudeGreetingDudes twitter. The juxtaposition is amusing.
Eh, it is situational. In the neighborhood or low traffic areas sure, in a city center no you’d be an annoyance.
Yeah, I was surprised that lady got so many comments in the video while walking in NYC, because one of my favorite things about working in NYC is that nobody expected me to talk to them. But I was primarily in the city/train/subway during commuting hours so that might have had something to do with it. Context is everything.
Hey, dude, you’re the one who compared soldiers to child molesters. The only person here digging a linguistic abyss (or maybe chasm?) is you.
For me, personally, that’s pretty inflammatory, so I would avoid it. But, hey, if it’s really important to you to tell everyone that there’s no difference between soldiers and child creeps, I’ll support your right to say it. I’m not sure what it accomplishes, but I’m sure you’ll inform us of that.
Yeah. Given that the video was made by “Model Pranksters” in association with “DAMN.com” and “Pranksters.com”, I just assumed the whole thing was staged as a joke. Especially with the jealous boyfriend forcefully turning his girlfriend’s gaze away from Hunky Guy at the end.
Even the author of that rather confusing article seems, oddly, to lament
Agreed. I just assumed that video was meant as a parody one like the “10 hours walking through New York Jets fan”.
This seems to have gone on for quite a while and I didn’t notice anyone mentioning the method I go by. If you make eye contact with someone then a polite nod or quick hello can be exchanged. If the other person is avoiding eye contact with you it generally means they don’t want an interaction with you and it would be rude to initiate one.
This method seems to work everywhere I’ve ever been. If someone is expecting interaction they will look for and maintain eye contact. If interaction is unwanted then they will tend to avoid eye contact.
This seems so obvious. If they’re not looking around at people, they don’t want to be disturbed. How is that not obvious?
I’m not talking about the “feminist hive-mind”. I’m talking about the guy in the linked article. The guy who started the hash tag.
In the video that started this, a lot of what was said to the woman were literal greetings. Some people have said “Hey, those guys were just being friendly, saying hello. You can’t even say hello?”.
This guy’s response seems to be “They’re not just ‘being friendly’, if they were, they’d being greeting everyone, men included, that they’re not, proves that there’s something more to these hellos than just ‘friendly greetings’”. Okay, fair enough. But then when he (and other twitterers) are supposedly making his point with examples of “Dudes Greeting Dudes”, it’s not greetings at all, but just standard catcalling, and nothing whatsoever to do with the debate he was supposedly addressing.
Ah, the classic “I note your presence and don’t intend to kill you. I don’t expect this exchange to go any further, but if it does because we are in an elevator, something about the weather would be appropriate,” gambit. Animals do it, too, but because there are no elevators in the wild it rarely gets to the weather stage.
Wife spent some time in Mexico and there she found the appropriate response to being flirted with by a stranger was a smile and a, “Oh, you silly…”
You know your social experiment has gone both right and wrong when they start making Star Wars parodies of your SJW film.
Regards, -Bouncer-the Men-pire Strikes Back!