Based on a turn the discussion over in this thread has taken, I thought I’d start a little informal poll of the Dopers.
The question is: When is the last time you felt intimidated by someone? I don’t mean that they had to be verbally threatening you at the time. I’m just talking about a feeling of concern that ‘that person over there might do me harm if given the opportunity.’
And please, in responding, tell us if you’re male or female.
I’ll start. I’m female, and there was at least one guy at the bar I was at last weekend who gave me that feeling. So I’d say last week.
About 8 years ago, I stopped a HS kid who was kicking the shit out of a younger boy who was curled up on a street. He somehow seemed to feel that it was alright to kick his brother. He threatened me, but I didn’t doubt I’d win a fight with him. I did feel some fear, so maybe that counts. Other than that, maybe 20 something years ago.
Male. I don’t know really. I think junior high school or high school and I graduated in the late 90s. People aren’t really intimidating in the sense that I’m afraid that they’ll attack or kill me.
Intimidated by other things like ideas or possibilities?
Over the last several years, I have been a single mother. Sometimes lived in not-so-nice parts of town. I have developed an attitude when I’m out in the world. I feel that there are predators of woman and children out there, and when they scan their field of vision for likely victims, they are likely to reject me and mine as a possibility, because the way I carry myself tells them that I’m not the one.
It’s not that I’m paranoid (I don’t think most people are predators. But there are some. And I’m not obnoxious or threatening as I go about my daily business- it’s more of a non-verbal thing. I feel that this attitude has served me well, and I haven’t been intimidated by anyone in a long, long time.
Couple weeks ago - a guy at work was sexually harrassing me and i made a complaint to his manager and got backup among my psycho buddies. Oddly enough it wasn’t the harrassment that made me feel intimidated - i just felt angry about that.
It was after his manager called me into a second meeting to say that sexual harrassment guy had been warned off and that i should come back to the manager if i ever had any further problems that i had issues. I had said i wanted this guy to act professionally to me and not to attempt to communicate with me other than about work issues - and the first time i had to speak to him after things got sorted i felt intimidated. Still not sure why…
I tend to be wary of potential threats at all times. That sounds like paranoia but it’s closer to ingrained alertness; being aware and observant, just in case, because there are people out there willing to prey on others.
As far as actually being intimidated, it’s been since I was a kid in grade school and a much larger bully singled me out.
I’m a fairly big guy, in good shape, confident in my abilities to handle myself, and willing and able to defend myself physically or mentally… so I’m not physically intimidated easily at all now, no matter who the person is.
In a non-violent sense of intimidation, I’m on occasion mildly intimidated by very beautiful and/or very intelligent women.
A couple of weeks ago. My flatmate is a Glasgow Rangers supporter and he and his dad are season ticket holders. His dad couldn’t make the home game against Bratislava, so my flatmate asked me to go instead.
We got into the Glasgow underground and waited for a train. As it came in, everybody surged to get on. We packed onto the train, but, just as the doors were closing, my friend got off, trying to take me with him (he didn’t have enough room). I’m now stood on a train on my own with hundreds of pissed up neds bouncing around, passing Buckfast to each other singing sectarian songs with me in the middle of them all. Now’s a good time to mention that my screen name is my real name, Mulligan being an Irish surname. Glasgow Rangers and Celtic have a bitter and violent rivalry (Celtic being a traditionally Catholic team, Rangers Protestant). If they’d have found out my surname I think I’d have been stabbed. I just stood there in silence whilst they danced around singing “we’re not sectarian, we’re the UDF”, “I fought the IRA”, “we all live in a proddy housing scheme” (sung to the tune of Yellow Submarine), “if you don’t know the Sash you’re a Tim” and various songs about stabbing Neil Lennon in the neck.
Male. I am 6’1’’ 200 pounds and cocky. I am not afraid at all of most males and I have gotten into my share of fights even as an adult.
What I am intimidated by is a strong, bully, female, authority figure that I am forced to work with. Oddy enough, my mother fits this type and I think part of it that I was never allowed to defend myself with her. I just had to sit there and say “Yes, Ma’am” and take abuse. My female advisor in graduate school was also like this and I have never been so emotionally and verbally abused in my entire life. At the same time, I had no idea about how to defend myself based on the mores that I was raised with.
If the female is younger than I am, I don’t have a problem. It is the sex, age, and abusive style combined that makes me intimidated.
Hm. Odd. I’m not very secure emotionally. . .but I’m hard to physically intimidate. Once things escalate to an actual conflict, I lose my insecurities and I get pissed off. And, if I’m pissed off, I have more balls than sense and am hard to scare.
The only time I can really remember being intimidated by threat of harm is about four years ago. A former acquaintance was kinda-sorta stalking me. My fear stemmed mostly from the fact that I knew he was kinda off-kilter, not from any immediate physical threat.
Ummm…Junior High circa 1974 when 4 or 5 guys lay in wait for me after school. Since that time, basically never. If there is one lesson that life has taught me, it is that carrying the fight to the enemy, with overwhelming ferocity, will carry the day. Assholes who seek to intimidate tend to be chronically short of nads. Oherwise, they’d launch right into the hurting.
A few days ago a 6’3 250 lb man (at least) walked up to me in the school parking lot while I was trying to get into my car (845 at night).
He asked for my phone number, I smiled and said I had a boyfriend (total lie, but I wanted him to leave me alone), then I kept walking. He ran around and blocked my way to the car.
I walked around him, got in my car, and drove off; but that was really scary because I am all of 5’3 and wouldn’t have been able to do much if he was crazy. Not to mention, he just gave off that creepy vibe.
Female, of course.
I’m an average-sized “white” guy who currently lives in Japan but grew up in a violent semi-urban area with various minority gangs and an awful lot of poverty close to a couple of major prisons. I’ve been doing some form of martial arts off and on since I was 16. The bar for intimidation rises pretty high with those factors. Most of the time, that kind of stuff comes down to a respect issue anyway. Even the hard cases don’t attack you unless you give them some kind of reason.
I’m a prime alpha compared to most of the males around here. Even the bôsôzoku (youth bike gangs) here are a lot more pose than threat. I’ve met one or two yakuza who I thought had the kind of presence that indicates a hard customer. I was alert, but not intimidated by them.
The last time I was intimidated was back in the States. The other guy had a hidden weapon and the right attitude and I had nothing but hands and someone to protect. Defending someone sucks a lot more than just getting into a fight on your own. The only advantage I had was that I’d spotted his knife already. I was a lot more subservient than my norm in that situation so that he didn’t interpret anything I did as a confrontation. Even then, the trick is to not be too subservient or you get marked as a potential victim.
I’ll bet that we’re going to get a lot more women than men who will have proximate encounters that they remember. Women are socialized differently and have inborn tendencies to interpret confrontations differently from men. In my first dojo we had a pretty hard time getting the few women who attended to actually attack us, or even defend with the necessary amount of force to make things work. And these were women who had self-selected for learning something kind of violent in the first place. Even the few women who have a size advantage don’t seem to realize it or use it in confrontational situations.
My secretary scares me. She must be 70, and not strong, but she’s as tall as me and will shove her face right into mine when she wants to contradict or correct me.