This comes up at least once a week in the dating advice subreddits, where some post will somehow entice a bunch of guys to complain about how they’re afraid to approach or talk to women because they’ll be accused of being harassed, and I’m sick of it.
They point to #metoo as if it had this huge downside which is : men are no longer comfortable talking to women. Nobody ever got #metoo’d for simply politely talking to a stranger. I don’t know where they get the idea that all it takes to become a pariah is introducing yourself to a woman.
Unless, they aren’t being respectful and equate introducing themselves with sexual harassment. Even then, most men still get away with so much indecency, despite us being in the age of #metoo.
Anyways, it just seems like they’re attacking this objectively good social movement because they can’t grow a pair and say “hello” to a girl. It wouldn’t bother me so much if it was just some fringe incels in the most downvoted replies, but these complaints are so popular—usually the top comment.
Ok, that’s all. Thanks for paying attention to my tirade.
Comments
Honesty? Good. If a man can’t even tell if he’d be harassing a woman then he should stop approaching people. It’s really not that hard to tell
Also men who complain about #metoo would be a waste of time to date anyway
Also like, so what if they are? Do men regularly approach other men to introduce themselves? There are a handful of contexts where I would expect that, but usually no.
Maybe just date people after you have met them in a real life social situation and found you’re mutually interested? Like through a friend, or at a shared hobby in which you socialize, or in a community group. Or on a dating app where people are looking for that.
Bonus effect: this approach would also go a long way to solving the “male loneliness epidemic” because it requires men to turn off their computer, leave the house and make friends.
Women didn’t just discover men exist, we’ve been dealing with them our whole lives. The amount of low level misogyny we encounter on a regular basis has made it to where “good” guys get a depressingly low bar to be considered descent. This means they usually have to be way over a line in order to get to #metoo territory.
Someone here made a good comment that it’s about always wanting to be the victim, and it’s this deliberate bad faith exaggeration (false dichotomy?) in order to avoid the very reasonable position of context and nuance and how not every time or place is appropriate
Actually come to think of it these men are self reporting, because the very idea of a basic boundary (not everywhere is appropriate) repulses them. 🚩
I’m not too worried about that being a top comment or thread because it’s a self-selection bias. The good ones are either taken or succeed in a date, while there’s mountains of mediocre men victimizing themselves
Even if a man is being respectful, if a woman has multiple men coming up to her on a daily basis, that’s going to get old. And you can be sure a lot of them aren’t going to be respectful at all. I remember some really creepy encounters when I was younger. At my age mostly I get left alone which is nice.
My partner’s dad said to him once, during #metoo, that it must “be so scary to date as a young guy because you could be accused of anything at any time by a woman”. My partner was so confused and upset that he had to explain to his own dad that if you don’t assault or harass people… You won’t be accused of anything! The fact that men point to #metoo as this scary awful thing that happened to them is fucking pathetic. As if 80% (probably more honestly) of women throughout their lives won’t be SA’ed or harassed. Boohoo poor fucking men.
and then they demand that women should approach men ( which they already do) because they think its the only thing preventing them from getting a GF
dude even if women would approach more you would still be single
i know approaching is hard and i sometime can understand the frustation especially if you are just a normal dude who just isnt lucky i truely do
but the thing with approaching men is that even if they are not into you, they will still get with you and use you as a placeholder GF ( or just using you for sex to boost their egos) because having a GF for many men is still better than not having a GF doesnt mater if the relationship is bad or if they are not attracted to the woman, the chances of someone like this trying to monkeybranch is way higher than a dude who approached you first, it can still happen tho but less likely
men do gain more from relationships than women ( sex, status, emotional and domestic labour), thats why women are more likely to not be bothered being single, are more likely to leave a relationship/divorce if it turns sour, they just lose less in general,while many men seem to see relationships as their only endgoal to a happy life and convinience and validating their “masculinity”
also the risk that the dude you approach seeing you as easy and slutty is also there
Good! Going to the gym pre me too and post me too is a completely different experience!
Don’t get me wrong I still get creeped on but now other men know it’s wrong and hold the creep accountable which is rare in most other environments.
I fully get where this dude’s coming from… but come on, most dudes can approach women without fearing harassment accusations. The entitled guys are the ones to be wary of.
i commented some well meaning advice on some tiktoks on this topic and got BOMBARDED by men 💀
my advice? establish eye contact first, maybe even flash a smile, see if she’s willing or interested to be approached. if not, leave it, no hard feelings. don’t ask me how that made them mad 🤷🏻♀️
I saw a video of a guy trying to approach a girl and she said she wasn’t interested and a lot of the comments were saying “low confidence” because the guy stepped away when the woman said no. So men push other men to harass women, but then are scared we’re going to call them out for their own behavior.
I might regret making this post but what the hell. Imagine you’re a happy child running around, playing, all that shit. Then one day an adult sits you down and tells you that there is a monster inside of you and if you don’t do everything you can to keep it down you will be one of the worst people alive. At that point it’s not even about being “me too’d”, it’s about thinking women want absolutely nothing to do with any of our gross feelings. Like, you’re constantly wondering if you can even look at a woman without ruining her day. Anyway, I know growing up women have their own terrifying conversations from adults, this sticks with us though
Literally. I
They got the idea because a buddy of theirs claims to totally only said hello to that bitch and she yelled harassment. No need to hear her side!
Yeah, annoying!
It’s so simple:
if you would say the same thing to (a) a dude or ( b) a woman you are not attracted to, then you can ALWAYS say it & talk to the woman. If not, just leave her alone & get a hobby, stop looking at all women and think about if you would like to date them / hit on them. We are people and like genuine interactions with other people.
I mean, I get that men are thinking twice about who and how to approach, but that’s good.
When I was young, I had guys sit down at my table when I was eating alone, follow me around asking for a date, etc. None of that was successful and it made me wildly uncomfortable.
Men can still talk to women but they can’t just harass them now.
metoo was about being raped.
Any guy who is afraid of approaching woman because he feels he might accidentally rape her is an instant predator.
I don’t know where men get this idea that the harassment police are going to swoop in on them and jail them or ruin their reputations for all eternity. In my 43 years of life, I’ve literally never seen a man who harassed, groped, flashed, or SA’d me have to endure a single negative consequence of those actions. Not even the guy who grabbed my tits from behind while I was using the register at my first restaurant job, in front of everyone. No, they couldn’t fire or suspend him because that would violate the conditions of the halfway house he was living in for prior crimes, and he’s just trying to get back on his feet and turn his life around. Boo fucking hoo.
for a very long time people met other people at ‘third spaces’ – a space that is not your home or your work. parks, coffee shops, bars. communal hangouts. third spaces have all but disappeared and, with them, the dating practices that were taught to young men. as men have been traditionally expected to initiate, and then taught to do so (because that’s how dad met mom), it’s not hard to understand why many young men are a little lost right now, and perhaps are looking for a boogieman to blame because they’re confused and a little hurt.
at least in NA, it seems we’re isolating from strangers in a big way that comes off a little toxically antisocial. i notice a lot of the comments are more or less “good, don’t talk to me. i don’t know you.” maybe it’s a good change, but my intuition says that this type of behavior will stunt a generation socially. plenty of good, loving, mutually respectful relationships were started by two strangers meeting in public.
i suppose it’s very possible that this is a vocal minority in the thread commenting on the vocal minority of men, but that couldn’t be a very interesting conversation – just the two loudest people you know complaining about each other.
If anything it shows how they are placing the blame on women instead of thinking about and taking responsibility for their behavior.
It’s more of : hold men to any reasonable standard and they will throw a fit and say they can’t possibly function under such restrictions.
Ex: Ask him to grocery shop, and then he forgets half the things on a list and needed to meal prep- he refuses to ever go again, because even when he ‘helps’ it’s always wrong.
Ok, so this may be really unpopular, but hear me out.
I’m an LCSW who works with adults who are struggling with dating and relationships. About 95% of my clients are men. Most of my regular clients, who are not predatory, really struggle with this too.
Now, they aren’t complaining about how unfair it is to them- they feel frozen. They will describe a situation in which it is very, very clear that the woman is waiting for him to make a move, but he is so worried that he will be perceived as pushy, that he doesn’t make the move, and then she misperceives that as a lack of interest, and it ends. This is EXTREMELY COMMON. Very, very, very common.
Of course, there are also tons of circumstances in which men are pushy or invasive and then blame the #metoo movement for not being able to sexually harass women without consequence- but I refuse to work with those men long-term. My business is intentionally unappealing to misogynists, so my experience is mostly with well-intended but confused men.
My role is to teach them appropriate ways to demonstrate romantic interest, read cues, and respond accordingly. The fear they have of being labeled as a predator is real and pervasive. We have mock dates where we practice over and over again, and the number of those men who then go on a third date and are too terrified to make a move is quite high. Also, to be clear, by ‘make a move’ I am not talking about sex. I am talking about flirtation or, at most, a kiss. These are not dudes who want to learn pickup artistry. They’re educated, intelligent, kind people who want to find their person.
IMO here are the primary contributing factors
* lack of socialization between girls and boys and women and men. The first time most of these guys have had any meaningful interaction with a woman is dating apps, and then a series of brutal first dates, that wreck their confidence (which is clearly not the woman’s fault)
* The incredibly sexist media that is fed to men every single day. Every tv show they watch, their friends, their parents, the books they read, etc… If you’d a dude and you don’t have female friends, it is so hard to know how to treat women like people, because they are taught that women are unpredictable fairy sex goddesses that smell good, but get angry for no reason. The difference between tv shows designed for adolescent boys and adolescent girls is really insane. In media designed for little boys, women are helpless, stupid, too emotional, unpredictable, etc… It would be like if your only knowledge of South Korea came from kdramas.
* Wildly different communication styles. Men and women communicate interest differently, especially in romance and dating. He doesn’t know how to read her signals, because he’s never seen anything like it before. If she’s not being direct, he thinks she’s not interested, because men are direct about what they want, and everyone he’s ever spent any time with, has a penis.
* He is a good person, who does not want to make women uncomfortable, and is terrified of getting it wrong. These people do not express concern that she’ll be mean to him. He is expressing concern that he will make her uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to hurt her or make her feel used, and because everything he’s read online is complaining about aggressive men, he interprets any move he could make as potentially offensive.
The solution is education. Once these guys understand how to communicate with her, the norms around modern dating, how to read her cues, and learn how to treat women like normal humans instead of the fairy princess he’s been daydreaming about since he was 14, they flourish… and they become really good partners.
(I am not defending incels or misogynists, they’re awful. I just want to give another perspective as someone who works with defeated men every day.)
Yeah, I wonder about that too. Do those guys really not know the difference between an introduction and sexual harassment?
“Hi! My name’s <name> and I thought we could talk a little bit if that’s okay with you.”
It’s not like it’s some mystical secret you can only find out if you get the Headpiece to the Staff of Ra and go to the Well of Souls.
One time a guy said something like that and I asked what we might talk about and he said he would tell me the names of three movies he likes and I could tell him the name of three movies I like and we could see if we had anything in common.
It turned out that we didn’t have much in common (I did not like “Saw” and he did not like “Barbie”), but that was a polite and gentlemanly way to approach and a safe subject to talk about that was also reasonably fun. Nothing rude, nothing gross, no harassment.
I think the guys who complain about that are maybe just really dumb that they can’t think of a polite way to introduce themselves and a pleasant subject to talk about.
This is just another item on the long list of reasons why other men mostly annoy me. The ones complaining about this are just telling on themselves because they dont see a difference between talking to a woman and aggressively diving dick first and trying to treat the interaction like they are looking for the fastest dialog options to get to sex.
It sort of benefits me, since with the bar being so unbelievably low, all I have to do is not be a caveman and I get praise for simple things. But I dont want that, I want other men to do better. It seems like so much of society just assumes that men are basically animals unable to control base instinct. But instead of a reasonable solution, like making them sit in the corner until they grow up, it somehow is made into women’s responsibility to baby them. And also lets put one of the worst examples of this behavior in charge of everything. Ugh.
I think a big part of it is that metoo confronted a lot of men with the fact that many behaviours that were mostly deemed acceptable and benign actually weren’t. Sure, most men wouldn’t wouldn’t rape a stranger in the streets, but things like getting women super drunk, not accepting rejection, pestering your partner to have sex with you etc were (and tbh still are) super common and not really condemned. And since nobody wants to see themselves as the bad guy it’s easier to think “these feminists are overreacting, even saying hello to a woman these days will get you harassment charges” than to actually reflect on and change your behaviour.
It’s emotional manipulation. It’s the same as someone saying “I guess I’m just the worst person ever! I’ll just never talk to you again” after being told “hey, I don’t like it when you do this particular thing.”
It can and should be ignored.
Women don’t own a man’s social anxiety any more than men own woman’s. Going up to strangers has always carried a risk of rejection, but it was on women to smile and be polite when we didn’t feel it.