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Men starting conversation with women they don't know, out of sexual/romantic interest
Just ran across this article, hat-tip to a friend on Facebook:
http://jezebel.com/5941463/stranger-on-a-train-i-would-fucking-kill-you-bitch
Discuss.
I think this person has a useful note. NB: The writer of this quote is male.
Seriously, what the fuck do these guys think is going to happen? Will a woman be SO enthralled by your ability to speak that she'll just drop everything and blow you right there? Or are they a bit more romantic and think it'll be the kind of love story that will one day be told to their grandchildren?
Seriously, I think that our media narratives and stories and such need to be less often about things like "love at first sight" and more about people interacting normally with each other.
Comments
I don't think I need to state what happened to that girl was horrible. The entire romance angle of our society is legitimately screwed up and I don't think it's revolutionary to say women bear the brunt of it.
I mean look at fiction, men are told they're the ones who have to rescue girls and sweep them off their feet and yadda yadda
(for myself my longest relationships were initiated by the lady)
On the other hand, this article is written as the result of not being talked to on the train out of sexual or romantic interest once in a while, but out of a long history of skeevy advances by strangers culminating in one colossal asshole being a colossal asshole. Talking to a stranger with such a usually harmless motive isn't a bad thing, depending on how it's handled, and I'm beginning to grow weary of articles that try to influence people's behaviour while pointing out the worst examples of a particular thing.
Mind you, I'm not someone who goes up to a lot of random women I find attractive to see if I can sleep with them. But I'm against the general implication of this article on principle -- being talked to when you want time to yourself or your own space is inconvenient and frustrating, but it's not like you're being kicked in the teeth. So while I understand the sentiment here and am sympathetic on some levels, this looks like moving from one extreme to the other in an effort to compensate for the frustration.
It's exceedingly common for us as human beings to look at things in terms of extremes, but I find that tendency to be at its worst when applied to social matters. This article is pretty much saying that you shouldn't go up and talk to someone if you feel like it, because you might accidentally upset them. Very considerate, but it's a perspective born out of frustration rather than reason or analysis of human social interaction. Most people enjoy being social and there are any number of given reasons why. And if someone's being social because they want to bone someone else, that might be annoying, but it's nothing you can (or should) stop short of evidence for sexual harassment.
I think the best solution for her would be to say that she's engrossed in her book and would rather not be disturbed. While that article provides on example of a circumstance where that wouldn't have worked, I daresay it would be just fine most of the time. And perhaps a lot of men would consider her cold or frigid for it, but just as anyone is free to engage socially for a variety of reasons, she (and everyone else) is free to assert their personal space.
This problem is best solved by mutual respect, not trying to pass new social rules or trying to prevent people from being socially outgoing. Public transport is unlikely to be an appropriate place for a sexual or romantic advance, but at the same time, why not, really? It looks to me as if this was just an unfortunate situation resulting in an unfortunate article caused by mounting frustration over time.
tl;dr: I don't think there's anything wrong with making a sexual or romantic advance on someone you don't know, but by the same token, don't be surprised if you're turned down quickly. Everyone has the right to test the waters, just as everyone has the right to tell someone making an advance to take it elsewhere.
>I don't think there's anything wrong with making a sexual or romantic advance on someone you don't know, but by the same token, don't be surprised if you're turned down quickly. Everyone has the right to test the waters, just as everyone has the right to tell someone making an advance to take it elsewhere.
I think this is a good theory, though there is the problem that a lot of people might be hesitant to ask to be left alone.
Of course that's a symptom of a much larger problem.
That said, I do think there's a tendency in these kinds of articles to look at extremes and then tell people not to try initiating any kind of contact like that.
Which is amusing when paired with the 'you're alone because you didn't take a chance' articles that often come up too.
Which means obviously, the answer is to use the coma dudes from Minority Report to hook people up based on infallible premonition.
This is the crux of my issue, not specifically in terms of romance, but in terms of social justice in general. The wording of these articles often make implications about those who don't follow the rules they lay out, but you might read another article by someone speaking of the same issue with equal authority and have it contradicted. As a white, male, hetereosexual individual, it makes things somewhere between confusing and frustrating. There's just no winning here, because you're encouraged to follow the lead of coloured, female and non-heterosexual individuals who proceed to contradict one-another and set different bars of consideration and behaviour.
It's an exceedingly alienating experience. This article isn't nearly the worst example of that, but it does follow the same patterns. I am well and truly tired of my opinions being laid out for me by social justice writers on account of the organ between my legs, the shade of my skin and the kind of people I like to sleep with. I'm also well aware of all the things I don't have to put up with, but that doesn't really alleviate how condescending these kinds of articles feel and how little intellectual credit they give me.
There's also the line about the guy telling the author that he'd beat up the other guys harassing her, where the author notes that this individual is acting like "a man who knows how to treat a woman". I'm not sure if this is the author being ironic or what, because it's condoning violence for the sake of alleviating her frustration. I'd expect someone conscious of social issues to abhor such petty violence, especially when it's motivated by gender roles and politics, but I'm just not sure how to read that bit. Like I said, I suppose she could be acting facetious about this one, but I can't pin it down for sure.
Like I said, I'm sympathetic to the author. And she makes some points worthy of consideration. But her article was also motivated by a recent traumatic experience without time to reason it out or consider it in a wider context, that being the entire body of experiences concerning strangers of both genders making advances on people.
Note: I do not necessarily endorse the views of the article posted, nor any of the comments to that article.
Meh, there's no perfect key to never violating anyone's boundaries. I mean, someone might be unnerved by a bro who is silent instead of being friendly, or even a minor greeting or a nod might be seen as a start-up to filch her phone number. And if you feel unsafe, awkward and unsure in such a situation, mirror neurons might give the lady the same feels. All her responses could be politeness because she might fear an inbound spergfit like the guys in the article, or such an analysis might be feeding into the filthy stereotype of wimminz never saying what they're really thinking. And do a bro's feels even matter in this if she's looking for escape routes like a soldier on PTSD?
After a certain point, you should just breathe, relax and use common sense. Just imagine how pleasant conversations with strangers on midnight trains were initiated with you in the past and do the same with her:
-Can you watch our luggage while we go the restroom?(boy+girl, so it was kinda obvious what they were up to)
-Why are you wearing four sombreros?
-*spontaneously start singing Don't Stop Believing by Journey until the entire compartment sung along*
-Do you think a guy has a crush on you if he's carrying you on his shoulders for most of the concert?
Mind you, in most of these scenarios people are drunk, bored and in a sizeable crowded wagon, so that also influences the whole shebang, but I can't imagine ever being interested in a dudette that's too shy/traumatized/dull to not know how to respond to such conversation openers. It's a nice system to filter out likeminded loonies.
Alex - I dunno, from a purely practical standpoint striking up conversations with strangers in a public place seems like a bad idea. If they are out on the bus, or in the park or museum or store or wherever, chances are they have a reason for being out there. Maybe meeting somebody else or just going from point A to point B or just running an errand, but what ever it is, chances are they wouldn't take kindly to being interrupted by somebody else. Doubly so for people reading a book or wearing headphones or using a computing device or somehow occupied in some task. Going up and talking to them for something short of an emergency is just being inconsiderate.
Well, if the location is a train, then I don't see why going up and talking to someone would be a good idea. It should seem especially obvious, in the case of a person with headphones in or their nose in a book, that, no, they don't want to talk to anyone and you'll probably upset them (and if it happens enough to the same person, it might feel like a pretty good kick in the crotch). Especially, in the case of the article, with a dumbass pick-up line like, "What book are you reading?" I find that question annoying, and I don't even get hit on (as far as I can tell).
With that said, I could see how this is a less apt complaint in other social settings. Do articles like this run around detailing this sort of behavior in these other social settings?
The on-creepiness stuff I linked to some time ago did(since it all pretty much comes down to social boundaries).
Also, if you go for a stupid pick-up line, better go all the way down with "hey, are you literate too?"
I can't help but giggle every time I see people use the book as an icebreaker pickup. When a girl used that on me she ended up getting the most disgusted look and stomped off when she saw it was Star Wars.
I agree with Alkthash here. Talking to strangers on public transit usually seems like more trouble than it is worth. Even if you believe that it is "worth a shot" to try to talk to somebody, some people are not so good at being forceful, so they might feign being polite to avoid having to harshly tell you off. I think being put in a position like that is especially uncomfortable for timid people.
Also, I never found it enjoyable to be forced into a conversation when you have limited means of escaping it (e.g., you are at a bus stop or on a plane). If you want to hit on someone, I feel like you should only do it when that person has a means of walking away.
My wife pretty much saved me. I had just gone through a bad break up and she's the one who started talking to me over MySpace. I was a bit rude at first, but she knew my story. Eventually we met in real-life and she was flirting with me all day and basically pursued me. So yeah...