I was just sitting at the mall taking a break from mall walking. A man walked over to me when I wasn’t even looking up. He said "I haven’t seen you here before. " I said I wasn’t really here to talk to people and got up and walked away. He said he would leave, he may even have said sorry. I said I was ready to leave anyway. In retrospect I think he may have just been slightly mentally challenged so I wish I had been a little softer, he did not turn out to be aggressive. Looking for suggestions on something still clear and firm but more polite? This scared me for some reason, I think how fast he walked up and sat down near me.

Editing to add a key detail, he sat down close to me which is probably what made me more nervous than I would have otherwise been. I appreciate all the thoughtful feedback I’ve gotten and interesting discussion.

  • AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish
    186·
    22 hours ago

    This is insane.

    Other people are not psychic. They cannot read people’s minds.

    This is the attitude that is destroying things, right here. This expectation that an absolute stranger should know your preferences and what you want without ever expressing it.

    The only way they can realize or understand any of that is if you talk to them first. This attitude is basically ‘everyone else should cater to me and they are shitty if they don’t do that’. Who, in their right mind, would ever want to interact with someone who is that massively entitled? Who thinks their comfort, their preferences, are the only legitimate or relevant ones?

    Talk about epitome of self-absorbed.

    • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
      114·
      22 hours ago

      I’d say that’s a little bit overly dramatic take on what I was trying to say. I understand where you’re coming from, but I wasn’t calling for anyone to read any minds. But a little bit of sensitivity to the facts and statistics is not an unreasonable ask:

      Approximately 4.7 million women in Canada — 30% of all women aged 15 and older — have been sexually assaulted outside of an intimate relationship at least once since age 15. [Source: Statistics Canada, 2019]

      That’s almost 1/3 of women, that’s a serious statistic, and it means that, as a man, you have a responsibility to approach unfamiliar women with at least a reasonable measure of respect for their safety and comfort. And it doesn’t even account for any potential bias towards exactly the sort of “attractive” women who tend to get approached by men much more frequently than others because they are in fact attractive: they literally attract these sort of situations and you can’t assume it’s because they choose to.

      For someone throwing around accusations of being entitled and self-absorbed, you sound very much like you’re in fact the one saying ‘everyone else should cater to me and they are shitty if they don’t do that’.

      • AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish
        126·
        21 hours ago

        I’ve been raped by women. More than one.

        I don’t assume every woman I meet is a rapist.

        Because women aren’t rapists. Rapists are rapists.

        But please tell me more how I’m a rapist and every woman I talk to, regardless of her attractiveness to me, means I’m potentially going to rape her.

        Also you leave out the fact most women are reaped overwhelmingly by people they already know, friends, co-workers, etc. Not random strangers. Not a convenient fact for your ‘1/3 random men you see are going to rape you’ worldview.