starygrrl wrote:
You build up defences in order to avoid unwanted attention and deflect it once you recieve it. It is not a matter of vanity, it is a matter of safety. Even when out with friends you try to stick close to them and try to limit contact outside the group. It is not a matter of being a snob, it is a matter of being safe.
In both the UK and US this is a common phenomenom. It is also common in other places where there is street harassment.
Agreed -- now that I'm older, the above makes sense to me. A girl acting too friendly on the street and smiling at guys passing by is going to get mobbed like a piece of steak in front of hungry dogs. Men have an optimism bias when it comes to women, and even now, if a woman looks at me twice, I think to myself "She likes me," even though that might not be true at all.
That being said though, I do wish for us guys, especially Aspies,
that women would actually tell us this rule that they were taught. I mean you specifically are doing us a big favor (as have other women here) by stating it here, but sometimes this really is kept secret, like a trade secret! My mom told my sisters all kinds of rules that I never even heard about until we were in our 30s.
Put yourself in the shoes of a guy who doesn't know this rule -- he walks down the street, all these women pass him, no sign that he is even alive in their eyes. No smile, no acknowledgement, nada. Now, he watches TV and other media, sees these (mostly manufactured) examples of women swooning at handsome guys, and thinks "Gee, I must be ugly, that never happens to me" or "These women here are so stuck up, they never act like that," forgetting that most of the stuff on TV is propaganda so that they can sell commercial time to corporations to sell you more soap/food/crap.
If men were only privy to some of these rules on the front end of their lives, we might not take it so personally, and we might get better at picking up on the subtle, and apparently female-specific (because men are very obvious about their interest) rules of how women indicate, consciously or not, that they are interested.
03 Dec 2010, 6:05 pm
I live in the US and I am not stuck up. When I am out and around town I'm usually thinking about the errands that I'm running and what I need to do next. I'm not looking at the people around me. You could be a hot guy or you could be an average guy, you could be a movie star and I probably wouldn't notice. Unless you are the cashier at the store, or the cop pulling me over I probably won't even see you. Nothing personal, I just have too much on my mind. I am also indepedant and I take care of myself. I'm not looking for a man to complete me. It would be nice to have some company, but I'm happy alone.
