Steven, sorry about this late response to your comment. I don’t spend much time reading responses on Medium.
You comment points out a problem with society in general and touches on one of the problems with terms like “stalker”. Do not get me wrong I am not defending the creep in the original story. I am just addressing a concept.
IN that post you say “ As soon as she told him to leave her alone and he didn’t, he became a stalker.”
The immediacy of that statement is part of the social contradiction. We, as a society, tell boys to be persistent. To show the object of our desire that we are sincere. To do grand things to get their attention. This goes back to Helen of Troy and Cyrano and millions of other tales of love and war.
Girls are taught that two men fighting over them is romantic, a sign of true love and appreciation. They are taught that they should make men “work for it”, prove they are worthy of the woman’s affections.
The problem is those teachings do not include any universal rules about what is or is not appropriate for the day and age. They do not account for mental illness, social immaturity, and other negative factors that seem to affect so many in our world today.
like I said, I am not defending the creep, I am suggesting the solution is only found in better teaching our young to understand boundaries and behaviors. Among other things that means teaching males when no means no, when to stop. It also means teaching females that sending mixed messages is bad, teasing males is bad, and the ways to identify when an suitor is really just a nut job instead of an ardent paramour bidding for her attention.
Many will claim that teaching females to moderate and identify their own behavior is somehow sexist. That is part of the problem, not taking a realistic view of the actions involved in many of these situations.
Some people, usually the very radical, will say that a woman should be able to walk down the middle of every street in any violent neighborhood in her bra and panties and be safe. that is a great idea if you live in a utopia, but we do not and never have.
Women and Men should be safe in our society, to make that happen early teaching on a universal scale is the only viable way to ensure that it will.