Do Men Know When They’re Being Creepy?
I suspect the answer is no
I’m a creep magnet. They approach me in parking lots, in airports, at the beach. I must come off as somehow approachable, and, until recently, I always tried to let them down gently. I was kind. Polite.
No more.
This morning, a dude I don’t know commented on one of my Facebook posts. He said, “Hello send me a friend request.” Did it not occur to him that that’s the equivalent of walking up to a strange woman and saying, “Hey, give me your phone number?” Does he not realize that women have to be careful about inviting strange men into their lives? Is he unaware that one in four women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime?
Heck no, I’m not sending you a friend request. And don’t tell me what to do.
Actually, what I said was, “You’re either creepy or a scammer, so the answer is a resounding NO.”
He responded “What the f*ck,” which earned him a verbal beating from my niece. I didn’t even feel the need to respond. Her tirade said it all.
Here’s the thing: men aren’t conditioned to be afraid of half the human population. They don’t have to be. Most men don’t feel threatened if they’re walking alone and see a group of women lurking up ahead. They don’t tense up getting onto an elevator with a strange woman. They have no idea what it’s like to have to be so darn vigilant all of the time. They don’t clutch their keys between their fingers in parking lots so they can use them as a weapon if necessary. Because these things aren’t part of their experience, they don’t think about the fact that women have to first make sure men are not deranged killers before befriending them.
If you see a woman walking alone on television, don’t you usually predict that she’s about to be killed? The world is simply more dangerous for us, and men need to remember that when they approach us. If Creepy Facebook Dude had wanted to be my friend, he should have started by introducing himself, maybe complimenting the cat picture that I had posted. Of course, the fact that he was commenting on my post at all when I have no idea who he is was enough to rate pretty high on the Creep-O-Meter. This wasn’t a post in a Facebook group. This was a post on my Timeline, a post I expected only my friends would see. Granted, I could set my account to private, I suppose. That would at least take care of some of the online creepers.
But then there are the sketchy fellows in real life.
Today, a creepy guy in an Arkansas Department of Transportation truck sat at the end of my road. Just sat there, his truck pulled way over on the shoulder. He was still there almost an hour later when I took the dog for a walk. I had forgotten about him, but when I saw the truck up ahead, I turned around and walked the other way. It’s very likely that he had some legitimate reason for sitting in his truck at the end of a gravel road for an hour. I can’t imagine what that reason would be — other than stalking — but, you know, it’s possible it was something else.
If the person in the truck had been a woman, there wouldn’t have been anything creepy about her sitting in her truck for an hour in the middle of nowhere. I would have been curious about her, but I wouldn’t have worried that she was a serial rapist looking for her next victim.
I work at a university. We have a little store downstairs in my building. They serve sandwiches and snack cakes, soda and candy. There used to be a fella who worked in the store. My co-workers and I referred to him as “Creepy Guy.” Creepy Guy earned his nickname by reading our names off our credit cards, then using them to address us. I’m sure he thought he was being friendly and attentive by learning our names — but it came off as creepy and stalky instead. Even my male co-worker thought Creepy Guy was creepy as heck.
But some fellas, like Creepy Guy, are just awkward. I think he was (probably) harmless. He simply tried too hard. He was far less creepy than Facebook Dude, who evidently thinks all women owe him friend requests on demand.
