Random men speaking to you

Inde there are about 300 of 341 posts on this thread with dissenting voices.
I think the people who disagree have made their point.

I would like to see a discussion between the people who do understand/accept what the OP is experiencing.
Personally, it would be helpful and I would like to read it.

Your post starts with listen learn and accept and then says you would like to see more discussion on this? It is quite clear the kind of discussion you want. No dissenting voices, male or female, allowed.

When I say I don't get... I mean in the street. And it's a long time since I went to a pub or a club (except for lunch with kids in tow)

I think I live in a different world.
My experiences are
I don't get perved at, chatted up, wolf whistled at etc I don't think I'm un attractive, am 31 with a good figure so there's none of the are you 3 billion stone or older than methusah stuff. Maybe I just look tough
I do get talked to and talk to complete strangers all the time. A complete mix of men and women (in fact hi if you were the lovely woman I met in the bakers yesterday) we say hello across the street
Dh is the same. He's come home saying 'I met this chap at the lights today and he's going to come to '
It may be the regional thing. I live in a small town in east anglia.

Listen, learn and accept, rather than deny.

Let me be clear: Some men will make a beeline and seek to interact with women, whether the interaction is welcomed or not.

This is an issue. Why do they actively seek women? Is it because they believe we have to be nice? Caring? Accommodating?
I'd like to see a discussion on this.

Sorry if I misunderstood MM. My experience is with people older than you are talking about. Some people do prefer to interact with people of the opposite sex though especially if they are lonely. One lady I used to visit said to me that one of her friends was jealous as she hardly ever had a man visit her now and she would just like to hear a man's voice again. I think as well that the women are more pleasant to me than they are to my female colleagues and vice versa.

Accept what though, that your experience is the only experience that should dictate what a reasonable response to a given situation should be? Or that every single 60 year old male wants to get inside the pants of a younger woman and thats why they talk to them?

Those are the conclusions that you are asking to be be drawn as you are supporting the op, What others have said is that they either do not recognise that your experience is the dominant one, or that they on a personal level have not got the same level of issue with the subject that you have.

Sigh. I knew someone would come on with a variation of that Inde.

They are not very old. About retirement age 60+. And it is not a reaching-out kind of interaction they are after. It's more of a flirtatious (on their part) kind of interaction.

Why is this so hard for some people to accept?

Inde, I think you have put your finger on something important, today's society can be quite a cold and lonely place not just for the elderly but anyone who has no close family. Youngsters in particular are full of bravado and often seem to have lots of social contact. So much of it though is of a very superficial nature.

However this will be pointed to as not being what the op was about, the op seemed to suggest that it was some kind of burden of being a women that men go out there way to talk to them. Perhaps we should just stick to the script that women are the subjects of unwanted attention and only the individual women can decide if and when they may be approached.

I work in a health-related organisation. Sometimes we have specialists/ programs for older men. I dread those days.
It is guaranteed that if I (a woman in my 30s) encounters them or walks through the waiting room, they will want to have a chat. About something random. They will want to talk to me, smile at me and have me smile at them.
Harmless interaction you say? Perhaps. Or perhaps it IS what the OP is describing - something more innately aggressive. Needy.

I have a part time job working with (mostly) the elderly and yes they can be needy. Getting old is not fun. They have usually led full lives where they were in full control and then are gradually reduced to relying on others and rarely travelling more than a couple of miles from their home. Sometimes I am the only person they will speak to for hours on end. A smile or a hand on their shoulder when they are upset can go a long way. It works both ways though. I used to work in a factory in horrible conditions and there is not a day goes by when I don't feel privileged to have been given this job working with these people who are almost always ever so grateful for anything you do for them.

I saw this in action the other day. A (petite) woman and a (taller, bulkier) man nearly bumped into each ither in the street and did that "left a bit, right a bit" dance. He made some comment, loudly, and laughed. She gave an uncomfortable smile.

Writing that encounter down, it could have been purely friendly and I have seen similar near misses which were just that. Observing the body language of the two, it wasn't. He wanted her attention and she did not want to give it and felt uncomfortable.

Oh Moaney, you're 'making a big deal out of nothing' slash 'over-thinking', blah, blah, yawn, blah.

Wait for the apologists to turn up, they'll do a better job of dismissing your experience than me.

More people make remarks to me when I am with my mother.

I think that it is largely down to personality. My brother finds that everyone chats to him, men and women-very much in the way that you describe, Moaney.

Hark at all the posters on this thread deliberately misunderstanding and extolling the virtues of chatting to strangers on the street.

This is not what the OP meant.

I work in a health-related organisation. Sometimes we have specialists/ programs for older men. I dread those days.

It is guaranteed that if I (a woman in my 30s) encounters them or walks through the waiting room, they will want to have a chat. About something random. They will want to talk to me, smile at me and have me smile at them.
Harmless interaction you say? Perhaps. Or perhaps it IS what the OP is describing - something more innately aggressive. Needy.

I have not noticed the same interaction between them and the male members of staff. And I know they would not strike up a conversation when I am with a male colleague. Not in the same way.

Another example.
I share my office with two men. This week we have had workmen in. Guess who they talk to? Me.
Friendly? Yes. But why me? Why do they not chat to the men in the same way? And the way they talk to me - in a jokey way is different to the way they would talk to the men (which they haven't so far).
Why have they zeroed their attention on the female in the office? It is not necessarily unpleasant to chat with them. But it wouldn't hurt to examine why they feel it is necessary to do so.
Is my work less important perhaps??
I don't know.
But this is the conversation I hope the wisdom of Mumsnet can address, rather than the bizarre pro-chat thread we have now.

I think some men find some women less threatening & more approachable than other men maybe?

I always strike up conversations with random strangers, its just nice.

I did have a funny experience years ago though, i was waiting at the drycleaners desk when in walked a man who started to ask the usual "do you live round here?", coming from work ? etc anyway i was trying to politely fob him off, in walked the drycleaner man from behind the desk with my newly drycleaned wedding dress and handed it to me, whilst Mr GetFresh gaped, "Sorry you're too late mate!" bellowed the helpful drycleaner .

Just throwing this out there, but if the comment had been, "oh no, did you see me slip? What an idiot I am!" would it have seemed more "cover up the embarrassment" and less, "hey love, have you been paying attention to me and my actions."

I do think Rosmarin's experience (not in Barcelona) but with men more generally is more typical -the woolf whistles, the shouted comments etc. I really don't think I at my age can be the only person who suffers it and of course at my age it's nothing like as much as it was but how many men will have cycled locally and get women in a car slowing down and shouting something out of the window which I had a few weeks ago, that was a couple of builders. It does not bother me hugely and I don't go to bed crying about it and sometimes it's flattering but it is definitely entirely different from what men experience.

Co platelet? This iPad has a mind of it's own...

Completely...

I have no idea whether he would have said it to a bloke.

I said it to a bloke, when it happened to me. I totally accept all the gendered stuff, but in this situation, I'm really struggling to see why you felt that way (I'm interested why you felt that way, but I'm struggling to grasp it. Is it because it is tied up with all the other genuinely gendered instances where a group of blokes made passing comments to a lone woman? In which case, I see your own personal context. But why does a bloke asking a woman if she saw him fall over - presumably damaging his street cred and minimizing his masculinity in one fell literal swoop, have to be looked at in this manner?)

This instance wasn't a gendered exchange. By judging it as such, we run the risk of building further barriers between the genders.

This was a person who slipped and made a comment to a passer by, in the same way that I and a few others on the thread have done. I wouldn't have cared if it was a man, woman, or alien from outer space, I was co platelet preoccupied with my own display of comedic value and my sore arse and damaged dignity. Wy would it have been any different because he was a man?

Why would his intentions have been different because you were a woman?

I'm genuinely interested that you felt uncomfortable because of the gender dynamics in this tiny exchange - and I think it says something appalling about expectations of gendered relationships in public.

Is it just because he was in a group and you felt threatened? (Even though he was one the one who had landed on his arse?)

I find locally we have a far more relaxed attitude to teenagers hanging around in groups - they are often polite and well mannered, and although I often find my expectations of conflict increase when I see them hanging around a bench, I am invariably reminded that just because they are 14 doesn't make them a danger. I smile and say hi, and they smile and say hi back. It's reasonably common for teens to be engaging and helpful in say car parks/ shopping centres. I can't help but feel they are trying to nick my shopping, but I know that's my own inherent bias after years of UK media telling me how dangerous teenager louts are. Ditto men.

And I think it would have seemed more aggressive had a male done it to a female.

I had one wonderful experience in Barcelona. I was walking along the street late at night (it was still busy, mind) and I saw a man do the most enormous yawn with quite a funny expression on his face. It was so funny that I just burst out laughing and he saw me and we had a short conversation about how funny his yawn had been and I re-enacted it for him. He was just charming about it - we chuckled together for a moment - and then went our separate ways.

Back to reality, every other instance in my memory where I've had contact with unknown men in the street has made me feel uncomfortable or, when I have responded in a normal or friendly way (anything besides nasty), there's been some catch and wanting a phone number or something from me etc etc.

And otherwise, comments in the street have been harrassment. Some really nasty, ugly things.

I wish there were more funny yawn moments.

Why would I have found it disgusting if a male did it to a female? I would hope that young males are not often going around assaulting 60+ year old grandmothers in the street to look big in front of their mates.