Random men speaking to you

I often chat to people in the street, or instigate a brief exchange (Everyone is 'duck' around here, male or female, and the traditional greeting goes this: Ay up, duck). I have never had random comments thrown at me of the 'Hi love' variety, unless it is going to be followed up with 'Do you know where X street is?' or similar. Maybe it depends where you live?

By someone, I meant a man of any age.

For the record, if someone said Hi love to me across the street, I would smile back and or wave., unless it was dark or he/they appeared drunk.
So even if they were meaning it rudely, I should hopefully have burst their bubble, and made them feel nicer at the same time.

Xenia2012. You dont seem quite yourself.
Are you feeling ok?

Slipping on the ice and making a comment is perfectly acceptable-even if you are 20yrs and male. It is a bit unfair if I can do it as a middle aged female and he can't!

There is a huge difference between being friendly to people as a lot of us are, when out and about and what many women are subjected to on a daily basis by men. The latter is an issue women all over the world have to deal with from sexual assaults on trains - not so common here as in Japan, Egypt and other places to general leering and the types of comments I described from the other night. It is a much bigger problem for women than men.

General it is not wise to go put to them jabbing a nose in their face saying - oy mate stop it nor to go back to them with something similar or say small penis because of the difference in relative strengths nor is it wise to carry a knife and threaten them with it. I suppose you could try to record it all and post it on line.

(I am I)

WHAT EXOTIC JUST SAID

I shall just continue to make random comments and if people don't want to be spoken to that is their problem-they are perfectly free to look straight through me and ignore. If they want to call me 'love', 'duck', 'hen' etc they can-without having to be a certain age or sex! (I don't use it myself and don't particularly like it, but I am not going to think-he is 20yrs he can't say it but the 70yr old can!!)

LRD I can and will make sweeping statements as this whole thread has been about sweeping statements, you are seriously telling me that disabled people will be offended by you using an every day phrase which we know relates to non disables language.

Just in case you worry yourself to sleep, those that use wheelchairs still go for a walk, and those that are deaf still listen to music.

Now manplanning god forbade, but I am a man, check, I know more about this issue of unwanted and unwarranted speech from both personal and theoretical perspectives. I have been attack, abused, laughed at, spat on, pointed to, and ridiculed. I have even been sexually assaulted in a pub by a stranger, I still speak to strangers and welcome being spoken to by strangers. Ah but yes I know I am privileged,

so if you don't fucking mind keep your stupid comments and feministplanning to yourself, try and be human not a collection of ideal and political dogma.

It's a good way of getting to know if they want to shag me

you might be talking about other men here, but basically that's making it explicit that when men talk to us, there is an element of sexual predation about it.

The way that makes us feel is directly dependent on how safe we feel at the time.

I wonder what age you are allowed to be call someone love? If not at 20 is it allowed by 40yrs? Do they have to be older than you? Is it allowed if they are a woman? I don't call people love etc but lots do- it is fairly harmless and not something to brood about.
He fell over, made a comment, you didn't even have to reply!
When I fell in the hedge and made a comment to the teenage boy he just gave an embarrassed smile and probably thought I was 'a mad old bat' but it doesn't mean that I can't make remarks to random people! I don't need to size them up for age and gender first!

I chat to other men all the time, It's a good way of getting to know if they want to shag me, some do some don't, I enjoy the chat either way

I am in Australia, so that might account for a difference, but in my experience, men talk to men in the street as well as women, and women talk to both sexes too. It's just that men will say "g'day mate" to men and "g'day darl" to women. If i am with my kids, they'll say hello to the kids too, and if DH is out with them, he comes back saying some bloke at the park or shops or whatever chatted to them. It's nice. I don't see the problem. Even if you are a bit preoccupied and it interrupts you, surely it only takes seconds out of your life? It's never occurred to me to think anything of it!

Partly facetious, my lovely...

But just pointing out that some women get loads of other women talking to them, so the op's experience isn't universal.

So now it's our fault if women don't talk to us?! Because we're obviously cold, awful harpies?

Give me a break.

So women don't talk to you in the street.

I wonder why not? They talk to me, and I talk to them.

Genuinely interested. In that sort of non sexually charged or patronising way, I wonder why women don't talk to you? Do you think it's to do with them, or you?

Are you giving off a 'don't fuck with me' air that men feel free to ride roughshod over in an ice breaking way, because they have been brought up to be braver?

I probably, on the whole, have more women that chat to me out of the blue in the street than men. One woman I could barely get rid of - I was in the queue at the grocery store, and by the time I had paid I knew where both she and her dh were from, when they were planning to go back and visit, how long they have lived here, and what she was going to have for dinner that night. Oh, and a couple of new websites for recipes.

So, I don't know. It must be something more personal, I think. My experience as a woman doesn't tally with yours in a 'just chatting or commenting' way. It does with the patronising and sexually inappropriate sit, but I see them as completely and utterly different.

If anything, I think men are far less likely to make a random comment or chat to a woman in the street for fear of being seen as a potential attacker.

It doesn't bother me.

I slipped over in the park today, then got up and made a flippant self-deprecating remark to a stranger who was passing and would have seen the fall. I'm female, he (as it happens) was male. I'd have said exactly the same if he'd been female.

We can speak to strangers.

The OP didn't like the fact she reckons men speak to women in a way women don't speak to men or other women, and she didn't feel comfortable with it.

Lots of other women have explained they've also felt uncomfortable with gendered interactions like this; lots of other women have said no, they don't get it and don't care.

I don't see anyone saying 'let's not bother talking to strangers, ever', so it's a bit sly to pretend that argument is being made.

I do make random comments- I didn't realise, before today,that I was supposed to know people, had to worry about gender and age and if I had friends with me it was taboo because I could have spoken to them!

OP doesn't like the fact she was spoken to by a stranger. I can't see why we can't speak to strangers- he seemed perfectly friendly to me - it was a simple one off comment. Was I terrifically rude because I made a comment to a young lad when I fell in a hedge?

But no-one is saying the world would be a better place if everyone kept their comments to themselves, are they? That's just a made-up argument because you don't like the one that's actually being put forward.