"Excuse me! You're a woman, Where's your shopping?

[YouCanHaveAParty]

Im amazed! My wife would be laden down with bags by this time of day!"

For disclosure- I am in a retail outlet shopping centre killing time waiting to pick up my teen from an activity. Yes, I'm female. Yes, I've been looking around the shops since 10am and it's now lunchtime and no, I haven't bought anything bar a coffee.

How odd that this man would walk past me and say this - he was fairly jolly and non threatening but I was a bit non-plussed by it all.

He was obviously making a friendly harmless comment trying to make convo and probs hinting that he hates shopping because of his wife. I can’t believe small non issues like this bother people
This
I'd have just laughed and made a jokey comment back, probably something like "nah, can't be bothered with shopping today!" 😁

Bookmark

I'd have said "Well I would be laden with lots of bags of shopping if some kind and do I dare say nosey gentleman would like to give me lots dosh to do so."😂

Ignore the random word bookmark there, copy fail! 😁

@AngelinaFibres I could well be .....

Ehhh... This is something my 60 something dad would say and call it banter. It is casual sexism, and I would cringe and roll my eyes if he said it to me, but equally it's meant with zero malice and in a perverse way is his way of being friendly

It's mildly annoying but best met with a witty retort than anger such as the one above about being left unsupervised.

In what way is it nice??

Next time I see a man with his baby in a carrier I'll say "excuse me! you're a man with a baby, and you haven't dropped it. Amazing! My husband always drops the baby"

Lovely, isn't it? Not sexist and demeaning at all.

It's the idea that as women we should just accept that men are entitled to make unprompted comments about our appearance, our behaviour etc. and we should just by a nice little woman and accept it as banter.

I like to pretend that I think they think they know me and are confused.

My exMIL is a random commentator and goes some way towards redressing the balance.

These everyday sexist comments are tedious, I would just give a rictus grin and ignore. I like talking to strangers but that is a very out-dated viewpoint.

If you don't think it's a sexist remark, just imagine the likely reaction if he'd said the equivalent to a random passing bloke. At best he'd get a withering stare I should think; at worst he'd get abuse of some kind.

That's the thing, men don't approach men they don't know on the street and them then to "smile it might never happen" because they'd get a mouthful of abuse.

'Smile' comments are the worst.

I got one recently from A Random Man when I was on my second walk of the day, trying to get my newborn baby to sleep. I was (still am) sleep deprived so donning a big grin for unknown strangers wasn't exactly top priority 🙄

Exactly. I just give people like this a sideways “what are you on about” glance then ignore. I’m not going to encourage this kind of shit by replying or smiling at them.