All men should be aware of this

[mildlysweaty]

I went for a walk in the sunshine around the back of my child’s school before pickup today. Usually the odd dog walker passes by but it’s pretty remote/foresty. I do this walk often but never go fully into the woods bit alone - because I’m female.

I was walking towards the woods and a person with long hair was walking my way - wrongly assumed it was a woman but when I passed them I realised it was a man in his 30s. I’ve passed plenty of men before walking their dogs, generally they give a nod and carry on. I started to feel a bit uneasy so rather than continue in that direction, I stopped a little further then turned around and started walking back (same way bloke was going).

I was a few feet behind him when he looked back over his shoulder back at me, then he stopped (with his back to me) and started opening his backpack. I felt bad vibes, there was no one else around. I managed to speed walk past him and pretended to phone my husband and had my car key ready to use if needed but all was okay in the end, I then passed some women walking.

In all honesty it could’ve been totally benign but any decent man should know that this sort of behaviour is intimidating for a woman, who’s alone, especially with nobody else around.

To get to my point: ALL men should understand how women need to be programmed to be wary of them, and how they can help is by ensuring they aren’t doing anything that could feel intimidating. They don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but any decent man should be aware and conscious of how their behaviour may impact. I have reminded my husband of this today. It took a while to shake the feeling from this afternoon.

if voting I guess YABU = men don’t need to know this
YANBU = yes they do need to know this, it’s a way they can help

Where was OPs awareness that this man didn't want to be followed? She is all about men being aware of her needs but completely blind to the needs of this man.

We also established why women are more likely to be killed by their family members than strangers. Greater opportunity and heightened vulnerability, plus personal motivators towards the woman. Not because being a husband makes a man more dangerous than being a stranger and ergo a stranger is safer than a husband. Most men are both strangers and partners after all.
I wasn't commenting on what the government is doing (not enough!) Just pointing out that it's not just a few overlly anxious women who think male behaviour is a problem. The most senior police officer, a man himself, has been very explicit about it.

When i walk home from the station when it's quiet or dark i always stop and wait for any male behind me to go past so i can watch him, as well as having my keys in my hand. I just want to be sure of what they are doing. I imagine most lone women do this. This is not about me being anxious, it's because i watch the news, and it only takes one male to kill a woman or girl. No one should criticise a woman who is nervous around lone males, we're just trying to survive ffs

In OPs case it is OP who changed direction and followed the man. He did the right thing and waited for her to pass. He was just trying to survive as well. Or are men not supposed to do this, is it only women who are allowed to put their own survival needs first?

We know SM makes a difference. It's hugely influential in driving opinion. This site is huge. Why would it be the exception?
And no, I don't think men are reading MN and moderating their behaviour accordingly. It was actually you who said it was unsurprising men don't care about women when women on a MN thread have said they don't care about men. So I assumed you were the one who thought they were all sitting there changing behaviour based on what we said on here. I was clear I didn't.
The influence of this site is on women. Women talking to other women, sharing insight, opinion and information. If we have a discussion where we learn that some women would feel safer if men did certain things, then we can take this back to our male friends and relatives and bring it into how we raise our sons if we feel its valid.
I discussed the crossing the road thing with my DS when he was an older teen and he has done this since.

Fair enough. But a woman has a greater chance of being killed in a road accident so should we all stop using our cars or going out onto the street?

Should all motorists be aware of this?

In 2022 419 women were killed on the road. (UKGOV)
In 2022 122 women killed by men. (FEMICIDE CENSUS)
In 2022 5 people (1 woman documented) killed by a shark

Yes, of course motorists should be aware. There are endless campaigns and legislative changes made to get motorists to modify their behaviour to make other road users safer. Drink driving campaigns, speed restrictions, adverts showing what happens when you don't wear seat belts, banning phones while driving. It would be incredibly difficult for motorists to be unaware.
There are also campaigns to get people to use their cars less and to ban the vehicles that are most dangerous from high pedestrian areas.
A complete ban on motoring would never be supported as the cost would be seen as too great to be reasonable to eradicate road deaths. Asking men to be aware when encountering lone women in isolated places is a cost free way of reducing women's discomfort. So really not comparable.

And no-one is arguing with that general principle but I think we've established now that in this particular scenario the man could not have reasonably been expected to do anything different. THE op 'felt anxious' but that doesn't mean the man in this particular situation should have acted differently than he did or been super aware.

So which is it??
up to that point I was keeping my distance walking behind him.

or from the OP:
I was a few feet behind him when he looked back over his shoulder back at me, then he stopped

Complete contradiction! Bottom line, you turned and followed a stranger! Then complained that he stopped when he noticed you were following him. What YOU did was really weird and unsettling.. I wouldn't want to be walking a 'few feet ahead' of someone who had purposely turned around to follow me, pretending to look for something in his bag was the safest way to avoid any interaction with you and let you overtake.

Your message about women's safety is completely invalidated IMO because what he did was 100% a response to an unpredictable situation, instigated by you, and he keep himself safe in a non confrontational way.. your safety as a woman shouldn't override his safety, when it is you that is shown to be the potential aggressor.

You KNOW that for certain now because nothing happened and he didn't do anything, so why you are still blaming him for doing something wrong here is ridiculous.

I think if you’re concerned about someone stopping and going in their backpack on a walk then it’s time to stop walking in remote places by yourself.

Im failing to see what he did wrong to be honest, I was waiting for the bit where he spoke to you or started walking closely behind you. He was likely getting a drink or snack out of his bag or something for his dog but I honestly don’t see what he’s done to act suspiciously in the scenario you describe.

This is exactly why I don't trust other people's "spidey senses" and "gut instincts". They're so often a mask for prejudice. I don't mean women distrusting or getting anxious around men per se - "misandry" is not something I'm hugely bothered about - but as a mixed-race woman I'm all too used to "gut instincts" being a cover from outright racism (and other prejudice). When "spidey senses" seem to get triggered by Black men or working-class men (or in this case a long-haired man) - or for that matter hijabi women - but not by white men in suits, that's not what I consider a valid anxiety.

In principle I agree with this - I think most of us have had the "cross the road at night" conversation with male friends, and mine have been largely receptive. This is not that discussion though. There are no takeaways. Most women disagree with the OP that her situation warranted a man changing his behaviour and there's certainly no consensus. It's a bit weird to pretend the specific scenario in the OP is irrelevant to the general discussion.

It's also really important to bear in mind that women aren't put at ease by the same things. I just read a post where a woman felt safer because a man called out to her that he wasn't following her. A man once did that to me and it scared the shit out of me, purely because I wasn't expecting it and it made me realise he'd noticed me. I hadn't actually been scared in the first place.

I'm not suggesting we pretend the scenario the OP described is irrelevant. But nor does it need doing to death while ignoring the general question either. Surely to goodness there's only so many times "the man in this situation did no wrong" needs saying before we can discuss the general principle? I'd have thought most people were capable of seeing a wider concept without obsessing over the specifics. And indeed several posters have proved they are, including male ones. They've just been a bit drowned out by the ones who aren't.

To all the people asking this, please just read my post about the sheer subtlety of body language, and our innate ability to read and modify it (you can use the function that lets you see all my posts - there have only been about 5, and it's the one that has two numbered scenarios near the top).

I simply don't believe that posters here aren't aware of the tiny, indescribable non-verbal cues we all use, every day.

If you encountered an aggressive dog and felt worried it would attack, you'd immediately attune every single part of your body and face to tell it not to - every inch of you would be "speaking" to it, in tiny ways that it's impossible to put into words, but that you and the dog would both understand. If you were engaging with a fearful dog, you'd do the same, and you'd do it very effectively indeed. If I then asked you to put into writing what you'd done, though, I imagine you'd struggle. But you'd know, all the same.

And I honestly believe many people writing here do know.

It's perfectly simple. Rightly or wrongly, the OP read verbal cues that left her anxious, so changed direction and sped up a bit to get back past the man to where there were people. There's no mystery here - no hypocrisy or illogicality to her movements!

And to all the posters who are saying that her behaviour would have deeply unsettled the man, even as his shouldn't have worried her for a second? You're clearly being utterly disingenuous - and not a little sexist. This interpretation quite obviously favours the man. For him to be unsettled by a woman who just abruptly changed her mind about her direction to head rapidly home (maybe she'd forgotten to lock the car? remembered the time?) you have to assume the worst possible non-verbal cues from that woman, and the man's sensitivity to reading these. Meanwhile, in order to disregard OP's own anxiety at the man in her turn, as he stopped to open his bag, you have to do the exact opposite: you have to disregard the existence of such verbal cues, and the woman's ability to read them. There's a clear bias here that's quite fascinating, and arguably makes the OP's point far more persuasively than her (rather unfairly critical of the man!) first post did.

I mean, maybe she read his non-verbal cues accurately. Most likely she didn't, and the poor guy was just getting something out of his bag. Whatever. The bigger picture here that she asked us to consider - and yet people are refusing to even acknowledge, with remarkable, quite hypocritical stubbornness - that it would make a huge difference to women if more men were aware of the impact the subtleties of their body language can have on women. That's it. There's no big mystery here.

Except, perhaps, in some posters' determination to reject a woman's request for empathy, while extending it in spades to an anonymous man who, at least as certainly as she shouldn't have been scared by him, was highly unlikely to have been scared by her.

I haven't said anything about tiny verbal cues and I don't care if you believe me or not, I'm not going to agree that we have to be hyper attuned to every scintilla of a male persons' demeanour. Im sorry the op felt anxious but I cant empathise with her ..sympathise maybe. It must be restricting and frustrating to live with that level of fear. Again, I don't think k anyone is disagreeing with the general point that in some situations its reasonable for many women to feel vulnerable and for males to adapt slightly for that. But I don't think they should be expected to alter their plan, behaviour, route or anything else anytime a woman is in the vicinity.

I'd have felt the same as you tbh. Spidey sense for men within physical proximity where there is noone else around and the stopping would have freaked me out as would going into the bag (for something to assault or incapacitate with?!) Growing up with crime dramas which are overwhelming about women being assaulted, kidnapped and killed doesn't help. It's vanishingly unlikely but it happens. So yes I think men should keep their distance and do what they can to make women feel at ease in isolated settings like staying well away from them, being friendly but distant with any greeting.

Women have an inbuilt predator alarm and this man set OP's alarm off.
It doesn't go off for "nice men".
It goes off for the ones that are giving predator vibes.

Every woman should listen to her own body's reaction to a man in any situation.
Women are hard-wired to sense danger when it is near.

Women pick up on behavioral cues, micro-expressions, and non-verbal signals that deviate from social norms.

Not "bizarre" - it's a survival mechanism.

Not what the thread is about. Women can do what they like, what they can’t do is dictate what others minding their own business do.

That’s just utter nonsense. Otherwise, no woman would ever end up with an abuser or be abused by someone they know and are friends with. Which happens.

Complete bullshit. This guy was minding his own business and OP turned round to follow him.

the stopping would have freaked me out as would going into the bag (for something to assault or incapacitate with?!)

But the very overwhelming likelihood is that he wanted to get something boringly normal from his bag: a water bottle, a snack, his phone, his cagoul...

Do you never use a bag to carry ordinary everyday items around with you, or do you see bags only as a means for transporting weapons?

Of course you would naturally need to stop to retrieve something from a backpack - unless you have arms like Mr Tickle and eyes on the end of your fingers.

I'm not sure where you get the impression that posters like the OP (or me?!?) are "living with that level of fear" and hyper-focussed on "every scintilla" (excellent word!) "of a male's demeanour". This shows the same disregard for any subtlety at all that we're seeing elsewhere in this thread.

I'm about as independent as you get - travel alone, have done martial arts (badly: promptly got injured, then went on to fight with that injury - bloody stupid, and gave up soon afterwards!) and, above all, I'm someone who speaks up for myself and others in all manner of contexts when most just put their heads down or walk away.

To get back to this particular case, it really interests me to see descriptions of our shared sensitivity to body language, with a particular focus on possible sexed dynamics, reduced to a patently absurd "living with that level of fear". It's remarkable, tbh, and so clearly inconsistent with what posters like me are saying that I'm increasingly thinking there's a kind of self-protective denial going on here.

Some women are quietly fearful of the kind of truths about women's physical vulnerability that I and other posters are acknowledging. It can be easier, I think, to attack the idea of this than to face up to what it can mean for us. That may not be the case here at all, but I do find these exaggerated over-simplifications rather hard to understand otherwise.

Plus it's a very bizarre response to have that intuition alarm and then head closer to the person whom you believe to be a threat. A bit like hearing a fire alarm go off nearby and running inside the burning building to get closer to the fire.

So many contrary and obtuse responses on here. OP is pointing out that completely benign actions by men in isolated places can be unnerving for a solo woman. Men should be sensitive to this. Simples.

Beautifully put. Exactly.