What am I doing wrong? Attention from men

[Treetopssofee]

WTF

I'm a happily invisible to men menopausal woman.

Until the last month or so! Men are paying me attention and I don't know why, I don't like it, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what I've done to unwittingly encourage it.

What am I doing wrong? I like the safety of being irrelevant and invisible and unfuckable. For context I was a very early "developed" tween and got a lot of unwanted attention from grown men which I've been delighted to age out of.

I don't make it my job to make small talk with performatively lonely looking older men in coffee shops

I don't make myself small for man splainers.

I don't laugh at shit jokes

I don't step out of the way first on footpaths

Under His Eye

The Patriarchy World.

Yes. It's so gross😞

If ONLY it was a "compliment" to a women's hotness to get unwanted male attention

Then it would be so easy to opt out

But it was never about "hotness" and dressing yourself down, cutting your hair, making yourself small, dressing in baggy clothes, none of that makes you immune

And guess what guys from this odd corner of MN? Nor does fawning, although I realise that society does often tell you that being a nice good women will distinguish you from the slutty women who complain about mistreatment by men that they went asking for...

There are broadly two possibilities. The first is that you are not doing anything differently and it is a mistake to go down the path of assuming that this has anything to do with you and actually has everything to do with how men are. In which case unfortunately you will have to find a way to deal with it. The second possibility is that you are doing something differently in which case you would have to work out what it is as no one on here can tell you. I strongly suspect that your early experiences of being harassed by men for doing nothing more than going through puberty is being re-evoked due to the current similarity - you have had a period of not having any unwelcome attention, have enjoyed it and out of the blue for no discernible reason suddenly you are getting a lot of attention. Just as it would have been when you were a teen. I suggest you stop looking to yourself as to why this is happening (self blame) and find a way to cut off any unwanted attention eg avoid eye contact, no smiling, polite brusqueness etc and get on with your life. Also maybe counselling to work through your early experiences.

Are you looking at them and making eye contact. That'll do it.

😂 good point. Never make eye contact.

Really, if people are complaining about being politely smiled at when they make eye contact, or having a door held open for them, or someone stepping out of the way on the footpath, or a cheerful 'good morning', then they need to get a grip.

That's just polite and civil human behaviour, and where I live, it's entirely normal for both sexes to engage in it on a regular basis.

Small talk is different though, and in most situations is frustrating to get from both sexes, because it's a sense of entitlement to your time and attention when the person doesn't know whether or not you want to talk. You could be having a bad day, have a headache, be thinking about something important... Just leave a person alone. And with men, I definitely do find small talk much more unwanted, for the reasons OP has listed.

@Treetopssofee Rtft. You say you look very different to all people where you live. I take that as being from a different ethnicity? Could it be that with Reform on the uprise that these younger men somehow go out of their way to be nice and polite to you to show that they are woke/immigrant friendly?

I'm 46 and I don't get male attention. My DH doesn't believe me because even his 80+ mum gets comments from younger men. I had the stupidity to say they were probably looking for an elderly widow to leech on and she got very upset (she likes to think that she's very attractive still). But I'm just being honest. I think men don't dare to approach me because I have this frown I have worked on that works very well.

I was all set to ❤️ your post until the last sentence

Work through my experiences of being a young women on the radar of men... To what end?

To forget?
To stop being angry at how gross grown men are about underaged girls, and young women that haven't yet lost all their childlike features?

Neither of those outcomes benefit me, or women in general. Why would it be helpful to forget how men can be?

So that I can be nicer to them?
So that I can enjoy their company?

No thanks. I'm better off remembering what they're like. Young women are better off if those of us who are past that stage stay angry, and don't "work on ourselves" to "let it go"

It's not a whole different batch of men who are performing their "do you need help across the road dearie". It's the same men. Still assessing what our value is or isn't to them. Whether it's to fuck us, be mothered by us, be nurses by us, or to use us to demonstrate their street angel credentials

Here it is!! The last in the panoply of misogynistic responses: You’re imagining male attention - ‘you’re so vain - who would want to …. an ugly bag like you’ as the alternative to ‘ you love it really you …..how dare you not be flattered by my attention because I am a MAN’ or ‘you were after me and asked for it’ ( having been female and in public where he could see you).

I have to say that since Me Too, particularly in the last couple of years, there has been a bit of a shift in some men in that they know that we know and I think a lot of women are openly not pandering anymore. I get the sense that some men have realised that we're onto them and in response they are trying to show they're one of the "good" ones. I know some pretty awful young misogynists and they are much more subtle in how they do it. The game's changed. Maybe it's something to do with that?

Right but it’s not misogynistic to claim that all women become invisible after a certain age and that the only reason any man would want to be nice to them is because they want to scrounge money off them? And not misandrist to make that claim about all men?

No I'm not a different race / skin colour

But I live in a region that has fairly strong genetics that I don't share, and isn't very mixed with lots of outsiders. So I'm not "othered" in the way that someone from another race would be, but they're also not looking at me thinking "I thought that was my aunty Mabel for a minute there she looks JUST like her" because I don't.

Or - to lighten the mood (and in no way querying your perceptions and experiences) - could some of them possibly be Mormons or religious sect adherents trying to recruit you?!

My own city centre is chock a block at the moment with earnest young men asking if you’d like to go to church, half starved looking Moonie recruiters and Jehováh’s witnesses. 😬😁 In the same way as chuggers fasten upon the benevolent looking older lady, the missionaries can scent you like wasps ….

100% agree with this

"Oh but you mustn't keep your guard up TOO high! I'm a man and I'm on women's side, see! Now don't cut off my access to women. I'm NICE. I don't do the rapes! I always make sure I go home at the point in the night out when my more rapey friends eyes start to turn black so that I can pat myself on the back for being so GOOD and uninvolved. I can't be expected to hold my pals accountable if I make sure to never see or believe what THEY get up to"

No thanks I don't want that kind of ally

You know, that's interesting because I actiallymake an exception for them

As much as I am against their institution, they're young and vulnerable and being set up by the missions to experience having doors slammed in their faces by non-christians so that they run back to the church afterwards believing that the world outside the church is hard and mean.

I will have a little chat and offer them a cold water on a hot day and send them on their way.

But these aren't the men I'm talking about. Mormons are easy to spot in their pairs

There's a v modern flex amongst youngish men of "sorry can't do that/things have to centre me cos of my fragile mental health/my authentic whims/ooh I've got a v bad headache/depression/poor me" oh, wait a minute, so we're not doing all the cooking and cleaning anymore but somehow you're the centre of attention, AGAIN! I mean it's sort of interesting to see the shape shifting in a way as they re-evaluate what they can get away with.

Men who persist in bothering women who have given no indication that they are interested are in the wrong. There are fewer men who are thick than there are ill intentioned who don’t or won’t comprehend that a woman ‘s failure to say a clear F off is because she is afraid from previous experience of being verbally or physically assaulted if she does . They deliberately ignore all social cues and polite rebuffs because they can and want to.

I say this as an older woman who enjoys speaking to strangers of all ages and both sexes on public transport etc in a city where this is completely normal. I am well able to tell the difference between a man who is generally benevolent and just chatting randomly to one who wants something. Most women can, especially by middle age.

Yes. It seems nice on the surface but something smells off.

Yes, I’m sorry for the Mormon kids too.

God I would love to tell them to fuck off. I really would.

Same shit different tools

I know I'm not insane for noticing shifts in the game, and questioning the change of approach I'm experiencing

🙌🏻

Good on you for noticing, and making sure you don't get roped into anything.

They've just figured out a new way to maintain the access to women that they feel entitled to

But they still show us who they are when they think that we mean just the big ticket stuff when we say we choose the bear: rapes, murders, black eyes.

And think "hey, I don't rape anyone, that means I'm good"

No pal. I also chose bear over the meakling who chooses to believe that all their pals exes are "crazy bitches". And all the other ways that you hold up the system that allows the rapes, murders and black eyes to happen.