P-C, At a party or something like that, it would be cool and might get you somewhere. In a public place like a mall or an airport? Nervousmaking and/or annoying.

nodding to the hyper-aware thing

It seems like the new policy is to require employees to justify and second-guess every decision they make and ask permission before doing anything, no matter how routine or insignificant.

Right you are. New school of management by intimidation, bullying and keeping the worker offguard and self-questioning. It's the new model, soon all the businesses will be using it. Reduce the workforce, increase the workload, reduce overhead, increase the profit margin. No, seriously, no snark intended. It's the business management standard being taught right now.

Because, well, I do often nonchalantly "follow" girls around and keep stealing glances at them.

Yeah, sorry, that's shady. Either walk up and say something, or don't, but following at all in any way is shady.

I remember the first big scare we got was when I was 13, there was a rash of break-ins around Joliet, with someone getting in by cutting through the screen window and bashing teens/young women on the head (a friend of my brothers ended up with a steel plate in her skull). It took them more than a year to figure out that the one thing all the victims had in common was that they had been at the local roller-skating rink within six months of the attack. I think the tally was 12 before they finally caught the guy.

I think you're quite coherent.

That gap of experience is one of the reasons I think it's not talked about too much in mixed company, and yet it's one of the reasons it has to be.

P-C, At a party or something like that, it would be cool and might get you somewhere. In a public place like a mall or an airport? Nervousmaking and/or annoying.

Duly noted.

Sometimes, I hate being a guy. Because I'm not trying to hurt anyone, but I do anyway because I have a fucking Y chromosome.

Well you could hate being a girl, because you're not trying to entice anyone, but plenty of people see that just because you're female.

It's hard being human.

Sometimes, I hate being a guy. Because I'm not trying to hurt anyone, but I do anyway because I have a fucking Y chromosome.

Dude, welcome to the exciting discovery of being a Decent Man in a World of Crappy Men. By the way, it's illegal for you (a single man without child) to hang out near children's playgrounds in San Francisco.

P-C, yeah. You're so sweet, and we know that. But there's no way MB could know that, plus as a celebrity, she's probably had so many wacko encounters in her young life.

I feel the need to recycle a post.

Here's What It's Like, Growing Up in Girl-shaped Skin

When you're little, you want to big a big lady some day. You think mommy's bra is pretty. You love make-up, and the clothes she wears out on the nights when she and daddy hire a babysitter. You're into the whole deal.

When you get into the upper-elementary school years, if you're not one of the early developers, you're certain you'll remain a child forever, and feel like a misfit. At some point, a boy verbally confirms your worst fears in this area.

If you are one of the early developers, you're in 6th grade, walking down the hall in your little elementary school where you've always felt safe, and just like a kid; you're wearing a brown sweater, with one of those (this probably pre-dates you) koala bear clips, clipped to the cowl neck, and Sean M--a boy you've known since kindergarten, and never had a problem with--grabs your breast and laughs, "Yep! They're real." And it doesn't help that Jon F, bless him--another boy you've known since kindergarten--puts Sean up against the wall, because you just want the whole incident to disappear. Well-meaning Jon is just attracting more attention.

Once you finally decide you can abandon the undershirt you've been wearing over your bra (to hide the tell-tale lines), someone snaps your bra at school, and you want to die.

You're walking to school, and Patrick--boy from your neighborhood, who's been the bane of your existence, since before any of you knew what sex even was--is still threatening you, but this time, he has you up against a garage on the street where you school is. Up against your neck is the rusty rake he has in his hand. Someone was throwing it out. It's trash day, after all. And instead of the childhood taunt that he's going to suck your blood, he's now telling you he's going to rape you. You don't know what that means, but you know it isn't good, and you censor out that comment when you're telling mom about the incident.

Your best friend's period comes early one month, and she's only in 6th grade, doesn't have any supplies with her, and goes home, so embarrassed it takes her mother 3 days to get her to go back to school. When she does, there is snickering.

You walk down the street, and grown men look, or beep, or yell something to you. You're walking down the street to play Barbies with your best friend.

In 7th grade, you hear Chuck talking in the hall--he sits next to you in math, or maybe science--telling his friends that if Cheryl "doesn't let [him], [he's] just going to fucking grab it, anyhow."

You get to class early; you're the first one there, and 10th grade geometry teacher--Mr. B--from a very well-known family in town, tells you to stand up straight and show yourself off.

You're in a car with Mark, a boy you've known for years, and he won't stop, even though you're being perfectly clear that you want him to. And he's strong. The best ending this scene can have, is you somehow hitting or yelling at him, and him taking you home, and thinking you a "bitch" there after. (Thankfully, that's the one I had.)

All those things happened to me (okay, the period thing happened to my best friend). And don't think I had it bad. I was sheltered, grew up in a nice town, with nice kids, and got out relatively unscathed.

Most men are decent, and respectful, and kind, and honorable. They appreciate the pretty, the sexy, but in their real lives, they think their wife of 20 years, wearing one of their T-shirts to bed, is hotter than a hot thing, because of who she is, as she's looking how she looks.

They encounter fewer women in a sexual/ized situation in a year, than a predator does in a week. The predator sexualizes everyone and everything. And few women get through adolescence, and probably no women get through (continued...)

( continues...) life without some of this crap, in one way or another.

So, no. Not all men, not even most men are predators. But the predators strike all of us in one way or another. And yes, of course nice, decent men have sexual appreciation of women. But when you've grown up a girl, sometimes it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and so your mind develops these rules, borders, end zones. To some women, just a not-so-coarse appreciation is creepy, and it's not because women hate or think less of nice men, or expect them to be eunuchs. It's because the predators have struck at (or attempted to) all of us, even if it's only to a mild extent. We don't necessarily walk away scarred, and battered. But we each have our own hot buttons.

I'm not ignoring the locker room crap that young men have to take. I am saying that (as a gross generalization) women are probably more easily squicked when a guy is crude (and crude is, granted, quite subjective), because (again, this is a gross generalization) in general, sexually, the average man has the capacity to be more of a physical threat to a woman, than the other way around.