Men Who Get Angry With Me For Smiling At Them in Public

This week, I’ve had two random men get angry with me for smiling at them when they speak to me.

A couple of days ago, I passed by a group of 3 men standing on a sidewalk. As I walked closer, they grew silent. One of the men said “How you doin?” I quickly darted my eyes in his direction, and kept walking forward with a little smile on my face. His friend yells after me:

“Someone said Hi and you’re just gonna smile without speaking? That’s a lil’ RUDE!”

Unbeknownst to them, I kept that same little smile plastered on my face the whole way home, as I pondered his statement. I thought men wanted you to smile. Historically, whenever I walk past men without smiling, they get angry with me for not having a smile on my face. So it was the first time in my life that I was being harassed for smiling.

But indeed, it wouldn’t be the last.

The very next day, I walked by another random man who I often see in my neighborhood. He always says hello or pays me a compliment, and I always politely nod, smile, or say thank you. This time, I walked past him while he was standing next to a couple of women.

AREN’T YOU LOOKING BEAUTIFUL TODAY!!! He loudly called out from just a few feet away.

I turned to look directly him with that same polite smile, and kept walking.

“So I give you a compliment and you can’t say anything??!!” he yelled.

His words swirled around in my head and settled in my frontal lobe until I got a headache that didn’t shake off for hours. I was officially angry, frustrated, and sick of this bullshit.

My thing is, men often want too much for too little.

These men are acting like a simple greeting or compliment on my appearance is God’s Sacred Blessing upon my soul. It should prompt me to drop everything I’m doing and prostrate myself on the sidewalk, or wet myself in an aroused flattery.

The truth is that only extremely insecure, vulnerable women will be overtly flattered by having these crumbs of male attention thrown at them.

I would know, because when I was 13, in the absence of adequate parental love, I too was impressed by any crusty, dusty man who called me beautiful.

But now that I have matured and healed, I am no longer dazzled by random men who throw peanuts at me, telling me things I already know about myself.

And, the ungrateful little shits who get angry with me for not giving them a bust-down bargain deal on my emotional energy just piss me off.

I don’t respond to everyone the same way. If I can tell that someone is connecting with my presence on a deeper level, I will open up more to them. Authentic connections really inspire me to blossom!

But the men who harass me cannot make me blossom, so instead they try to pry me open. And, like dealing a stubborn jar of honey, they become even more forceful when prying doesn’t work.

They are thirsty for validation, frustrated with their own inadequacies, and entitled. When a woman doesn’t cater to his fragile ego, it’s easier to project onto her than hold a mirror up to his face.

Walking in public as a woman is the world’s best example of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario.

When I smile at a stranger, it’s because I’m genuinely cheerful! I smile because I have it to give. I smile because I feel good about myself, and I don’t mind sharing that positive energy with others, no matter who they are.

But when someone turns my smile into something negative, because they’re angry they can’t extract more, and they’re intimidating me because of it—it’s crossed over into the same territory as any other abusive, controlling relationship, where nothing you do is ever good enough.

In an abusive relationship, nothing can ever satiate your abuser, or prevent you from being scapegoated. The carrot stick is always moving, and if you follow it you’ll just end up lost, throwing parts of yourself into an endless void until there’s nothing left. You’re only the scapegoat because you’re that person’s most convenient target in that very moment. Their anger has nothing to do with you.

Harassment is an abusive exchange. It’s not something that I as the victim can control; it is something I manage and respond to with the tools I have.

One of the best things that I have done for myself is to work on my healing so that I don’t internalize this culture of prioritizing other people’s feelings over my own.

I remind myself that it’s Okay to have boundaries and not be available to everyone. It’s healthy to require that trust be earned before opening up, rather than responding to a pressure based on what someone else wants from me.

I check-in and respond to harassment in ways that feel most sensible to me in the moment, and I try not to blame myself for ‘not doing enough’ if the abuse continues, the way it did earlier this week when a man responded to my polite smile by telling me he wishes I would sell my body to him.

Overall, my response to harassment should be focused on self-preservation, not on trying to change others. Although, I do wish that we lived in a world where more men would stand up for women.

If, for every harasser there was always another man who would step in and say “Hey buddy, she’s not interested. Leave her alone!” and get him off my back while I walk away—it would really shift culture and increase public safety. I do believe that a world like this is possible, and I think that men checking other men is necessary to end this culture of male violence.

But men like this are currently a small minority. A lot more men are out of touch with women’s experiences, or they will not help a woman who is being harassed unless they have personal incentive to do so. There is a lot of work to be done, starting from boyhood, and this is not a TED Talk where I bring all the “solutions”.

But I will end this by saying that it would feel great to be stood up for, because as many of you know, I am tired as hell of advocating for myself, and harassment is one of those burdens that I constantly have to shoulder all by my lonesome, when I really shouldn’t have to worry about it at all.