Editor’s Note: This content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board. 

I love meeting new people. But like many other friendly and outgoing women, I rarely feel safe striking up a conversation with people I encounter in public, particularly men.

For women, it is unfortunate common sense to avoid conversation with unknown men in public. Men do not have the same constraints. I am jealous of men because they can simultaneously be friendly and safe. The same is rarely true for women.

Men, for the most part, don’t have to worry about being harassed or assaulted by people they don’t know. They can connect with anyone, anytime, largely without worrying for their safety or fear that their friendliness will be fatally misinterpreted as romantic or sexual interest. 

“I value kindness and empathy, both in others and in myself. I value friendship with others and connecting with those in my community.“

Based on past experiences, I am reluctant to extend any signs of friendliness to male strangers because, even when I’m not friendly, men do inappropriate things. 

For example, I attended a senior awards ceremony at my high school this year. After the show, the father of someone in my grade came up to me and told me how beautiful my picture was.

Because I was receiving an award for a painting, I began to talk about my piece. He interrupted me and said he was not referring to my painting but rather my photo, which was displayed on a projector screen while I received my award.

He quickly and repeatedly emphasized that my photo was just so beautiful and so gorgeous. He was standing too close, his eyes were grossly intent and he drove the point home that he thought I — an 18-year-old — was just so beautiful. Every time I tried to back away, he moved closer.

I was stunned. It had gone from a genuine compliment to an unsettling comment in the blink of an eye. I didn’t even know who he was.

All I could do was point-blank turn away from the creep and wonder whose strange father just hit on me. He felt it important to search for me — a girl the age of his own child — after the ceremony just to tell me how much he appreciated my beauty. I was nauseated.

After experiences like this one, I don’t believe I should ever be expected to extend excessive politeness or even friendship to male strangers in public. Sometimes, putting on a stone face and feigning deafness or ignorance is just what it takes to keep myself safe. I am willing to play the silent card any day if it means I don’t get hit on. 

Putting on a stone face doesn’t fit my self-image; however, I don’t feel like I or other women have a choice. But I often consider that this stone facing portrays me as less empathetic than I am.

When I was 16 and on break from my job at a sandwich shop, I was leaving when a man who appeared to be intoxicated approached me and started a conversation.

He was slurring his words so badly that I couldn’t even understand half of what he said, but he eventually asked me if I wanted to give him a gift. I was confused.

A gift? He had already eaten, so he wasn’t asking for money or a free sandwich.

He went on to explain that in his country, it is customary for me to give him a gift — with emphasis on me, a woman, and him, a man.

I was being propositioned for sex.

I value kindness and empathy, both in others and in myself. I value friendship with others and connecting with those in my community.  

But I wasn’t safe from a creep at my own high school. My parents were 10 feet away when he approached me. Other parents, students and teachers were standing around us. Their presence should have deterred such a strange and sexual comment, yet it happened. 

I wasn’t safe at a sandwich shop in my small hometown during daylight hours when all I wanted was to eat during my break. Why wasn’t minding my own business enough? 

My stories are a couple drops in the pond of what women face for existing. Many women have stories like these, and worse, when their only crime was being in a public space.

So why should I bother being friendly? Clearly, I don’t have to do anything to be a beacon for men twice my age.

It is a bitter truth that to keep ourselves safe, we must mislead others about our character.

Reach Leah Stephenson at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.