#sorry im in contrarian mode rn

[22degreehalo]

When it comes to interpreting why men act the way they do, something I always find confusing is when people assume that it must be for a completely different reason to why women act that particular way.

Like, if a woman prefers to keep the company of women, and avoids interacting with men they don't know, one explanation tends to come up immediately: men are scary. She's afraid of men hurting her, and finds women safer.

But isn't that just as valid a reason for men to prefer to approach women rather than men?

Men are actually more likely to be victims of violence by other men than women are. And even if you ignore that, not all men are equally good at fighting or defending yourself. The sort of man to threaten a stranger is probably going to be capable of hurting an average guy - and not all men are 'average guys' in these capabilities.

Yet, if a man prefers to talk to women rather than men, it's almost always framed as a predatory act: that he prefers 'victims' who 'can't fight back'. But 'can't fight back' just means 'less likely to hurt me.' Sometimes it almost seems assumed that the man deserves to be 'hurt', and knows it, and is deliberately trying to 'wriggle out' of that justified punishment. A line of logic which, naturally, doesn't ever really seem to apply to women, except in the most grotesquely misogynistic circles.

As an example: at the library, we got a lot of Weirdos. In almost every single case, they were harmless, or at the very least obviously not intentionally harmful. A lot of people without anywhere to go, or lonely souls who sought refuge in this place where people are likely to be tolerant of them. (Isn't that funny, that people can praise the values of a library to 'simply let people be' or find community, while also denouncing others for 'pushing themselves on to people who are required by their job to be nice to them'?)

There was one guy who tended to be really talkative. Like, if you let him, he'd just stand around the front desk and keep up a conversation with you for a lonnnnng time, to the point of interrupting/obstructing actual library work. Unfortunate; we do have to do our jobs, and so just kinda by necessity had to find ways of interrupting that.

But he was never creepy. He never asked about our personal lives or tried to approach us outside of the library. He didn't get too close or try to push any other kind of boundary other than 'talking too long'. He didn't hit on us or even really try to build an actual relationship; part of the annoyance with him was that his reasons for talking were often so boring and pointless. (Like, he'd continually ask about whether we had books on some arbitrary subject, which even he obviously had no real interest in.)

The first time I got into a conversation with other librarians about it, we all agreed: we never felt creeped out or unsafe. And then a more senior librarian mentioned that he only ever did this whole routine with female librarians. Suddenly, the other librarian in the conversation got visibly creeped out, and started mulling over whether he was either possibly neurodivergent or 'a creep'. (Ofc, I pointed out that it's not impossible for both to be true.)

But... why? Why does that change everything? What if he prefers talking to women not because, IDEK, ~women are encouraged to coddle men's feelings~ or whatever vaguely ableist bullshit, but because... men are scary? What if he'd had the experience of approaching men for conversation, but got a harsh, angry, or hostile response? What if all this 'men are encouraged to see women as receptacles for their feelings' is actually just... 'men can be just as scared to open up to men as women are'?

And if he really was neurodivergent (I sorta suspected, if only because it was Weird Behaviour, and if someone's behaving weird, it's probably for a reason)... that's not a shallow concern. Neurodivergent people are much more likely to be physically assaulted. And, in this context: how many men might view a man randomly coming up and initiating a friendly conversation apropos of nothing (possibly while not observing 'typical' male closed-offness) as hitting on them? We all know about the gay panic defence, right? It is 100% a thing for some men (not all, not most, but you never know for sure who) to respond to any sign of queer attention with extreme hostility or violence.

Is it not at least possible that that's what happened to this guy, in the past? Or that he might have worried about it happening? And that preferring to converse with women was in fact mostly about preserving his own personal bodily safety - something which, I hope we can agree, all people are entitled to want to do?

Which is to say: where is the line between 'preferring people who can't fight back' and 'preferring people who aren't going to physically harm you'?