[jnaddef]

This exchange is a very good illustration of what happened with the #metoo movement: a woman explains the toll that street harassment has on their life, and a man that has never experienced that brushes it off with a #notallmen.

While I agree that having small talk with strangers once in a while could be very healthy, I also try to remember that a woman has to unwillingly interact tens of times a day with male strangers just by walking in the street, sometimes with very scary outcomes, and being like "yeah but I am different" is not an appropriate response.

[nobody9999]

I'd also point out that commenting on the quality of the chicken noodle soup while on line at the supermarket (that's small talk) and randomly walking up to someone and tell them how sexy they look and suggest they sit on your face (that's harassment) are wildly different things.

Or do you believe they are exactly the same thing?

[nobody9999]

I don't, as you put it, "brush it off" at all.

What, exactly, do you suggest I do about it?

That's not a rhetorical question.

I have no control over the "crazies" or the "Entitled assholes."

I only have control over my actions.

So please, do tell. What is it I'm supposed to do other than treat those around me with courtesy and respect?

[jnaddef]

You say that you don't brush it off at all, but just before you said "But IME, those folks are few and far between.". Your experience does not really matter here if you are not a woman that experiences that type of harassment.

What the person you were replying to was trying to tell you is not that the problem are men who start the conversation with "hey pretty girl, can you sit on my face?", but rather people who start with a polite conversation, and if they feel they are met with a warm reaction think it opens the door to more.

It might be only a small percentage of guys who follow up with inappropriate actions, but when as a woman you get 20+ men a day starting to make small talk with you, you end up with a high probability of having at least some of them being weirdos.

On the other hand if the woman answers coldly to the small talk tentative, some people may take it in a bad way. The line you have to walk to not appear too warm to weirdos and not too cold to easily offended people is very thin.

If you can't understand that under these circumstances some women become anxious at the idea of men starting small talk with them, well that's too bad.

As for what you can do, maybe start with asking women you know how they feel about it. Maybe they are all fine with it. It is also very dependent of where you live. If you live in a dense city women get harassed way more often than in a suburb area, it's kind of a number problem.