Apparently, approaching a woman has become a high-risk activity. At least, that’s the impression I get from posts about men being afraid they’ll be yelled at, mocked, or publicly embarrassed for saying hello. I keep reading them and wondering whether we’re going to entirely different bars.
I approach women, but usually in places where people have already gathered to be social: clubs, bars, festivals. Places with a little room for a conversation between strangers. That’s the extent of my strategy. I’m not walking around with a clipboard, measuring my success rate.
If I had to estimate, though, about 95 percent of those conversations lead to nothing. No hookup, no date, no new person in my life. We talk, and that’s as far as it goes. I’ve never considered that an especially alarming outcome. A conversation can end without either person having suffered an incident.
Every month or so, something does come of it. Sometimes it’s a hookup. Sometimes casual dating. Sometimes I make a new friend, which is a pretty good result for an evening that started without knowing each other.
What hasn’t happened is the hostile reception I hear described so often. I’ve never been accosted for approaching someone in those settings. That doesn’t mean nobody else has had an ugly experience, and I’d be interested in hearing from men who have. My little stretch of the world can’t account for everyone’s.
Still, there’s a gap between an unpleasant encounter happening occasionally and the idea that approaching women now routinely invites ridicule. I can understand being nervous. I’m less convinced that the worst possible response is waiting behind every introduction.
So I’m curious about the actual experiences: the good ones, the awkward ones, the ones that made somebody stop trying. Are men really getting treated that badly when they’re being friendly and respectful? Because most of the time, for me, nothing happens. And nothing has been perfectly manageable.
