I’m a college student who was walking down a major street in my city to go to Target. A lot of people were walking, I was talking to my mom and it was broad daylight so I felt safe. A man proceeded to invade my personal space by putting his face close to mine and say “You’re beautiful.” He walked away, yet even with the many people around, talking to my mom on the phone still and broad daylight, I still felt too uncomfortable and worried to call him out on his behavior. I laughed it off to my mom who was worried about me walking alone in the first place and called the guy a creep. Mostly though, I felt really sad that I couldn’t stand up to him due to worries of my safety and that my laughing could be misconstrued as being okay with that kind of experience and not just a defense mechanism ingrained into me by society.

Later that week, I was walking at night with a good guy friend of mine explaining catcalling and my experience with this guy. He told me that this guy invading my personal space or a guy being gross in his catcalling was an outlier of society because he has not done it or seen it so therefore I’m getting up in arms about something that only really exists in the movies now.

Furthermore, I argued that I might have still been uncomfortable even if the “You’re beautiful” was said from a distance and in a polite tone especially from a male stranger. He argued that a compliment like “You’re beautiful” or “I like your outfit or hair” is not uncomfortable and that he loves to receive compliments from women and they respond favorably when he gives them compliments even when strangers. He then proceeded to give a compliment to a women and a stranger to both of us about her outfit and she responded with a “thank you” and didn’t seem bothered. To him, it was all the proof he needed that my view that all types of compliments, especially from male strangers to females, being uncomfortable and part of rape culture was borderline ridiculous. All the while, he did acknowledge that if I wasn’t clearly walking with him then he probably wouldn’t have given her a compliment considering it was nighttime and there weren’t many people around. I didn’t know what to say. Someone explain it to me because he is a great guy.

What was worse though: my female roommate and another girl agreed with him on all counts.