This morning I present the above screenshot as another example of the kind of crap many women go through on a daily basis. I saw this floating around Facebook the past week, and I thought it looked familiar. Remember this:

Man Harasses Woman On Facebook, Gets Exposed, Whines Like A Little Baby. . .

Well today’s post is just a shorter example of the same type of behavior. Man messages a woman on Facebook, initially with a bunch of compliments. Then when it looks like she’s not interested in talking, he implores to just reply to him once. And then when she doesn’t do that, it’s angry insults, including threats of physical harm in this case. This man just took less than one day, 18 hours, to turn from complimentary to threatening, rather than 4 days.

I wish I could find the original un-edited photo, as I don’t think this fool’s identity deserves to be hidden. Let him be publicly exposed.

But this example fits all the standard signs of toxic masculinity, not to mention “Nice Guy Syndrome” (as I bet you this guy thinks of himself as a Nice Guy, you can see that by the way he goes on about the other guys who he says don’t treat her well). You see the way he repeatedly messages her without waiting for a response? And doing so, so quickly. After his initial outreach, it’s only 2 hours later that he messages her again, and then again another 2 hours after that. Did it ever occur to him that she might be busy at that moment? Then when he says he notices her posting on FB he again immediately assumes he’s being ignored. If they’re not friends on FB, it’s possible that she’s not even seeing his messages, that they’re going to her “other inbox,” and that she just hadn’t noticed his Friend Request yet (I’ve noticed I don’t always get that red notification anymore). At least wait a few days before trying to message her again.

But what also really stands out to me is the part where, after less than a day, he presumes that she’s deliberately ignoring him and doesn’t want to accept his friend request, but asks can you just reply once? Alexandre Chbeir in the last example did the same where he started imploring her to just answer if you find me attractive and then I’ll leave you alone. That’s the part that’s really important to guys like this, getting a reply. They really think they deserve a reply. A response. An acknowledgement of their existence. I’m trying to talk to you, you should at least respond to me. That’s Male Entitlement 101.

And it’s not just online either. Women experience this in real-life, as Sara Dueck details in her article:

How I Learned to be Afraid of Men

A man is sitting on the sidewalk across the street from us. I make eye contact with him. A mistake.

“Hey blondie!” He calls out to me.

I put my head down, make no response.

“Hey, you! Blondie!” He yells again.

Still, I ignore him, looking at the ground. My friends glance in his direction and look away.

“I’m talking to you, girl!” He yells, and stands up.

I strain against my friends’ arms, trying to walk faster. I don’t take my eyes off the sidewalk.

“Hey! I’m fucking talking to you, bitch!” He screams at me, and starts walking towards us.

You can (and should) click the link to read the whole thing (she managed to get away from that particular man). But notice it’s the same thing in regards to how the man responds? First she’s “blondie” but when she doesn’t reply she’s “bitch.”

Similar examples abound in other articles I’ve seen about street harassment/cat-calling, such as in Shoshana B. Roberts’ infamous video of walking in NYC. It stands out to me the way many guys act like she’s being rude when she doesn’t reply to their random comments. “I’m giving you a compliment, you could at least say thank you!!!”

Seriously, that mentality baffles me. I shouted something to a woman I don’t even know whom I saw the street, and she completely ignored me. What’s wrong with her?!?

And let’s not kid ourselves that most of these guys would really stop after just getting a reply, if it’s not the reply they want. Most women I know have also experienced something like this:

You really think if the woman in the last example did reply to Alexandre Chbeir and said “no, I don’t personally find you attractive” that he would have just left it at that? You don’t think at the very least he would have then tried to get her to tell him why she doesn’t find him attractive or, more likely, just would have went right to insulting her then, as he eventually did? Same with this guy in today’s example, if she did reply just to say that she didn’t want to add him or talk to him, you think he really would have just left it at that? There’s an ongoing debate about whether women should say they have a boyfriend, even if they don’t, to deflect men. The idea being that women shouldn’t have to do that, that men need to learn to simply respect women’s choices, but as Eliana Dockterman has said:

I don’t have the patience to get into debates with every man who hits on me. I’ve used the “I’m not interested” excuse before only to be regaled for 10 minutes with stories as to why I should be interested. I’ve seen men sit down at a table with a friend, put their arm around her even after she’s said, “I’m not interested.” I even had a man try this strategy while I was on a date with a boyfriend who was sitting across the table from me.

READ MORE

Guys, get it through your thick skulls: Women do not owe you anything. They don’t have to reply to you (and if they do reply, to tell you that they are not interested in you, they don’t owe you an explanation for that). Whether it’s a Facebook message, a comment on the street, or even a message through a dating site. Especially when your message or comment is unsolicited in the first place. No matter how polite or complimentary you think you are being, they still don’t owe you a response. If they don’t want to talk to you or reply to you, they don’t have to. It’s that simple. You can go ahead and think that’s “rude” if you want to (it isn’t), but that’s still your problem, not theirs.