More precisely, I was asked what it is that I want (straight) men to do, so that they might avoid being charged with rudeness, misogyny, or creepiness. Implicit in the question is the charge that there is no answer, the assertion that there is no way that (straight) men can publicly interact with women in a way that will not beEspecially by women who are hysterical. Women who are psychos. Women who are over-reactionary. Women who are man-haters. Women who think all men are perverts. Women who are looking for things to get mad about.But, of course, there is an answer. Men can be nice to women.There are, surely, people who will read that and snort derisively and feel compelled to make arguments about how "nice" is a relative term and is thus meaningless, in terms of trying to help a man know how to interact with a woman.And, just as surely, people like myself, who are not invested in the idea that (straight) men can'tknow how to interact with women without a high risk of offending them, will call bullshit in retort.You see, one thing I have observed over and over (and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and over some more) during my thirty-seven years on this rock, is that there are men who treat women like people, and men who treat women like not-men.Men who treat women like people—that is to say, in the same way they treat other men—generally tend to have no problem being nice to women. They are pleasant in their interactions with women; they are respectful during their interactions with women; they hold friendly and engaging and fun and challenging and sometimes contentious conversations with women; if they are straight men, they acknowledge appropriate boundaries in terms of romantic behavior (i.e. they don't treat a work environment like it's a singles bar just because a female person is in it); they don't ogle or grope women; they regard women as their equals, and are capable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species.Men who treat women like people treat them aswho are deserving of their decency unless and until an individual woman gives them a reason to be guarded, or avoidant, or angry, or whatever—in which case, those feelings are directed at the individual woman who piqued their ire, not at "women."They are, in short, nice.On the other hand, there are men who treat women like not-men. Women are regarded as a separate class of human altogether (or, in some cases, non-human), a monolithic variation which exists not in complement to men, but in service to them. Men who treat women like not-men, if they are straight, view women as the sex class, and ergo do not draw any delineation between spheres of work and play, but view a woman in a professional space as an interloper, whose purpose as a sexual object and potential sex partner supersedes her role as a working person in her chosen vocation.Men who treat women like not-men have problems viewing women just as co-workers, as bosses, as friends, as teachers, as equals, because they see them as humans with a (sex/reproductive) service role, which is not how they see other men.And because they see women as fundamentally different from men, they imagine that there must be a whole set of unique rules to interacting with women. They cannot conceive that there is, simply, a set of rules to engage all other humans politely and respectfully and productively—and that the boundary between "man" and "woman" is not nearly as important as the boundary between, say, "work" and "speed-dating event."(Which is not to say it's inherently awful or wrong to meet someone at work. There is a difference—and a not remotely difficult to discern difference, at that—between happening to meet someone at work in whom you become romantically interested, and treating the women who share your place of employment as a captive audience for your random sexual overtures.)Men who treat women like not-men are incapable of acknowledging women's different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species. They use any woman's failure to please as a strike against the entirety of womankind, and they annihilate the individuality of a woman beneath the crushing weight of their own biases about women, and then accuse women of being all the same.They treat a woman'sand heras mutually exclusive constructs , while treatingandas synonymous, and then they wonder how it is that women can complain of different treatment, oftreatment.They are, in short, not nice.There's nothing decent or kind about treating women as though they are alien beings whose primary use is in service to your needs. Unless, of course, a woman is not attractive to you, in which case she has no use at all.It isn't just terrible men who treat women this way. It's lots and lots and lots of men, who consider themselves to be decent and kind, and who are hardly considered monsters by the women who know them. I'm sure the man who asked me what it is, exactly, I'd like men to do is not an awful fellow. He's probably just a guy who's been told his whole life that it's okay to treat womenand never questioned if maybe that wasn't actually the best thing to do, if you really do fancy yourself an egalitarian sort of bloke.And thus is my advice to him, and to all the men who are wondering what it is they're supposed to do to make us bitches happy: Be nice.If you really think about it, and if you're really honest with yourself, you know what that means.