This is seriously like #NotAllMen in action right here or something. I'm glad that this experience happens to you and that therefore as a result you are better able to relate to the women that (probably) surround your daily life and (probably) have experienced this kind of behavior from men - not limited to being ordered to smile, but in general the idea that a strange man can walk up to a female and just tell her what he thinks she should do - repeatedly, perhaps even ad nauseum, throughout their lives. I am glad that for a few moments in your life you are able to experience what is a common phenomenon for women, not something that happens once in their life but repeatedly, consistently, throughout pretty much their entire lifetime. Something that happens not only to a single woman but to women, as a group, in general. It's almost like this shared collective experience/sisterhood that you can be a part of now! (Hmm, and they wonder why people who are discriminated against tend to group together. Shared experiences. Shared discrimination. Look, we can even have commentary on how being told to smile makes you feel.) I'm glad that you were able to experience what it's like to be told that "You don't look happy enough for me, I consider it my prerogative to tell you to look happier. No, I don't care why you don't look happy. I just need your unhappy mug to stop messing up my enjoyable view." Or "It is more important that a woman appear to be happy than be happy." Or in other words, a woman's face is far more important than what's going on in her head, and plenty of men seem to feel that they have the right to tell strange women what to do with their faces, which means that hierarchically, what a woman thinks is probably even lower on the respect train. It probably wasn't an enjoyable experience for you. I hate being told to smile. I hate it when people think they have the right to tell me what to do with my life. It's a pretty overarching personality trait of mine and yeah, it does become a flaw at points. If you're anything like me you mentally told at least one of those women to go fuck herself, but you smiled and went on with her day because her intentions were just good. She didn't mean any harm. This reminds me of laughing women eating salad for some reason, probably because in part apparently women have to be happy - i.e., look attractive, pleasing, non-aggressive, and non-disturbing when they're in public.
What I said? I don't see how, because if it was, then I would have said something like "All men aren't like that." You know why I didn't? I don't care about what other men do, I'm only concerned with keeping myself within the good social graces of anybody that I interact with. It's just that simple. Since I've had it happen to me by women on occasion, I'm aware of what a nuisance it is and can be hearing it every damn day... So yes I can relate and I do understand what's going on. To be honest it really wasn't and I wasn't going to say anything because I knew if I did, I would have given her a very good reason I wasn't happy (the Starbucks incident) - a reason I won't mention here because it's not that relevant to the conversation. Actually I told every single one of them (mentally) to fuck off and leave me alone. I do when it happens, which is as I said occasionally. I know what the "laughing women eating salad" thing is. So score one for recognizing something by it's hyperlink. This is seriously like #NotAllMen in action right here or something.
I slightly misread your comment and edited appropriately but to be honest, my tone's still there. If you did catch anything that read as super-confusing before I re-read your post and edited, that would be my bad. I think that your snark about 'being a woman' because you have experienced something that women routinely experience rubbed me the wrong way. Don't get me wrong. It's okay to be flip on Hubski and all that. I'm trying not to come down on you too hard. But I'm irritable, and I'm a feminist, and saying "women tell me to smile too" is like saying "I'm not one of those men who tell women to smile" which is how I ended up at "Not All Men." I think that while you experience something similar to what women experience in one single aspect of interaction when people tell you to smile - it's not transferable to true comprehension. And I know, you were joking. You were being flip. But you know what? As a man, you maintain a right to say "fuck you" to strangers who try to tell you what to do with your face that women don't. Because saying "fuck you" is unladylike. Because physically, 90% of the time or more, a man saying "fuck you" to another man is a lot more defensible of a position than a woman saying it to a man. Because if a stranger walked up to me and told me to smile and I said "fuck you" my mother would scold me. For wanting to preserve my own autonomy. And not just my mother but many people - it would be me who was rude, not the stranger trying to tell me what to do with myself and my face, with how I should present myself to the world.
Nevermind the deleted comment. I was making a jab at another comment (or was it post?) that said men aren't allowed to have feelings. You came off as really condescending, which is why I flipped the post on it's head with a related incident. Well I'm an egalitarian, so I don't there's much of a difference between us. I was also raised pretty goddamn good, meaning that if some woman comes up to me and tells me to smile, I'm going to look her in the eye and shake my head no and then continue doing what I'm doing. Why? Manners. Yeah it was a bit disrespectful, but you know what? I wasn't disrespected enough for me to look her dead in the face and openly say "Go fuck yourself." I digress you're right, I should fall back on "Fuck off." every time it happens, if ever again. Relying the fact that I'm male to justify my telling a woman to fuck off for saying "You should smile more." EDIT: I was going to be flip for the rest of what you said, but in light of your PM I'm going to let it go. Ignore was too strong of a word.