I understand what you’re saying and I appreciate your perspective, mostly because it tells me that you are one of the men who realize this is inappropriate behavior, but the entire dynamic of it is problematic to me, no matter how much their perspectives might be influenced by horniness. I know a lot of women who have a VERY high libido (including myself, someone who thinks about sex most of the time), yet we don’t typically do this, no matter how horny we are. We aren’t taught that that is appropriate behavior, that we can just approach any man, stranger or not, whether he’s working or not, and ask personal questions or proposition sex.

The very fact that that is such a normalized behavior for men is not okay. It reinforces the idea that our function is to fulfill their needs — not to exist for ourselves and do our own work and live our own lives.

Look at the comment above yours, by Etienne Perret. He literally strips me and other women of our humanity in his claim that this is reasonable and normal behavior and that my “feelings” (which yes, he put in quotation marks) about that don’t matter.

I appreciate that you want to see a more innocent side of it, but it’s so much deeper than social awareness and empathy.