About compliments and harassment.
So, I was going home and I was already near my house when I passed by a man with his 5(?) y.o. son.
When I passed by this guy, he said "Good morning". I usually ignore it because it's usually someone trying to hit on me, but as he was with his son I thought it could be a neighbor and I looked at him. As I looked at him I saw I was mistaken: He had this look at his face as if I was a steak. He actually was hitting on me. I don't know how to translate it straight but it's not like if I were at a party looking for a date and a guy hits on me, it's more like harassment when you're just walking on the street and a guy feels free to say to you whatever comes at his mind. As I averted my gaze from him and walked away he kept saying things about my eyes, my body and everything he thought he had the right to say to me.
Compliment not accepted. I stopped and looked back to him, who was still with that look at his face. I tried to say something clever but all I could say was "Does your mother like when men say that to her?".
Of course it was enough to hurt his feelings. He answered something like "I don't know, but your mother would do so." and I realized it should've been better to ignore him as I usually do. I gave up to keep any conversation there, but, as I silently gave my back to him, he started to yell awful things at me. Instead of entering my house, I kept walking and turned the corner. I didn't want him to know where I live.
As I said before, he was with his son. I don't know how old that child is, but by his size I could tell he's 5 y.o., 6 at most and that guy was not ashamed to hit on a random woman in front of his son as he was not ashamed to yell awful things to someone still in front of his son (before everything happened I heard him calling the child "son", so I'm pretty sure that boy was his child).
A compliment is not a compliment if it makes the target feel uncomfortable, the same way compliment is no compliment if you're looking at your random target as if she/he was a steak and not a human being!
Oh, and a compliment is not a compliment if you don't want your mother/daughter/sister/anyone you consider an actual human being to receive this kind of "compliment".
It wasn't the first time I've had this kind of experience and I'm unfortunately quite sure it won't be the last time. I just feel bad that in the XXI century not only we're still living this kind of experience as this kind of "values" are still being taught from father to son.
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