Everything you described, I have experienced, almost freakishly verbatim over my 57 years of life. These experiences started for me back in the late 80's when I was in undergrad. I did my four years at the University of Arkansas. I then did my master's work at Penn State for three more. But here's the funny part, I'm from the North Shore of Boston, MA. Like Brooke, I experienced kindness from strangers that I never thought existed when I attended the UofA. It opened my eyes and my heart to the fierce competitiveness and untrusting behaviors of the northeast. It actually made me never want to go back there.
Attending Penn State only made the situation worse and more apparent. I was convicted as a monster, yet I've never personally committed a crime against any woman. The fear women feel when they see me is imagined, but it is shaped by stories and/or experiences, first-hand or second-hand. She has no data on me, so for her own protection, she has to assume the worst.
To your point, there's nothing I can say to convince a woman I'm passing on the street or the trail that I'm trustworthy. And saying anything beyond a smile and a quick "hi" will only escalate her heart rate. By default, she has to assume every man, including me, is a potential threat. What I noticed is that the level of fear was far greater at Penn State than at the UofA.
When I go out on a trail today in the eastern part of PA (Allentown), I find everyone acknowledges my existence, with or without earbuds. When I go rucking in my neighborhood, I mostly see women out running or walking. Every one of them acknowledges my presence. Sometimes, because the roads circle around, we end up passing each other twice or three times. Every time the smile gets bigger, or she initiates the hand wave first on the subsequent encounter.
Familiarity does breed some trust. So, seeing the same people lowers the anxiety of fear, but cannot remove it completely.
I love your work. I really connect with it. Thanks!
What a good piece! Women hiking like that reminds me of Legally Blonde when Elle sends in a seductive college admissions video and then gets mad when a professor offers her a position if she sleeps with him. No self awareness lol
This article was mana throughout. I don't quite know how to praise it proper. Words like eloquent, insightful, gentlemanly come to mind, but what exactly made reading every sentence feel like taking a sip of chill white wine on a summers eve, i can't say. I've tried my best. Thank you for sharing it for free.
Thank you so much, Lucien! You made my day! For me, the sound and tone of a sentence are as important as the information it carries. Thanks again heartily!
Funnily enough, women (young and old) started smiling happily at me in the street quite flagrantly about 20 years ago. I at first thought my charms were finally being recognised then realised they were smiling at this sweet-looking white-haired elderly gentleman. Apart from smiling, they now even stop to chat. Why? Because my wife bought a sweet-looking border collie/Australian shepherd dog she hoped would induce her to do more walking. It didnāt and I am the now the official dogwalker, with the one perk being ladies stop to chat with me and not, thankfully, just about the mutt.
I was nervous this summer when the pipelines came to my road where I walk the dogs. But I settled into smiling and waving at the pick ups that drove by, some from out of state. (Some pretty trucks.) The work was fascinating to watch. I was sorry to see them leave.
Hi Katie, thank you so much! Iām just a very slow writer. My new pace is about once a month but Iām constantly working every day thru the month, rewriting and changing my mind, or deciding I need to think about things for a few days. The reward as you know is being immersed in the work!
It is good to be immersed in the work. Revision can be a lot of fun. I am tempted to slow my pace as far as posting goes. Iām amazed at the amount of content people churn out too. It can be overwhelming to me as a reader.
Everyone has to make their own decision, of course, but I doubt if my readership would be larger if I could post more often. Iām not writing the kind of thing people want to read everydayāso maybe once a month gives them some breathing room. i A famous poet once told me that it was best to talk with the audience a little between reading poems, rather than rattling out one after another. His idea was that listening to a poem required a lot of concentration from an audience, so that having a break was refreshing, a change of pace that enabled them to concentrate once more.
Iāve read your essay but I will re-listen to it on my way to work.
My eyes are welling up at this part:
āI feel compelled to protect her sense of well-being even as it effaces my own.ā
Everything you wrote applies to my husband, with whom I seem to fall in love more and more as years go by. I am in awe of his silent masculinity, his ethics, his calmness, his warmth both spiritual and physical.
Thank you for living and writing about what it means to be a good man.
People are generally less friendly in Berkeley...I was happy to leave that growing fact when I left. Unfortunately, I do think part of what you're experiencing is very much a 'Berkeley/Bay Area thing'. You'd be surprised by the Midwest, Dad. People are generally pretty friendly and acknowledge each other in passing... especially close passing. Funny story - when I moved here and we bought a house in this neighborhood, I would be driving around and see people walking on the street (there aren't many sidewalks in the area). And they kept waving at me...I would be confused and try to lamely wave back in case I was supposed to know the person but dumbfounded as to why people kept mistaking me for someone else. Turns out, people are just waving to folks driving by to be nice and generally inviting! Can you believe it! So now I'm a waver too. Even if I don't know them. Just give a wave and acknowledge someone. It's lovely.
My wife has three suggestions she tells our children for choosing a partner. They should have a good relationship with their own family, they should have a job, and they should be from the Midwest. They roll their eyes and/or laugh at the last one, but my wife is a wise woman. Midwestern folks are just friendly and squared away.
So, I'm reading this from another country, but: Gosh, America today sounds bleak. Is this lack of acknowledging one's fellow men and women in daily life true everywhere in the USA, or just in more populous cities and suburbia?
About 30 years ago I lived in small town Kansas, and I'd say hi to everyone I saw walking through town, or on a hike around the lake. So would everyone. These days, I live on a small island known for its hiking trails, and if you didn't say hello to every fellow hiker--let alone folks you pass on the street--it would be considered super rude. (I'm a woman, by the way, but greeting everyone you see on the trails is just expected regardless of sex.) So the behavior of people where I live now is just like the behavior of the people I lived around in small town Kansas in the 1990s. So do you have any feel for whether this antisocial behavior exists in American small towns now, too?
I often spend part of the year in the mountain towns near Lake Tahoe and the people there are much friendly. A relief actually. So itās possible that your small town in Kansas is not much different than your memories of it. Being an older white male in Berkeley California I often get the feeling that people around here would prefer that I just hurry up and die. But Berkeley is an extreme example. I think lots of things have happened to turn Americans inward, most having to do with technology and Covid. Thanks for reading!
Iām happy that youāre happy, but from my perspective that still sounds pretty bleak. What do you do if you need help moving, or cleaning up after a storm? What do you do if you hurt yourself and need help just getting around? Online friends, for all their virtues, cannot help with these acts of physical caring.
I am very grateful for the phenomenon of online buddies, and the ability to maintain virtual friendships across long distances. I am on Substack, after all, and some of the community here is very real and rewarding. But the idea that Iād talk more with a person on the internet than a person, ah, in person seems sad.
I can very much relate to what you're describing. It's sad, but it's rare for people to say hello anymore when passing. One understands this better walking the streets of New York. But on the trail - when it's just you and the passer by? And as you describe, when it's male and female ships passing, there is so much more complexity. "If I smile, she may think I'm creepy; If I don't, she may think 'what's wrong with me?' and I don't want her to think that" and so on. I have found it strange to observe in myself a sort of satisfied elation on those rare occasions when a woman passes me and just smiles genuinely and says "hi" - super simple, super quick, as if she's just not overthinking it. These days, it feels like something to be celebrated. And on the rare occasions when it happens, I'm left feeling that elation and wondering why it feels like such a big deal. Thank you as always.
Might as well swing for the fences! Female anxiety on the trail is seriously sad, though, and wonāt be settled just in Cali, for certain. Somewhat encouraging anecdote: my son & I went up Cottonwood Pass out of Lone Pine last Aug. The majority of hikers were women, and the vibe was casual, downright friendly at times. Maybe the further one gets from the city? A demanding trail like that one might have something to with it - about 8-900ā ft. in the last mile. My 65 y.o. bod felt it afterwards.
"One of the endless labors of the liberated woman is the necessity for her to participate in all kinds of activity that she knows to be dangerous simply to preserve the possibility of continuing to do them."
Reminds me of ships transiting the Taiwan strait in the name of "freedom of navigation." Send a couple of somewhat vulnerable vessels through contested waters to normalize the right to do so, betting that the consequences of an incident will dissuade adversaries from taking action.
Everything you described, I have experienced, almost freakishly verbatim over my 57 years of life. These experiences started for me back in the late 80's when I was in undergrad. I did my four years at the University of Arkansas. I then did my master's work at Penn State for three more. But here's the funny part, I'm from the North Shore of Boston, MA. Like Brooke, I experienced kindness from strangers that I never thought existed when I attended the UofA. It opened my eyes and my heart to the fierce competitiveness and untrusting behaviors of the northeast. It actually made me never want to go back there.
Attending Penn State only made the situation worse and more apparent. I was convicted as a monster, yet I've never personally committed a crime against any woman. The fear women feel when they see me is imagined, but it is shaped by stories and/or experiences, first-hand or second-hand. She has no data on me, so for her own protection, she has to assume the worst.
To your point, there's nothing I can say to convince a woman I'm passing on the street or the trail that I'm trustworthy. And saying anything beyond a smile and a quick "hi" will only escalate her heart rate. By default, she has to assume every man, including me, is a potential threat. What I noticed is that the level of fear was far greater at Penn State than at the UofA.
When I go out on a trail today in the eastern part of PA (Allentown), I find everyone acknowledges my existence, with or without earbuds. When I go rucking in my neighborhood, I mostly see women out running or walking. Every one of them acknowledges my presence. Sometimes, because the roads circle around, we end up passing each other twice or three times. Every time the smile gets bigger, or she initiates the hand wave first on the subsequent encounter.
Familiarity does breed some trust. So, seeing the same people lowers the anxiety of fear, but cannot remove it completely.
I love your work. I really connect with it. Thanks!
Thank you so much for reading. Iām glad it rings true for you!
ā or with the sight of a grown man playing with his phone..ā šÆšÆ
Brilliant piece. You, sir, are a real writer and a cogent thinker.
What a good piece! Women hiking like that reminds me of Legally Blonde when Elle sends in a seductive college admissions video and then gets mad when a professor offers her a position if she sleeps with him. No self awareness lol
Thanks so much for reading!
This article was mana throughout. I don't quite know how to praise it proper. Words like eloquent, insightful, gentlemanly come to mind, but what exactly made reading every sentence feel like taking a sip of chill white wine on a summers eve, i can't say. I've tried my best. Thank you for sharing it for free.
Thank you so much, Lucien! You made my day! For me, the sound and tone of a sentence are as important as the information it carries. Thanks again heartily!
Funnily enough, women (young and old) started smiling happily at me in the street quite flagrantly about 20 years ago. I at first thought my charms were finally being recognised then realised they were smiling at this sweet-looking white-haired elderly gentleman. Apart from smiling, they now even stop to chat. Why? Because my wife bought a sweet-looking border collie/Australian shepherd dog she hoped would induce her to do more walking. It didnāt and I am the now the official dogwalker, with the one perk being ladies stop to chat with me and not, thankfully, just about the mutt.
Have you considered making a sandwich of your wife? I hear feminists are very tasty on sour dough with a schmear of grey poupon.
I was nervous this summer when the pipelines came to my road where I walk the dogs. But I settled into smiling and waving at the pick ups that drove by, some from out of state. (Some pretty trucks.) The work was fascinating to watch. I was sorry to see them leave.
Great essay. Thank you. Iāve missed your voice.
Hi Katie, thank you so much! Iām just a very slow writer. My new pace is about once a month but Iām constantly working every day thru the month, rewriting and changing my mind, or deciding I need to think about things for a few days. The reward as you know is being immersed in the work!
It is good to be immersed in the work. Revision can be a lot of fun. I am tempted to slow my pace as far as posting goes. Iām amazed at the amount of content people churn out too. It can be overwhelming to me as a reader.
Everyone has to make their own decision, of course, but I doubt if my readership would be larger if I could post more often. Iām not writing the kind of thing people want to read everydayāso maybe once a month gives them some breathing room. i A famous poet once told me that it was best to talk with the audience a little between reading poems, rather than rattling out one after another. His idea was that listening to a poem required a lot of concentration from an audience, so that having a break was refreshing, a change of pace that enabled them to concentrate once more.
Going out defenseless takes guts
Thank you very much!
Thank you! Thank you!
Iāve read your essay but I will re-listen to it on my way to work.
My eyes are welling up at this part:
āI feel compelled to protect her sense of well-being even as it effaces my own.ā
Everything you wrote applies to my husband, with whom I seem to fall in love more and more as years go by. I am in awe of his silent masculinity, his ethics, his calmness, his warmth both spiritual and physical.
Thank you for living and writing about what it means to be a good man.
Thank you so very much for letting me know your response! I couldnāt be more pleased!
Good article, thank you, Working Man. I miss 'those times and that society', and...I have a son, who, sadly, won't even know 'those times'.
Thank you so much!
People are generally less friendly in Berkeley...I was happy to leave that growing fact when I left. Unfortunately, I do think part of what you're experiencing is very much a 'Berkeley/Bay Area thing'. You'd be surprised by the Midwest, Dad. People are generally pretty friendly and acknowledge each other in passing... especially close passing. Funny story - when I moved here and we bought a house in this neighborhood, I would be driving around and see people walking on the street (there aren't many sidewalks in the area). And they kept waving at me...I would be confused and try to lamely wave back in case I was supposed to know the person but dumbfounded as to why people kept mistaking me for someone else. Turns out, people are just waving to folks driving by to be nice and generally inviting! Can you believe it! So now I'm a waver too. Even if I don't know them. Just give a wave and acknowledge someone. It's lovely.
My wife has three suggestions she tells our children for choosing a partner. They should have a good relationship with their own family, they should have a job, and they should be from the Midwest. They roll their eyes and/or laugh at the last one, but my wife is a wise woman. Midwestern folks are just friendly and squared away.
Iām glad you live someplace like that!
Love you, sweetie. Nothing I wrote applies to daughters!
So, I'm reading this from another country, but: Gosh, America today sounds bleak. Is this lack of acknowledging one's fellow men and women in daily life true everywhere in the USA, or just in more populous cities and suburbia?
About 30 years ago I lived in small town Kansas, and I'd say hi to everyone I saw walking through town, or on a hike around the lake. So would everyone. These days, I live on a small island known for its hiking trails, and if you didn't say hello to every fellow hiker--let alone folks you pass on the street--it would be considered super rude. (I'm a woman, by the way, but greeting everyone you see on the trails is just expected regardless of sex.) So the behavior of people where I live now is just like the behavior of the people I lived around in small town Kansas in the 1990s. So do you have any feel for whether this antisocial behavior exists in American small towns now, too?
Thanks for writing this.
I often spend part of the year in the mountain towns near Lake Tahoe and the people there are much friendly. A relief actually. So itās possible that your small town in Kansas is not much different than your memories of it. Being an older white male in Berkeley California I often get the feeling that people around here would prefer that I just hurry up and die. But Berkeley is an extreme example. I think lots of things have happened to turn Americans inward, most having to do with technology and Covid. Thanks for reading!
Iām happy that youāre happy, but from my perspective that still sounds pretty bleak. What do you do if you need help moving, or cleaning up after a storm? What do you do if you hurt yourself and need help just getting around? Online friends, for all their virtues, cannot help with these acts of physical caring.
I am very grateful for the phenomenon of online buddies, and the ability to maintain virtual friendships across long distances. I am on Substack, after all, and some of the community here is very real and rewarding. But the idea that Iād talk more with a person on the internet than a person, ah, in person seems sad.
I can very much relate to what you're describing. It's sad, but it's rare for people to say hello anymore when passing. One understands this better walking the streets of New York. But on the trail - when it's just you and the passer by? And as you describe, when it's male and female ships passing, there is so much more complexity. "If I smile, she may think I'm creepy; If I don't, she may think 'what's wrong with me?' and I don't want her to think that" and so on. I have found it strange to observe in myself a sort of satisfied elation on those rare occasions when a woman passes me and just smiles genuinely and says "hi" - super simple, super quick, as if she's just not overthinking it. These days, it feels like something to be celebrated. And on the rare occasions when it happens, I'm left feeling that elation and wondering why it feels like such a big deal. Thank you as always.
Thank you, Miles, for that perfect description of the behavior I was going for! I appreciate your support as always!
Bravo Man! Feelin' ya. And restacking. Who knows? Maybe you can free Berkeley from itself after all.
Thank you so much, Tim. I think California might free itself one day but Berkeley, not likely.
Might as well swing for the fences! Female anxiety on the trail is seriously sad, though, and wonāt be settled just in Cali, for certain. Somewhat encouraging anecdote: my son & I went up Cottonwood Pass out of Lone Pine last Aug. The majority of hikers were women, and the vibe was casual, downright friendly at times. Maybe the further one gets from the city? A demanding trail like that one might have something to with it - about 8-900ā ft. in the last mile. My 65 y.o. bod felt it afterwards.
I love that stuff. My local has 1500ā gain in two miles.
I really do think itās the mountains. Everyone in Lone Pine knows theyāre next door to heaven.
"One of the endless labors of the liberated woman is the necessity for her to participate in all kinds of activity that she knows to be dangerous simply to preserve the possibility of continuing to do them."
Reminds me of ships transiting the Taiwan strait in the name of "freedom of navigation." Send a couple of somewhat vulnerable vessels through contested waters to normalize the right to do so, betting that the consequences of an incident will dissuade adversaries from taking action.
Thank you so much!
It was an analogy that really only works if they are international waters.