Tl;dr: strangers “compliments” mostly come from entitlement

You’ve heard it before. “Everyone is so sensitive these days, I’m even afraid to talk to my female co-workers now!!!” “It’s ridiculous! How do you approach women nowadays?!” “It’s supposed to be a compliment!” “Why can’t they take it as a compliment?!”

The story is always the same. A poor man is upset because he’s just trying to be nice, but women take it the wrong way! There’s two layers to this discussion. The first being that catcalling isn’t a compliment, it’s harassment.

But I’ll be examining a second layer: men who are upset that women don’t want ANY compliments from them, are being entitled not nice.

let’s examine a scenario where multiple woman state they aren’t okay with compliments from guys she isn’t friends with. Is this feeling unreasonable? Of course not!

The expectation that women are supposed to be okay with compliments because they’re “nice” is ridiculous. Let me give you an example of why this is:

Sally is walking home, and a person stops her in the middle of the street. They ask her if she’s having a good day, and being flustered she respond yes to the question. The person then responds “Well you’d have an even better day with Jesus in your heart!” They start talking her ear off about how much Jesus loves her, and hands Sally a Bible at the end of the conversation. Would it be unreasonable for Sally to feel upset/annoyed at this interaction? Of course not! It even makes sense! Sally wanted to walk home, but now time was wasted on a subject she didn’t care about. It doesn’t matter if the person thought they were being nice to Sally by giving Sally a book to salvation. Would it make a difference if the guy just yelled “Jesus loves you!” and left it at that? The answer is no, at the end of the day it was an unsolicited act that made Sally uncomfortable. The same goes for giving unsolicited compliments, just because a person thinks it’s nice doesn’t mean it is or that their action is okay.

Pretend you make peanut butter cookies for random people. You LOVE these cookies, and suppose others would love them to. Some people love them, others are indifferent. Eventually you run into somebody who doesn’t even want to take the cookie and looks visibly upset. Would that person be wrong for being upset? No! It makes sense if someone doesn’t want to have a random cookie given to them. Maybe they’re allergic peanut butter cookies, or maybe the cookie reminds them of a time they got food poisoning. Either way, the expectation the person should be grateful for a cookie they didn’t want is ridiculous.

What about the person who made the cookies? Should they be upset about the situation?! They put all this time and effort into the cookies just to be rejected!! At most the person should be upset that they failed at their objective, they thought they were doing something nice that wasn’t. It makes no sense for you to be upset that someone doesn’t want to eat your unsolicited cookies, expecting them to take your cookie and be happy about it because of the work you put in is entitlement. At this point, you’re no longer being nice, the reason why you’re upset is because the stranger is not giving you the reaction you feel entitled to, the stranger is not giving you the gratitude you think you deserve because of your work.

Which brings me to my final point, men who get upset women don’t want random compliments, are not coming from a place of kindness. They feel entitled to a woman’s time because they believe they’re being kind. It’s another version of “sex in exchange for kindness tokens” except it’s “a reaction or gratitude for an interaction you never asked for or hinted at wanting”.