How should men interact with women in public at night?

Photo by Darran Shen on Unsplash

As a man who wants to get it right I’ve found it’s best to ask real live women how I should act in specific contexts, one of which is the scenario of how men ought to interact with strange women at night in a public place. I had an intuited method, but I felt it was important to confirm my suspicions. I conducted informal interviews with women both in person and online. The responses I got were unanimous and emphatic.

To summarize my findings in brief: Men should leave strange women completely alone at night. The best possible thing a man can do is stay as far away as possible. He should be aware of his surroundings and consciously move so as to avoid women. His presence can only make her more afraid, and so the method of least suffering is for him to avoid her completely. Ideally, he should disappear from sight before she even notices him and just stay away, since no man is a welcome sight for a woman at night.

If a man gets himself maced it’s his own dumb fault for invading a woman’s space.

“Well hold on just a sec, Wyatt,” a man might say, “I am a shining paragon of moral decency and would never harm a lady, so why should I, a man so pure of heart, avoid women?”