this happens in a public park.
first time this happens to me afaik. I was just stretching with black leggings and a t-shirt. I noticed him 100 yards away walking around but always looking at me. Upon making eye contact he would look away but as soon as I turned to stretching, he’d look at me.
He started slowly approaching me and at one point stood at like 15 yards from me, but still separated by a fence. At that point I decided to cut my work out short and left avoiding eye contact.
I consider myself lucky because he didn’t follow me.
What scared me the most is he was bigger and taller than me.
If this ever happened to you, how did you react? How do I react next time this happens?
Lots of people giving advice here, but I’m not seeing the most important advice being emphasized.
Always trust your gut. Listen to that uneasy feeling and act on it.
We developed this intuition over millennia for a reason. Your subconscious will pick up on cues even if you consciously aren’t catching it.
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker is a book about exactly this. It’s definitely worth a read, and his methods have been used by countless celebrities & public figures to assess threats.
You got me, this is what I’m referencing.
If the topic of books comes up in conversation with random people I always recommend it if that’s the only book they read in their lifetime
Unless it’s about some other group of people than men.
Pulling out your gun and shooting the brown skinned dude going for a jog is a little bit different than packing it in and resolving to do yoga another day
I don’t know what gender you are, but you’ve just triggered my spidey-gut.
I don’t disagree with the advice to trust your gut, so I can’t blame you for doing the same thing.
I’m getting sexist racist homophobic anti trans vibes here. Should I trust my gut?
If what I’m saying even remotely resembles something your caricature of the “other” might say, then the only logical conclusion, of course, is that I must be exactly like them.
I’ll take that as a yes.
Oh no! A random person on the internet thinks I’m something I’m not. How can I ever recover from this.
Oh sorry, which one out of racist, sexist, homophobic and anti trans was incorrect?
Yes that moral imbalance also striked me when reading this. When grandma has a gut feeling towards brown people and talks about that, she’d be called a bigot here. But when it’s about men, the highest upvoted advice is to listen to the feeling of fear in your gut…
If people only listened to their gut all people from a different culture which similar but not same body language as well as people with a disability would be even more estranged than today.
What does your gut tell you about the guy in line at the tell who keeps his hand in his pockets and fiddling with something who then seem to panic a bit when someone tries to look him in the eyes? Is it a robber or an autistic person who don’t want to show his hand due to having a stim toy and have learned to not stim in public view?