White male seeking understanding

[xoder]

So I was reading an Ask Metafilter question about being asked to smile. The thread is interesting but devolves into a giant "Men Are Pigs" fest. The operative theory being that men think women should be pretty no matter what, therefore they should smile all the time. In addition, the smiling somehow reinforces their submission to the males. Personally, I don't think I've ever asked anyone to smile, of either gender, but I often try to cheer people up through silliness and absurdity—occasionally to bad result. Given the initial question at AskMeFi, however, how does the answering public become so certain that the poster is female and is being told by males to smile? (Ignore, for the moment, that the poster marked a response as "Best Answer" pretty much declaring what the previous posters suspected.)

On a slightly related note: (most, if not all of) you know that I'm a tall, white male. That said, I feel very vulnerable telling women I find them attractive, as the song notes suggest I do. Perhaps its from the culture at RIT, where women could bring men up on "looking" charges and then those men could get expelled (although extremely unlikely—forced letters of apology and probation were much more common). Perhaps it's just plain old fear of rejection. Who knows. But I ask you, my reading public (which has many women in it), how do I avoid the first kind of repercussions (the latter, I have only myself to blame, I know)?

And on a related note to that last related note: most of the shame I feel from my eyes catching on attractive women for as long as is "safe" is mostly due to the fact that I feel I am consuming a resource (looking at an attractive person) and not contributing resources back to the "ogling pool", if one exists.

Thanks to s00j's K for giving me that second idea to think upon and ruminiate on since Lunacon '06. And thaanks to Sooj herself for the song which gave me the impetus to actually write out the thoughts I was having.

Comments

[unlovablehands.livejournal.com]

Re the first: if the answering public is predominantly female, probably because that is their experience. I'd probably say 4 out of every 5 people who tell me to smile are dudes. Also, the ones who are ladies are pretty much all older ladies, but the dudes are of varying ages, so it always strikes me as a gender thing.

re the second: I've found that saying "you look really pretty today" instead of "gosh, you're pretty" tends to sound less creepy? Like more like a genuine compliment than you being creepy? it also helps if it comes up in an actual conversation instead of that being the only thing you say to someone.

[(Anonymous)]

that's pretty much what I was thinking (though with an opposite gender ratio of smile-sayers, and that hasn't really happened since highschool). it's definitely very weird to damand that people smile, but (almost) everybody likes a compliment :)

but yeah, if you want me to smile, give me a reason to. I'm not some kind of sideshow, smiling for your amusement.