A Compliment or Harassment?

I visited friends for Thanksgiving Dinner.  My friend’s granddaughter, a gorgeous redhead in her early twenties and a recent college graduate and I were talking. 

I mentioned having just completed an on-demand course for Illumeo (see www.Illumeo.com) called “Don’t be a Victim:  Say No and have it honored” and told her a story I’d told in the course.

I too am a redhead – although significantly older than this young woman – but I too was young once and had all kinds of rude and lewd compliments and invitations thrown at me.  My father (a wonderful wise man) suggested that instead of getting insulted I take them as a compliment, smile, say thank you and move on.  A woman, he told me was like a work of art in a museum, men would look and some would comment, but they do not have the right to touch or take.  You, he said own your boy and only you can decide with whom you choose to share it.

That piece of advice has been enormously helpful to me – but this young women’s reaction was quite different.

She and her generation are determined to re-train boys and men so that they never say lewd and rude things again.

Yeah, that’s a good idea for their parents – but if an attractive young woman is walking down the street and some guys cat-call her shouldn’t she smile and walk on – or should she stop and give them a lecture on appropriate social behavior?

Me, I’d play it safe.