Mazzy

Throwing a ball in the playing field for my dog yesterday early eve. An older man (60’s?) walked from a woodland footpath into the field (about 100m away from me). He stopped and wheezed a bit (had just walked uphill) then called out that I didn’t need to stop throwing on his behalf (I hadn’t, was just waiting for my dog to stop messing with the ball and bring it back to me).
He walked across the playing field, up some steps on the other side and then sat on a bench overlooking the field (wheezing again because of the stairs). I could feel him watching me and was a bit uncomfortable but didn’t think much of it and just kept playing with my dog. After about 5 mins it was time for me to go home so I climbed the steps towards the bench as this was my route home. When I got to the top of the steps (close to where he was sitting) he jovially said to me “I have been thinking ‘How can get that girl to come over and kiss me?'”. I just laughed and said something like “I don’t think so” in an equally jovial way and kept on walking.
I think I sort of thought in the moment that he was just a silly old bugger and it wasn’t until afterwards that I started to get pissed off.

I am a 44 year old woman and I was out walking my dog. How did he view me to come out with something like that?
It seems like he just saw FEMALE and his thoughts automatically became sexual.
This to me is everyday sexism, a very boring and standard example of the type of run of the mill harassment women encounter on a frequent basis.
I wasn’t threatened by the situation and it wasn’t noteworthy enough for me to even tell my partner about when I got home. It is not until today that I thought ‘hang on, that wasn’t on’ and decided to share it here. It is the idea that a man was watching me doing a perfectly normal activity and minding my own business and he and responded in a completely unnecessary sexual manner.
It is this type of low level encounter that makes us aware about the thought processes of some men and makes us uneasy to come across a man in an isolated spot. He didn’t see me as an individual, just some female to ‘get a kiss from’. Urrrgh.