The creepy things that women do to men

Women can list a thousand ways they are subjected to male behaviour that makes them uncomfortable – but it’s not all a one-way street. These are the ways women creep out men.

Oxford dictionary chose ‘brain rot’ as its word of the year, Merriam-Webster picked ‘polarisation’ and Cambridge Dictionary settled on ‘manifest’, but mine is absolutely the f-word.

Feminism.

It’s been a tough year to be a woman … which kind of makes it the same as every other year. But the loss of healthcare rights in the USA, the loss of a female prosecutor against a male felon in a presidential race and the continual laundry list of assaults and harassment against the fairer sex continues to be rage-inducingly unfair.

One of the most glorious manifestations of this can be seen on social media with the ‘women in male fields’ trend on TikTok.

Using Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda”, women flip the narrative on double-standards in relationships by satirically re-enacting stereotypically male behaviours.

See posts such as: “He was crying in bed, so I said ‘here we go again’ and turned around and fell asleep.”

Or: “When he tells me exactly what I’ve done wrong, so I say ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’.”

Seen as a subtle guide to male red flags, the trend has blown up not just because it’s funny, but because it’s true.

Nicki Minaj performs onstage during the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards in September last year. Picture: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for MTV.

Of course, it works both ways, with men now adding a #meninfemalefields tag to describe such situations as: “When she asks me where I want to eat, and I tell her [I don’t know]. So she starts naming off different places and I get mad and I say no to every single one.”

However, it’s not such a laughing matter when it comes to the ways in which both genders can be the subjects of unwanted attention or affection.

The fact is that women are far more likely to be victims than men, with one in five women and one in 16 men experiencing sexual violence from the age of 15, but any real feminist should want to fight for fair treatment of their brothers.

The truth is that women could probably list a thousand more ways we are subjected to micro-aggressions and male behaviour that makes us uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean men can’t experience that as well.

In fact, one of the most popular posts on Reddit right now bluntly asks: “Men, what are the creepy things that women do which usually go undetected?”

It’s phrased in somewhat of an inflammatory way, but I can’t deny that I’ve seen examples of some of the replies in action.

For example: “Middle-aged women make creepy observations about how attractive my sons are, then asking their ages and calculating in their heads. If a middle-aged man behaved that way around someone’s teenage daughter all hell would break loose. Makes my skin crawl.”

Or: “I had a lot of older women in bars when I was young comment on what age I was when they were in college and then get all handsy while talking to me. Now that I’m older I see the behaviour in a lot of my wife’s friends when we go out and it’s just as creepy (but) when you call them out on it they see nothing wrong with it. It’s just a very normalised behaviour.”

A mugshot of Luigi Mangione provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections on December 10. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.

Another said how the recent case of Luigi Mangione, the young American man who shot and killed insurance CEO Brian Thompson, had illustrated this,

“I get people finding him hot, and it would be fine to say “wow, that dude’s hot!” But some women online are going into fairly graphic detail. The worst part of this to me is that this behaviour from women is mostly just accepted. Whereas if a man were to do the same, he would rightfully be called out.”

Of course, it seems somewhat ridiculous to call this out when so many women would rather face a bear in a forest than a man, but it still doesn’t negate that we can sometimes engage in the very behaviours that make us uncomfortable.

The best thing we can do is treat others as we would want to be treated. So maybe rather than just a word for 2025, we should make a resolution: equality.