My mother and my grandfather won’t agree about my English. XD They would say it is terrible.

I probably won’t get the nuance of some words. Also, I usually miss on slang or “dog whistles” and things like that. Plus, some subtle differences in words are missed by me. I might think they are synonyms when they aren’t.

The thing is, most people look. But polite people avoid direct looking or staring.

There is a reason some people have to face rude people more frequently. Basically, people adapt their behaviors depending on who they are dealing with. For example, some people treat their bosses/superiors better than their underlings. This is similar. Men who think women are inferior, think it is ok to be rude to women and, in fact, they won’t consider that they are being rude. They would translate that behavior as “boys would be boys”. As a side note: my sexist grandfather would also consider rude some of those behaviors, so there are more layers to the situation. Point is, many men who stare, catcall, or grope, would do that only to women who are alone or with no men around. Because those are the situations where they think it is OK to do so. If another man is around, they won’t do it. Probably because they would think it is wrong to do so to an “owned woman”. That is, it would be disrespectful to the man.

So is not me having “bad luck”, is certain men targeting women who dare to go about their life on their own. While I do have a boyfriend, I travel a lot for my work. So there are plenty of times I’m alone. I’ve also plenty of anecdotes about meeting interesting people for the same reason. I travel, have hobbies, and do things, so things happen to me.

The only thing we can do to reduce rude people is to not condone what they do with easy excuses like “Are you sure that is what happened?” or “I’m sure he didn’t mean it” and so on. Most people can’t be specific about what bothers them but know that something bothers them. So if a woman says that a man did something that makes her uncomfortable, well, she might not be able to explain, but it is clear something happened. Not assuming that she “overreacted” is a good first step.