I originally posted this on Tumblr. But I thought it might be a bit tl;dr for over there.
I am a cis-gendered hetro man. I have been known to see a lady in passing and notice that they have fantastic eyes, or great hair, or a nice body. I’ve been known to think to myself “mmm, nice x”. X could be hair, eyes, butt, smile, boobs, or something else.
I like to think of myself as a “progressive man of the world”, whatever that means. I would like to think that I’m a feminist, at least in training. And yet I’m still out there noticing women and going “mmm, nice x”.
When I catch myself, I feel a little guilty on the inside. On the other side of the coin, I figure that it is natural to notice people around you and to find some features of a person attractive. I think it would be totally awful to wolf whistle or cat call or whatever anyone, or to stare at someone and make them uncomfortable. Basically I wouldn’t want to be a creep.
So that leaves me with the thought that perhaps even seeing someone and thinking that they look nice could be considered creepy. Where’s the line? The obvious line to me is at least taking any action that makes someone uncomfortable. But is there a line that is even earlier than that – is thinking that someone is attractive, or a feature of their body is nice, crossing the line?
Just the stuff that goes through my head from time to time, that’s all.



You are overthinking things IMO. It is complimentary to notice something beautiful in someone else. It is creepy to leer, two different things. The world would be a very sad place if we couldn’t enjoy beauty in others. You have lovely eyes – imagine if everyone was to scared to notice for fear of being a ‘creep’ and no one ever told you that?
I think it depends how blatant you are about it. I find when men ‘ogle’ me I feel incredibly uncomfortable and immediately think I must be showing too much skin and start trying to cover up a bit more. That’s sad and it shouldn’t be like that. It’s just not a nice feeling if someone is staring at you, for good or bad reasons.