One that always annoyed me is when it is around the holidays, when stores advertise gifts for men. They always assume a guy is into toilet humor, beer humor, assuming they’re a lumberjack who needs to survive out in the wilderness, are into bbq-ing all of the time so gotta have those available all year around for some reason.
Even when I used to have identified myself as a guy, I never once fit into any of those traits. Just because guys grow beards, doesn’t always mean they’re chopping wood somewhere and always wearing plaid.
This is one thing that I’m pretty self conscious about. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet and see lots of actual creeps on there but it’s often on my mind in public to try not to come off as a creep. The only exception is with my nieces or nephew, I’ll be dammed if someone’s going to accuse me of something because I’m playing with them or keeping an eye on them in public, but outside of that, I’m a single guy in his 30s and that don’t look good, so I keep to myself.
Actually, as I was typing this out I remembered the guy that I saw while I was with my nieces and their parents waiting for some food at a fast food place a few months back. The place was busy so we were all there for a while and this old guy comes up nearby, waits for a while, then complains out loud to us. Ok, that’s normal, but then he just hangs out for a while close to the kids. After we get the last of our food as the youngest is getting off of a stool, he reaches out to help her off, holding her under the arms. That type of situation is exactly what I try to avoid. Maybe he was harmless and thought she needed a hand, that for some reason the three adults she knew couldn’t provide, but keep your hands off the kid, we don’t know you. (She was not struggling to get off the stool)