[dpark]

I agree that the term "rape culture" is unhelpful. It's an extreme term that alienates people. When you equate undesired behavior to rape, you both trivialize rape and cause people engaging in the undesired behavior to disregard anything of substance you might say. When you call someone a rapist, they aren't going to listen to you when you try to explain why hitting on a 21-year-old coworker is inappropriate.

I do not agree with your dismissiveness of female complaints about "creepiness". Solving "creepiness" is a hard problem, but not because women are bad at distinguishing between creepy guys and normal guys who happen to be unattractive. If you repeatedly hit on someone and fail to pick up on the social cues that say your advances are unwanted, you are a creepy person, regardless of whether you are unattractive or not. It is not reasonable to disregard the discomfort this causes the recipient of the unwanted attention. It is also not reasonable that the recipient should have to be blunt, abrasive, or combative to make the unwanted attention stop.

[DisposableMike]

I completely agree that repeated attempts to ask out a woman who is clearly not interested in you can come across as creepy, and I'm not really insinuating that it's not a problem. People that do that will earn their association with that term.

I can only comment from personal experience, but many of my female friends will call ANY interaction with an unattractive male 'creepy', regardless of how polite or nonthreatening that person has been. An ugly male will warn them that their car tires are low, or that they dropped something, or ask them about their volunteer organization (that they are promoting via a t-shirt), and these women will either give a quick response and leave, or give no response and actually physically flee the scene. Afterwards, they will ALWAYS say "some creepy guy tried to tell me that my tires were flat", or "some creeper was trying to find out where I worked. Is he going to be stalking me in my parking lot?" And I will have been there, observed the same individual, and say "what's wrong with you? He was just trying to help you out", etc.

I realize that the above is just anecdotal evidence, and that the normal/typical behavior of women could be completely different in most/all other situations, but can I really help that my observations shape my worldview?

[dpark]

Well, there are two things to consider here. First, as you called out, your friends' behavior is anecdotal and may not be representative. Second, there is a big difference between work colleagues and strangers. If someone at work does something like complement my shoes, I'm much less likely to see that as weird/creepy than if a stranger does it.

Certainly, there are interactions that get labelled as "creepy" when they really shouldn't. But there are also plenty of legitimately creepy people making others uncomfortable at work.