Stop Telling Women to Smile, by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.
Where I learned that when the content of a “compliment” seems friendly but the underlying intent is more sinister, that is where the line is drawn between friendliness and harassment. When one’s compliment moves from genuinely wanting to wish another well to hoping to get something out of that another (read: hoping to satisfy the initial one’s intended desires), it becomes transactional, and friendliness is not transactional. I also learned that one’s unsolicited “compliments” to another are hardly based on that one’s attraction to the other, especially when the other has expressed a discomfort with the compliment. One’s continued offerings of the “compliments” are then considered as exercises of power over the other. One moves toward exploring how much power they have over the other, and this power is usually validated (in the one’s mind) by how quickly the other says “yes” or responds to the “compliment,” and when the other does not say “yes” or respond, one takes that rejection as a direct assault to / challenge on their power. And if what I learned is wrong — if this unsolicited “compliment” had nothing to do with power dynamics — then one would offer those same “compliments” — again, unsolicited — to those who they feel share the same level of power with them: aka, men. But this never occurs because those who have power are rarely interested in proving their power to those who also have power. Power sustains and maintains itself only when it is practiced over the subjugated.