Attention and Headphones

Alternatives:

• Start recording him, immediately inform him that he’s being recorded and that you don’t want to talk to him and want him to leave you alone.
• FB Live! (Again, inform him he’s live and that you want to be left alone.)
• Tell him that wearing headphones in public means you want to be left alone and that he’s being very rude and intrusive (he will likely not react well “I was just trying to be nice” “Well if you can’t take a compliment” “Are you on your period” “What a fucking bitch” etc. etc. etc. be prepared to run.)
• Wave to another girl and join her, start chatting like you were besties since kindergarten (other girls, leave no girl behind).
• If you SEE this happening but aren’t the person it’s happening to wave to the woman who was wearing headphones and start chatting with her like you’ve been besties since kindergarten. If she asks you to leave or tells you she’s okay respect her desire to be left alone.
• Just keep the headphones on, if he reaches out to take them off say very loudly “Did you just pull my headphones off? What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Don’t ever touch a stranger like that! Go away!” (again, may not go well, works best if you’re in an environment like a coffee shop where you know people or feel secure causing a scene)

So here’s the deal: Headphones on in public are an implicit “no.” They are an agreed-upon code/social cue for “I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.” Someone who is ignoring that implicit “no” is pushing boundaries and will want to find out what other “no”s they can safely ignore. I’m not going to say that this is comparable to rape, because it isn’t, however forcing someone into a conversation that they didn’t consent to is boundary-testing, grooming behavior. If they can get you into a conversation you don’t want to have they will try to get contact info you don’t want to give them; if they get contact info you didn’t want to give them they will try to encourage you to go out with them when you don’t want to. And on, and on, and on. This tactic is not in and of itself abusive but it’s a big red flag signalling that abusive behavior may be forthcoming.
Denying eye contact, looking fixedly at a phone screen or book, turning physically away, starting a conversation with someone else - these are also all implicit (and polite) “no”s that the vast majority of people are capable of reading but that some people will choose to ignore.
And a certain type of person will say “well why can’t you just say no?”. Putting aside that there is tons and tons of evidence that womens’ explicit “no”s are frequently met with violence or aggression, there’s largely no need for an explicit no.
In linguistics there’s this thing called pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning and explores patterns in the way that people use speech in a manner inconsistent with exact grammar.
So, for example, English speakers tend to find imperatives rude except in emergencies. Instead of telling a server “Bring me an espresso” we will say “I’d like an espresso” or “could you bring me an espresso” or “can I get an espresso” or “I’ll have an espresso” which aren’t technically orders but are (technically) a statement of preference, a request for help, and a request for information, and a statement of fact respectively. But we all understand when a customer says any of these things to a server they are placing an order for an espresso.
Similarly if you ask someone if they’d like to chat and they say “I’d rather catch up later, can we catch up later?” they aren’t (technically) saying no, they’re making a statement of preference followed up by a request. If you ask a coworker if they can help you finish a report and they say “I’m just too swamped right now” they are making an informative statement, not saying no, but we understand that they mean no.
“No” is often considered a rude word in English. We don’t like to reject people, we don’t like to give hard “no”s, we like to soften our “no”s with other kinds of statements because it allows the person being told “no” to save face.
These utter assholes who pester people wearing headphones to talk to them are (at some level) aware that we’re more willing to bend on a soft “no” and will pull off our headphones so as to not appear terribly rude but don’t want to be rude by giving a hard “no” once the headphones are off because we’ve been trained FOREVER to not simply say “no.” They are using our desire to be polite as an excuse to call us rude if we don’t respond to their rudeness.
But you know what else doesn’t have to be explicit? Threats. Ignoring an implicit “no” so hard that you are willing to interrupt someone, request that they remove their headphones, and publicly act as though you are correct to be doing so is threatening. It says “I don’t care if I’m in the wrong, I want to talk to you and if you don’t go along with it you don’t know what other social rules I’m willing to break. Do you want to find out or will it just be easier to have this talk and get it over with?”
So yeah, long story short fuck all of this bullshit and be safe. If you think you’re safe to tell the person bugging you to leave you alone please do so. If you don’t feel safe telling the other person to go away just try to end the conversation as soon as you feel safe to do so.
Good luck, everything is awful.

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