Women and men complain here that they’re being harassed by users from the other gender. I was just wondering what the various ideas about harassment are. What might be polite in one culture, could be perceived as obtrusive in another. For instance, one user might find it friendly to write „my dear friend“ in their first message while the other thinks that this was crossing a line. One might think that it’s a good idea to ask each other’s age to see if they’d be a good fit as language partners, while the other is offended. One might try to start small talk by asking about marital status and number of kids and the other sees this kind of questions as too intimate and asking them as breaking a taboo. One might regard it as a good idea to exchange contact details to start an audio/video exchange as soon as possible, while the other find this behaviour suspicious.
So, my question is: What is in your opinion ok to ask when approaching another user here? What behaviour and what questions do you see as harassment?
I feel unconfortable when the first message is something like "hi pretty", "hi you're beautiful". It seems like the other person is interested in my appearance or something like that, while what I really want here is to practice languages.
I don't like "hi dear" neither, but I feel like it is a kind way of greeting in some cultures.
Beside those compliments, asking for my age is also a bad question. Not because it's offensive, but because it's not a good idea to reveal these personal informations online.
As for the right way to approach someone, I'd say it's necessary to present yourself first, like "Hi, {person's name}. I'm Julia, a native speaker of Portuguese, and I'm learning {language}. I see you're interested in my language, so maybe we could help each other (...)".
Of course I don't want to be rude, but I ignore those only "hi" or "hello" messages. I used to answer to them before, but it never works out, because it looks like the other person is not interested in exchanging languages.
In a virtual world, one can easily avoid annoying and obnoxious people who are good at using words/phrases that mostly make one uncomfortable. Don't give too much personal info about you.
But in real life, the harassment might be too much annoying(one can even fall into depression and lose mental balance) which can be of different type such as chasing or following someone or teasing or commenting inappropriately etc etc. One should report such people to the police asap.
Dear (the person's name)
........
Best/kind regards
As far as I know, this is the formal way of communication. I communicate in this way by academic people such as professors, researchers, students and etc, both male and female. I use the same way here when I want to send a message. I think the phrases such as dear or kind regards are not harassment at all.
