I don't find this line of argument compelling though. For example, your Bundy argument appears to imply that it is immoral to have any sort of difficulty in a public place that might cause a woman to come offer help to you. This seems like a fairly absurd, possibly ableist moral guideline?
The reductio ad absurdum of this reasoning is: "Abusers breathe oxygen, if you breathe oxygen that makes you like an abuser, therefore it's predatory to breathe oxygen."
Basically by saying "X is a behavior that abusers do", decent people will want to avoid beahvior X in order to not be thought of as abusers. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: no decent person will do behavior X. This works regardless of whether behavior X is inherently problematic.
I'm really sorry that you had such shitty experiences, but I think your ideas about reworking society to give you less anxiety are misguided and counterproductive (even for the goal of reducing your anxiety).
If you're super risk-averse, you can implement some personal guidelines like "never be alone in a room with another person" or whatever. I don't think your own risk-aversion is a good justification for preventing other consenting adults from being alone in a room with each other though.
That predatory behavior and manipulation also betrays a good faith interpretation of consent. Consent isn't realized through trickery and technicalities.
If someone believes that predatory behavior and manipulation are okay, especially when it comes to dating, sex or consent, that is definitely someone that a SA/CSA survivor should be wary of, because those are the beliefs and attitudes that perpetuate such abuse.
Suppose a man does as described in OP and if anyone asks him what he's doing, he responds honestly. Is that fabrication/manipulation?
Suppose a woman wears makeup in order to appear more youthful and beautiful than she really is. Is that fabrication/manipulation? If she successfully seduces a man into sleeping with her as a result of her makeup, is that a consent violation?
> Suppose a man does as described in OP and if anyone asks him what he's doing, he responds honestly. Is that fabrication/manipulation?
Suppose one of Bundy's potential victims asks him what he's doing, and he goes, "Well, I'm just pretending to have trouble in order to get close enough to kidnap you!" Is that still predatory and does it affect his intent?
> Suppose a woman wears makeup in order to appear more youthful and beautiful than she really is. Is that fabrication/manipulation? If she successfully seduces a man into sleeping with her as a result of her makeup, is that a consent violation?
Surely you can see the difference between taking care of yourself and preying upon people. There's nothing deceptive about looking good. If they're out there catfishing people to sleep with them, however, that is predatory, but that is not what you're describing.
I agree if you want to kidnap someone, you're a predator.
>Suppose one of Bundy's potential victims asks him what he's doing, and he goes, "Well, I'm just pretending to have trouble in order to get close enough to kidnap you!" Is that still predatory and does it affect his intent?
The key thing that makes Bundy a predator is wanting to kidnap someone. If someone did the exact same thing with the intention of meeting their future spouse instead of forcibly kidnapping someone, they're not a predator, barring extenuating circumstances.
For example, the other day in the store a woman dropped something near me, while I was squatting on the floor. I picked it up and gave it to her. Afterwards, I realized that she'd been looking at me prior to dropping the object, and it occurred to me that maybe she was trying to get me to talk to her (out of all the places in the store, she somehow dropped her thing right next to me, and also waited for me to pick it up instead of bending over herself).
I don't have any particular reason to believe she's a predator based on that interaction, even if she dropped the item intentionally.
I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand. It seems like you're using a wild analogy with Ted Bundy to demonize harmless flirtation of the sort you'd find in a romantic comedy.
>There's nothing deceptive about looking good.
Let's change the scenario -- suppose she deliberately makes her makeup look natural, and when someone asks if she's wearing makeup, she lies and says no. What do you call that?
Because it seems about as bad to me as a man who does as described in the OP, and when asked why he's in the class, says something like "yeah I like helping people, I don't know!" In both cases you're doing something to attract people you're interested in and telling a white lie related to it.
It crosses the line when it becomes abduction.
If you are a SA, or a CSA, survivor, then this is the kind of behavior that gives you nightmares. I know, because it gives me nightmares. And it's brought up in almost every support group I've been a part of. Their behavior is identical to someone who profiles a victim type, seeks opportunities to put themselves in the victim's path, and creates an opportunity to engage.
At the extreme end, Bundy did this with a cast and by targeting times of high stress (exam time). He would place the car outside of dorms and essentially fumble putting things in a car. Women would come up and start trying to help him; at which point, he'd kidnap them,
> Further similarities between the victims were noted: the disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, and were within a week of midterm or final exams. All of the victims were wearing slacks or blue jeans when they disappeared, and at many crime scenes there were sightings of a man wearing a cast or a sling and driving a brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle.
This post isn't to say that these people are Bundy. That's not the point. If you had 50 glasses of wine in front of you, but 1 of them contained cyanide, would you drink the wine at random? Now, what if the wine glasses were being forced on you? And you still didn't know?
1 in 50 to 1 in 10 of these people won't have such nice intentions. 1 in 100 will be a psychopath. If you are at the receiving end, how do you know? How do you differentiate between the majority that's innocent and the years of hell and therapy on the other hand?
Would you want to navigate this every time you just want to go to class and learn?