Wow way to exaggerate the story. Rebecca Watson mentioned this incident in a talk as an example of ways that men intimidate women without realizing it. Women experience sexual harassment in public on a very regular basis and so of course a man making an advance on a woman in a space she can't escape from would be worrisome to her. She never told the entire internet or any other group he was awful. And then yeah, she got trolled. But it wasn't just people saying mean things to her, they were calling her personal phone, sending things to her house, and posting pictures of gore and dead bodies on her Facebook page. She got death threats.

I'm going to go ahead and give my own experiences as an example. I've had my fair share of weird, creepy, unwanted advances in public, often from much older men. Sometimes they're just winks and stares. Sometimes a guy sits down next to me on an empty bus and tries to flirt with me. And sometimes, every once in a while, one of those men will threaten to kill me when I turn them down. This has happened twice to me in the past few months. This sort of thing makes me wonder: What if one of these men had approached me in a parking lot or on a dark street instead of a public space? Would they have assaulted me? Raped me? Killed me? Thankfully it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it will. Who knows?

And here's the thing about me, I'm a trans woman. These sorts of advances started happening in July and I've already had multiple people wholeheartedly express their desire to kill me because I don't want to fuck them. I don't pass perfectly. I don't completely conform to conventional beauty standards. If I was a conventionally beautiful cis woman, these sorts of advances would be many times more frequent. I can go a couple days without someone being creepy around me. Some women can't go one bus ride.

Most of the time, unwanted advances are just weird and creepy. Once in a while, they're terrifying. So when you've been in a bar giving a speech, and then you sit around for hours chatting with you audience, and finally head to the elevator to sleep.. And some guy you don't know ducks into the elevator with you and says, "I've been watching you all night, now that I have you alone in a space you can't escape from, how do you feel about heading up to my room for a euphemism for sex?" That's pretty fucking scary, because maybe this guy is the one that finally does it, finally gropes you or beats you or tries to drag you off to his room.

And that's what Rebecca Watson was talking about.