If it's a symbol

I read an article recently discussing the issue of reporting sexual harassment in France, and how glib the law is about it (I think it was on Jezebel, and written by a Frenchwoman). It seems that the French are largely still entrenched in the mindset of 'you should be flattered by the attention' so maybe it's a good thing that you didn't try to report it because it likely would have been incredibly frustrating and wouldn't have gotten you anywhere. (This makes me furious, btw, that this mindset is still so prevalent in a Western nation.)

I, personally, get irrationally offended when strange men talk to me in the street. Logically I know that most of the time they don't mean anything by it, especially when they are just paying me a compliment. There's no harassment there. I tried to follow my line of logic to figure out why I was being set off by a compliment, and it went something like "but I didn't ask for a compliment ---> I didn't ask for anything from this guy ---> so why does he feel justified to make damn sure I know about his opinion about me ---> does he think that his opinion should matter to me?" Generally I'm having a hard time verbalizing this, but I think the conclusion I came to ties into how entrenched the patriarchy is in our culture, and how the idea that 'women (should) dress up for men' and 'what men think about women is important to women' is still in play today.