Another related issue is less 'strangers' and more 'more-familiar' men, the phenomenon that if you are even slightly friendly to some-men, they interpret that as a lot more than basic social chat or whatever. This is another reason why some women will avoid giving any sign of pleasantness to a man they don't know well or don't have verified somehow (e.g. social group validation) as not-creepy.
As a teenager I didn't get outright creeped at much, but I got a lot of young men interpreting basic social civility as a lot more than it was. Upon correcting their misapprehension, some of these young men would behave shittily. I had a stalker for a year at college from this. A lad who I'd made friends with on a trip, he'd interpreted more than just trip-friends (con buddies) as his male friend similarly misunderstood my female friend. As soon as we realised, my friend and I paired up to keep our distance cos former-buddy and his friend suddenly become creepy and entitled and angry with us. Former buddy then proceeded to stare at me creepily at every opportunity for the rest of the year till he left the college. Very unpleasant and would make some of my friends not want to sit with me cos they felt so uncomfortable.
I eventually learned to limit social niceness to men in general and be very clear from the start "not interested". It did help once I had a boyfriend, as I became "someone else's territory" in that nasty sexist ownership kind of way, and my ex was Rather Big And Tall which tended to put creeps off. Sadly having a female partner doesn't work, too many men "get off on that" and will routinely ask queer women for threesomes etc (cos sex aint real without a mighty dick and all that) and not understand how fucking gross that is either.
As ever with sexism/misogyny, there's layers on layers and it intersects with other things like race, class, physical appearance, disability, social class, perceived social status and so on.
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