None of the men I know carry mace, walk with their keys in their fists like brass knuckles, or have stories about being harassed in public. Most of the women I know have all three of these things in common.
When I was in my early 20s I regularly tried to hit on/chat with strange women in random public settings (sitting at a park bench, buying groceries, etc). It made them visibly uncomfortable. But I felt like I was entitled to keep doing it anyway, and my male friends felt the same way. It wasn't until reading "me, too" stories that I realized I shouldn't regularly make people uncomfortable, and not to excuse my carelessness (women had certainly tried to communicate this and I had failed to listen), but part of the reason was that I had been given the impression that that was simply how a man behaved, and I didn't really know men who disagreed with that perspective. I also didn't understand why I was making them uncomfortable and just how common harassment was, and how in their mind there was a totally reasonable concern that I might be dangerous or creepy (and indeed, the way I was acting was a bit creepy, so how can I blame them). I think I mostly saw it through the lens of whether or not my advances were rejected and how I felt about that, and to the extent I considered whether they were welcome, it was to minimize rejections rather than to understand the experience of a fellow human.
Not everything is gendered, but the experience of talking to strangers unfortunately is. I'd like for it not to be, as well, but without recognizing truth there is no reconciliation.