I would be wary of a female "pick up artist" on the street most of the time, but I find this scenario very sweet. For one, this girl is cute and the fact that she checks on the other girl sitting on the bench is a humanizing element.
And two, street harassment is a public nuisance caused mostly by men. A woman looking for company on the street does not read as a threat on the same level, in fact she risks her own safety way more than a man doing the same would. It makes her odd, but her guts and the novelty of the situation make her interesting.
In general, I tend to find the "'if this was a man you'd hate it"/"it's not better just because it's gay" genre of criticism (both from outside and inside the yuri fandom!) tiresome. It implies that yuri and similar media pulls a trick on its audience by subverting heterosexuality, and thus unfairly 'gets away with' improprieties. For some reason it's accepted as a fact that straight people don't measure straight stories by queer standards (imagine someone commenting under hetslop that the depicted scenario isn't less gross just because it's straight), but yuri fans who like yuri for its own sake, and maybe even treat F/F as the default relationship type, are considered hypocritical or lacking in self awareness.
It's normal to react to yuri scenarios with "I would not like this if that was a guy" (happen to me all the time), but when the conclusion drawn from that is "therefore this is gross and bad too", to me it suggests a defensive posture, and one that consumers of straight media don't tend to assume with it. Why should yuri fans hold themselves to a standard of impartiality, of being unbiased? What do we really get in exchange for disavowing a female character just because she would be unappealing to us if she was a man?
.jpg?1595038535)
