Greentext

Here is the thing, this is terrible flirting. Men are not clueless or dumb. We have been told by women that a woman looking at us or smiling at us or being nice to us is not her flirting. It is her being nice because society has told women they have to be that way all the time. So now women have to use their adult voices and actually say what they want and actually flirt back.

Not sure if stupid is the word I’d use, but we tend not to pick up on subtlety very well.

Paraphrasing from memory a comment I saw in a similar thread on a different site:

• What’s subtle to you is entirely invisible to him
• What’s obvious to you is still mostly invisible to him
• What’s embarrassingly obvious to you is just starting to become subtle and therefore potentially noticeable to him

We don’t have nearly as much practice on picking up subtlety, and many of us are well aware of the potential blowback of perceiving interest and acting on it (“ew gross i’m just being nice you creep”).

We aren’t mind readers. Frankly, if I was a mindreader, I wouldn’t be hanging out on Lemmy. I’d be hanging out in the casino at the poker tables.

Now that I'm an older, very married guy I look back at the times in my late teens and twenties when women were trying to flirt with me and I was pretty clueless about it.

Hello. I'm a woman. And I'm also a dumbass who thinks she has no shot with pretty much anyone. Plus I'm easily embarrassed.

Plus if I'm interested I'm like "Ugh i don't want to be a creep who'd approach someone for their looks", projecting because I get uncomfortable if someone finds me attractive, completely ignoring in the moment that if you don't do that you'll never get to know the person.

This behaviour makes no sense. Just wanted to reassure(?) you that guys don't have a monopoly on stupidity.

I wouldn't even say it's men being stupid for the most part (everyone is stupid sometimes of course) but most men are having anxiety or other social problems AND a lot of them are afraid they come off as a creep. Unfortunately it's usually the ones that will almost never be creepy, but that's just how it is.

So yeah I totally agree, being direct is good, and also trying to pay attention to what men do over what they say, because we find the worst ways to express the best things often and that shit can be confusing. If you're not sure, you can always revert to directly asking them and most men will be honest.

But yeah, seems like there's a slow shift from men actively pursuing over to the whole thing being genderless. Some people are pursuing, and some are being pursued. I think it's a good change, because no matter the gender, usually the way to pursue someone is very similar and I think all the gender roles in all of this just enforce traditions that cease to be healthy.

Nah, most women I met are just as bad in flirting as men. It is has to do with the personality and attraction.

If one finds the other attractive there is not much you can do wrong. If one finds the other one not attractive there is not much you can do right.

More accurately, we don't get hints.

It’s so weird. Half of y’all will pull the earbuds out of our ears on the subway to shoot your shot and the other half will be actively getting motorboated and wondering if we like you.

The second type of guy is perfect, by the way. You’re doing good, stay humble.

I'm not going to proposition every woman that makes eye contact with me.

You aren't the vast majority of men on 4chan who assume any woman that glances at them is hitting on them. That's why femanon is so confused at why her approach is failing.

"Good day, m'lady!"

Girls ≠ Girls that are on 4chan

I actually do this as well because I've been told so much about guys looking at boobs when talking to women. I make extra effort to keep eye contact. So because of that I've been told "it's intense." That's from people that know me so that is probably the polite version.

I find small breasts the most attractive, but sometimes large breasts are just so eye-catching that you can't not look at them, especially when a large proportion of the surface area is not covered. It's especially annoying to have women offended by this when it's not even my thing.

I feel like making hard eye contact would be creepy so I just don't look at women. Wow that sounds terrible, more I just look at the ground while walking and don't look at anyone. Hmmm, not sure that's an improvement...

She could just be Canadian. They're really polite.

We had one lady who got a security guard fired because she said he made her feel uncomfortable

I have seen guys report women to HR because of actual, verifiable sexual harassment (physical touching, etc.) and be laughed out of the HR office because “women cannot sexually harass a man” and “men always want it”. Many of these men were also punished for attempting to report, with some even being fired.

They asymmetric societal standards currently in place are insanely misandric and bleedingly hypocritical.

If you want to show us interest, just give us a pat on the head, scratch our chin, or something.

Got to be honest, I think them doing that would confuse me even more.

Also for autistics: if you find yourself doing anything that requires speaking to a group, as long as you are more than 5 to 6 feet (160-170 cm) away from the people, you can look just over their heads, and behind them, and they will think you're looking directly at them. It's a common stage acting/singing technique.

offer them delicious food

She's probably just being friendly.

offer to have sex with them

Yeah, still not sure, might just be her way of being friendly.

NGL this is how my first girlfriend forced me to realize their intentions.

Lured me over to their house for free venison sausage dinner, then didn't let me go home.

I legit had zero clue she was into me until she flung me down on the couch. She had been planning this for weeks.

Unfortunately it didn't last, but it was fun while it did.