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Or be honest: "I'm not interested in a relationship" or "I'm not interested in you that way." Courting is what humans do. Flirting is what humans do. Being pol

by Nadya 10y ago

Or be honest: "I'm not interested in a relationship" or "I'm not interested in you that way." Courting is what humans do. Flirting is what humans do. Being polite shows interest to most people. Be rude. Be absolutely disinterested. Tell them to fuck off. They aren't going to magically read your mind and know you aren't interested if you are either signalling that you are interested or they aren't picking up the (usually weak, when I read stories like this one) signal that you aren't interested. If you send a strong signal of your disinterest or communicate clearly (not trying to "signal") there are only two types of people who keep pushing on: 1) Actual harassers (far and few between) 2) People who think you're playing hard to get (which is an actual thing that people actually do) unfortunately this is equivalent to (1) for some portion of society I've mistakenly sent that "I'm interested" signal to others while trying to be polite. When Ender's Game came out I was speaking with a coworker and seeing as we were both interested in the book, she had asked if I wanted to see the movie when it came out. Not wanting to be rude, I said OK. It turns out she thought I had accepted a date. She was quite dressed up when we met up, while I was in extremely casual attire. And guess what? That was my fault not hers. I had accidentally communicated interest in some way, although unintentionally. She wasn't a harasser, it wasn't "her fault". She couldn't read my mind and know I wasn't interested. Almost every story I see about these scenarios (which often boil down to "unwanted flirting") I think of the above and I pity the person being made out to be a harasser when, in almost every scenario I've read, they were only "misreading the signals" if there were any signals at all. Her perspective: "He's obviously flirting and I'm just trying to be polite, I wish he would stop." His perspective: "I'm flirting and she's obviously playing along or she wouldn't be so polite! This is going well."

powera 10y ago
Your advice to women at conferences is really to "be rude"?
- beat 10y ago
  And then when she's rude, she's a cold, nasty bitch, and fully deserving of the stream of insults and epithets she gets for it. And anything short of being rude is perceived as interest and encouragement. Sigh.
- rarec 10y ago
  Sometimes, being blunt works. Especially in a field unfortunately dominated by socially unskilled men.
- Nadya 10y ago
  If her intuition is "this guy is flirting with me and I don't like it" my advice was to clearly state that. Being rude is one way to do that, yes. "Don't blame the other person for your failure to communicate." is my advice taken as a sound byte. Not just to women, but to everyone. Never blame someone else because you suck at communicating something. ps. I love how you took two words out of my entire reply and ran with those - ignoring the rest. For example, the first sentence telling them to be honest and communicate their disinterest (mentioning nothing about tone). Their weak signalling obviously isn't being communicated to or read properly by the other party. And yes, there are people who are bad with social cues or even "stronger signalling" and need actual words to be said to them.

by Nadya 10y ago

powera 10y ago

Your advice to women at conferences is really to "be rude"?

beat 10y ago
And then when she's rude, she's a cold, nasty bitch, and fully deserving of the stream of insults and epithets she gets for it. And anything short of being rude is perceived as interest and encouragement. Sigh.
rarec 10y ago
Sometimes, being blunt works. Especially in a field unfortunately dominated by socially unskilled men.
Nadya 10y ago
If her intuition is "this guy is flirting with me and I don't like it" my advice was to clearly state that. Being rude is one way to do that, yes. "Don't blame the other person for your failure to communicate." is my advice taken as a sound byte. Not just to women, but to everyone. Never blame someone else because you suck at communicating something. ps. I love how you took two words out of my entire reply and ran with those - ignoring the rest. For example, the first sentence telling them to be honest and communicate their disinterest (mentioning nothing about tone). Their weak signalling obviously isn't being communicated to or read properly by the other party. And yes, there are people who are bad with social cues or even "stronger signalling" and need actual words to be said to them.