Why can't women simply say "I'm not interested." to men?

[DarkLight]

The whole discussion was started pretty much by my strong opposition to the idea that social norms of politeness aren’t binding on women. Epidemic or not didn’t enter the question.

One thing that occurs to me here - who sets the social norms? I feel like there’s a tendency among men to see how men typically behave around each other as the norm - even if most women don’t act that way. If most women behave in one way, and most men behave in another, it’s hardly fair to say that the woman who doesn’t act the way most men act is the one deviating from the norm.

 

[EasterJoy]

…People are so self-absorbed these days that they could berate you in public for offering a helping hand and thus implying that they just might gasp! actaully need it, or — the absolutely unspeakable — be showing any sort of weakness. How dared you not slam the door in my face, you arrogant presuming sumbitch, get your bigoted hide back to 1950s where it belongs, I’m getting a restraining order and suing for $/€/₤1M, my liberal counsellor says people like you are the very reason this world’s such a despicable intolerant place to be in, yadda yadda.

I’ve never seen that particular form of rudeness.

But, on the other hand, since practically everybody here is helpful and polite to strangers, it doesn’t trigger alarm bells when somebody is helpful…

You’re from the South, aren’t you?

Jeff Foxworthy famously said “If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you live in Nebraska.” It happens all the time in the Pacific Northwest, too. And at Costco. Get some really great Kirkland item in the check-out line, and you can get recipes, too.

Chev, the people you are describing have progressed their way all the way out of any meaningful kind of civilization. If that is even a little prevalent where you live, you gotta move! Life is simply too short!

(If you come to “Portlandia,” though, whatever you do, stay out of the “Feminist Bookstore”! Never been there myself, but I’ve heard stories!! )

… if there are men who encounter the issue regularly, I think they are almost certainly violating the principles that I quoted from “The Gift of Fear” or engaging in some other kind of extreme faux pas.

Some people spend way too much time around people who have a lot of “bad days.”

If I never have to go through the airport in Newark, New Jersey, it will be too soon. Not only unhelpful, but several people who couldn’t have dismissed a request for help more rudely than they did. I’ve gotta hope it is better when you get out where people actually live.

 

[Xantippe]

One thing that occurs to me here - who sets the social norms? I feel like there’s a tendency among men to see how men typically behave around each other as the norm - even if most women don’t act that way. If most women behave in one way, and most men behave in another, it’s hardly fair to say that the woman who doesn’t act the way most men act is the one deviating from the norm.

Yes.

And as a matter of fact, women are (as a rule) very helpful to each other in public (hence my example of almost only ever getting a seat on the bus or metro from other women in public). But I believe that that may fly over a lot of guys’ heads.

 

[Estevao]

Is that something you’re ok with, or something you want to change?

Because if it’s something you want to change, then start actually talking and listening to women. I think you’d quickly be surprised at how much no two are alike. But when women talk about women, you tell them they’re wrong. Well, if you don’t see them as people, I’m not sure you’re qualified to say anything about them. Trust me, women know women better than (most) men do.

I’m going to tell you something that you need to hear: You have been posting awful, ugly things here about women for years. And then you take these links to sites like Dalrock where you repost them along with more awful, ugly things about women. And then all of those never married men who want absolutely nothing to do with women in the first place show up and tell you all of these crazy things about women (my favorite is that we lack moral agency) and how they can’t wait for ISIS to take over the West so that women will be forced into their place.

So, if you want your life to stay exactly the same, I would keep on immersing yourself in that world all day, every day. But women aren’t there. Not even the demure, traditional, silent women that you crave are there. Just a bunch of lonely, bitter, angry men who are all too happy to tell someone like you who is in his 20’s and has every possibility open to him that he should resign himself to a lifetime of loneliness, bitterness, and anger too. Is that really what you want?

If you want your life and your situation to change, romantically or otherwise, then it is YOU that has to change. Not the world, not women, not even those pesky “feminists”. That’s just a fact. There is no amount of complaining online that will result in a pretty, interested woman knocking on your door for marriage. I’ve read your posts here and your blog. You’re clearly a very intelligent man with a passion for reading just about anything he can get his hands on. Why not get off the computer, put away the reflexive anger, and let the world see it?

Thanks BEL.

Yeah I just should get off the computer. It was fun.

Oh and I don’t keep a blog I don’t think, so that might be someone else.

 

[Xantippe]

No, you’re jumping to conclusions and exaggerating a lot in order to justify people’s rude responses and abandonment of traditional kindness and basic politeness that mums and grannies used to teach people in any place on the globe.

If it consistently bothers or frightens people, it isn’t actually kind or polite.

To a perverted mind.

No, casual social hand-kissing would be taking a liberty and violating personal boundaries in any part of the US that I am familiar with (and I’ve lived in many areas).

And depends who and which part of the US. Some people in the South still do it, and maybe in the more traditional circles in New England. Heck, my ex knew to give the right hand if married, left if not, and she wasn’t from the Deep South, went to college in the North.

**Maaaaybe the deep south is different from Texas, but I’ve never seen any hand-kissing in the US anywhere.

I can also virtually guarantee that there is no social hand-kissing in New England.

I’ve never heard of the left hand/right hand rule, and I virtually committed Judith Martin to heart as a young woman.**

You’ve got some high rates for that over there, true, but the fear-mongering culture with victim mentality that encourages shutting off and entering survival mode, treating other people like hostiles, that’s also there.

**The way we reassure strangers that we are safe people to be around is to observe social norms. It’s possible to be plenty friendly within those parameters, but once we go outside those parameters, people are within their rights to start wondering if we are safe to be around.
**

 

[Estevao]

The OP was honest enough to admit he has a hard time viewing women as humans. I bet you he isn’t the only man here who does.

Seriously, would any right thinking man or woman want to be with someone who does not view them as human?

C’mon, I said I have trouble seeing women as people. You gals are still Homo Sapiens in my book.

But yeah, I kinda just meant that I have a hard time relating to women since there are none at all in my life, and I’ve been getting more bitter towards them recently due to being emotinally immature, and possessing self-hatred coupled with half-baked ideas about a female hivemind.

 

[Xantippe]

This said, if I need to be honest, I do believe that many women these days are snappy and act in antipathetic ways and refuse to get their act together. Guess someone had to say it, because it’s true, even though it’s not something I’d bring up just to troll people with. In other words, women tend to act like the proverbial alcoholic dad from ACA materials.

(Nothing should be done which might displease an alcoholic dad in the slightest, even potentially. Or else it’s your fault if he beats up you and your siblings and mum too. It’s never dad’s fault, always yours or at least someone else’s. Dad cannot be expected to show normal human self control. Etc. etc. This is the typical woman online these days. Not like men are all lovely people to hang out with, either, but anyway.)

I think you would be well-advised to look around you in meat-space and see if your local observations aren’t rather different.

I personally find myself surrounded by polite, helpful, socially well-calibrated people of both sexes. If your online informants aren’t, that might have a lot to do with their own personalities, rather than being a reflection on women in general.

 

[DarkLight]

C’mon, I said I have trouble seeing women as people. You gals are still Homo Sapiens in my book.

But yeah, I kinda just meant that I have a hard time relating to women since there are none at all in my life, and I’ve been getting more bitter towards them recently due to being emotinally immature, and possessing self-hatred coupled with half-baked ideas about a female hivemind.

I would recommend the cure for that to be to get involved with women in a social situation where dating isn’t really a big issue. Perhaps a place where you’ll be in contact with older women.

 

[Xantippe]

If I never have to go through the airport in Newark, New Jersey, it will be too soon. Not only unhelpful, but several people who couldn’t have dismissed a request for help more rudely than they did. I’ve gotta hope it is better when you get out where people actually live.

My personal no-go zone is Washington DC–the country’s surliest pharmacy staff and the slowest, rudest postal workers. As JFK said of DC, Northern charm and Southern efficiency.

 

[Xantippe]

EasterJoy,

We were just watching the Toni and Candace back story for Portlandia, and apparently the owners of the Women and Women First bookstore are NYC transplants.

 

[EasterJoy]

Only creepy for someone who’s on the lookout for creepy. (And accustomed to thinking of fellow human beings as creepy. Which is creepy in itself, by the way, and in a very high degree.)

You find what I did “creepy”? WELL, I find it creepy that you FIND me creepy! So there!!

(I am sure that felt very righteous. Where exactly did it get you? )

To a perverted mind. And depends who and which part of the US. Some people in the South still do it, and maybe in the more traditional circles in New England. Heck, my ex knew to give the right hand if married, left if not, and she wasn’t from the Deep South, went to college in the North…

A woman doesn’t want your mouth on her hand, and you’re going to tell her she has a perverted mind? Really? My, you are right, it is hard to imagine why that doesn’t go over with those women who mysteriously are not looking for an introduction.

Oh, yes, the way to win appreciation is to argue with people when they indicate that your bids at making them comfortable are actually having the opposite of the intended effect. Sure, give them a dressing down. They deserve it!!

 

[EasterJoy]

EasterJoy,

We were just watching the Toni and Candace back story for Portlandia, and apparently the owners of the Women and Women First bookstore are NYC transplants.

A lot of the characters on that show parody the transplants. If the transplants hadn’t moved in, the rest of the characters on the show would have moved out.

 

[EasterJoy]

My personal no-go zone is Washington DC…As JFK said of DC, Northern charm and Southern efficiency.

I hadn’t heard that one! Very good!

 

[EasterJoy]

To answer the original question: few female social groups operate in the way the OP describes. Girls and women simply do not come out and tell would-be friends that they aren’t interested. It would be considered very rude and unfeeling by the other women in the social circle. A lot of female social decisions are not yes-no, but a matter of diplomatic prioritizing. To tell someone she is "out"altogether? Ooo, wow. Sure, if you want all the other women to think you are Queen All That who doesn’t care whose feelings she hurts. Even if they don’t like your target, it doesn’t earn you a kind reputation. Worse yet, hurt the friend of the friend of the wrong friend, and by the end of third grade you’ll know how often you can get away with that. Uh, uh. It doesn’t take many trips to the social deep freeze to learn that lesson. Give hints, and let her figure out her place on your orbit. You don’t make friends by drawing a too-sharp picture. Nice girls do not do that. Socially-adept girls don’t do that.

Do not get me wrong. When I was in school, I appreciated the relatively more straight-up communication style among boys. That simply is not the way females typically socialize, as in starting from about day care age. Get used to it, because that is probably hard-wired. If you don’t like it, try hanging around with women who prefer the company of guys. That preference often stems from liking a more direct social style.

 

[DarkLight]

To answer the original question: few female social groups operate in the way the OP describes. Girls and women simply do not come out and tell would-be friends that they aren’t interested. It would be considered very rude and unfeeling by the other women in the social circle. A lot of female social decisions are not yes-no, but a matter of diplomatic prioritizing. To tell someone she is "out"altogether? Ooo, wow. Sure, if you want all the other women to think you are Queen All That who doesn’t care whose feelings she hurts. Even if they don’t like your target, it doesn’t earn you a kind reputation. Worse yet, hurt the friend of the friend of the wrong friend, and by the end of third grade you’ll know how often you can get away with that. Uh, uh. It doesn’t take many trips to the social deep freeze to learn that lesson. Give hints, and let her figure out her place on your orbit. You don’t make friends by drawing a too-sharp picture. Nice girls do not do that.

This is key to remember. Women don’t do this because they enjoy playing games, or want to mess with you, or anything like that. Women are indirect because women are socialized that indirectness is what politeness looks like. They’re not doing it to lead you on or anything.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

Ooo, wow. Sure, if you want all the other women to think you are Queen All That who doesn’t care whose feelings she hurts.

You’d be surprised at how many circles of women I know ultimately act like a Queen All regardless of what they say, believe, or even what kind of personality they have.

This is key to remember. Women don’t do this because they enjoy playing games, or want to mess with you, or anything like that. Women are indirect because women are socialized that indirectness is what politeness looks like. They’re not doing it to lead you on or anything.

Does it really matter if they ‘enjoy’ the game or whether or not the like ‘messing’ with anybody? If you ask me, the ends are the same regardless. If they’re interested, you have to worship them as the superior sex and now must live the rest of your life owing it to that one decision.

If it’s a no, it all ‘sucks to be you.’ It’s not even recommended that you try your luck again because you’ll either come across as sexually deprived or just plain jinxed.

I am so sick of this system.

 

[Estevao]

All this talk of serial killers is making me scared about this chick who’s stalking me. If I don’t say the right thing will she go Lizzie Borden on me? She got my phone number without me giving it to her, can she get my key next?

Sigh, I wish I remembered that thing about horse girls, they’re usually all crazy, better to avoid.

 

[bearman90]

It is a spiritual problem.

The “friendzone” is usually caused by masturbation. Masturbation sometimes attracts bullying. Porn will destroy your soul. Here are many testimonials about the GREAT benefits of quitting porn and masturbation, this is a MUST-READ : filedropper.com/0benefits

 

[Xantippe]

A woman doesn’t want your mouth on her hand, and you’re going to tell her she has a perverted mind? Really? My, you are right, it is hard to imagine why that doesn’t go over with those women who mysteriously are not looking for an introduction.

Oh, yes, the way to win appreciation is to argue with people when they indicate that your bids at making them comfortable are actually having the opposite of the intended effect. Sure, give them a dressing down. They deserve it!!

Yep.

The polite answer to, “The thing you are doing is making me uncomfortable,” is not “You’re engaging in victim culture!”

 

[Xantippe]

This is key to remember. Women don’t do this because they enjoy playing games, or want to mess with you, or anything like that. Women are indirect because women are socialized that indirectness is what politeness looks like. They’re not doing it to lead you on or anything.

Yes, women commonly do the indirectness with each other as their normal social style. It’s not an approach designed and used exclusively to torture men.

(And actually, well-socialized men are often pretty indirect in their refusals.)