Some men really hate women being single don't they?

So no one should get upset/annoyed when they are being pestered by someone they have said no to?

You need it to be a dangerous situation before it can be considered an annoyance?

It doesn't have to be a crime to be unpleasant and unnecessary Wamster. And why should we have to put up with someone persistently making a nuisance of themselves in a social setting when we don't want them to? It is all about lack of respect. Would you really carry on talking to someone who has told you they are not interested? If not, why should other people not offer you the same respect and courtesy?

I don't think anyone on here was saying it's a crime, just that it's annoying.

The moron who sexually assaulted me was initially a friend. He became a friend because I chatted to him at a party - he thought this meant I fancied him, whereas it meant - I was sat next to him. He thought this for years (I never EVER fancied him, not for a moment, and never gave him any real indication as such). When it came around to him sexually assaulting me, I think he saw it as his "chance". I had just ended a two year relationship, and was single and therefore "up for grabs" as it were. It was a horrible experience and changed me as a person.

I've had a similar situation at work recently where my managers, despite me telling them "no" about four times in relation to changing roles, have refused to listen to me. It's annoying and in my mind shows that the person has no respect for your opinion.

Wamster: I will try and give you the world's most inadequate analogy. suppose you are in a bar and a man (statistically probably bigger than you) you have never met before comes up and without any invitation begins to talk to you about star trek (for this to work you must have no interest in star-trek, if you are in real life a massive fan please replace it with football, or the greatest hits of Elton John, anything really)
So after a short period of this you make it clear you have no interest in what he is discussing, but he takes this as an invitation to continue talking to you, because clearly you just need to hear more about it to love it.
You try to walk away to another part of the bar but he follows you, continuing to try and convince you to come to his place and just watch a couple of episodes because he is sure you will love it. In fact he is making the implication that if you don't love it there must be something wrong with you.
Every time you move he follows you, everything you say to tell him to go away; up to and include saying flat out "p* off" he laughs off because he loves a challenge and is sure you'll come around, after all who doesn't like Star Trek.
You're stuck with him, and he is not going to go away no matter how much you ignore him.

When does this cross your boundaries? He's not assaulted you physically, but he's certainly invaded your space, ignored your wishes and occupied your time in a deeply creepy and uncomfortable way.

This totally trivializes the other aspect of course, which is that there is always the implicit threat of that physical assault.

If you're still not getting this the only recommendation I have left is Schrödinger?s Rapist.

Yes, the law does use it as a yardstick. I think you will find that chatting somebody up and them being irritated by it because you are slow to get the hint is NOT a crime, whereas rape, imprisonment, physical assault are crimes.

Tell me- because I am really, really confused here- but people are saying that the men will not take no for an answer, how exactly are they not taking no for an answer? Are they physically trapping you in room? Are they attacking you physically? Because THAT is what 'refusing to take no for an answer' REALLY means. If they are doing these things, then I am really sorry for anybody who has suffered this, if, however, you're all like, er, a bit irritated then so what?!

I think men like confidently single women- they're attracted to it. I once put on a dating website as my sort of blurb 'Women need men like fish need a bicycle!'. I suppose by doing that I was hoping to attract men that liked that attitude.

Nah, after some thought, some men might not like woman being single but really they're just like all people, all individuals.

I'm surprised some posters are belittling the problem. It is quite bizarre to hear someone say: UNLESS he absolutely persists to the point of physical intrusion or rape -which is of course never acceptable- why the hell does it matter?

In what other sphere of human interaction would we use that as a yardstick for whether someone is behaving in an acceptable way? eg between two men-well unless he resorts to physical assault, why the hell does it matter?

The pressure of this kind of won't-take-no-for-an-answer chat up is actually pretty awful. Half the time, when you do get very blunt to get rid of him, male and female friends alike start to say 'Aw, you're so mean! Why did you have to be so rude, he was only trying to chat you up?' etc etc which depresses me more than the original chat up.

Ignoring a simple no in a conversation is a very bad sign. The complaints are for men whose entitlement overwhelms any common decency rather than the man who picks up on your signs and either walks away or doesn't interupt at all.

Exactly.

Wamster - trust me, it is really annoying to be interrupted multiple times when you're busy. Especially because you can't usually just say 'sorry - I'm busy here' and get back to what you were doing, you have to have a long conversation. I never understood this. I mean: if someone says no once, why carry on trying to talk?

I used to go to clubs because that's what we did to socialize with each other, and because the pub stopped serving at 11 and the clubs did not.

You know how people get annoyed with charity muggers because you'll go past about 5 of them on one street and they pester you? It's similar, but usually more annoying because in a crowded club you can't just walk away.

I have found Wamster that many men regard single women as 'fair game' and dislike it when women are happy in either their own company or that of other women.

Interesting.

An old boss of mine, very flash, powerful looking, big guy, told me that telling a man that you're engaged/married while he is trying to chat you up only makes it more of a challenge. He was very convinced of this.

When I was a very silly teenager, friends and I used to tell men trying to chat us up that we were lesbians, thinking this was a deterrent, ha ha ha, how wrong were we?

I am happily single, have been for a while. When I go out, I like to talk to people, most people are just friendly, even the complimentary ones- I tend not to see it as flirting or on the pull- certainly not from my side anyway.

I think most men are scared of rejection if I'm being honest and I don't usually find them pushy or offensive. (There have been exceptions but more when I was younger).

It is men and women who can be pushy- I had a woman come up to me once and stick her hand up my skirt, no joke, and say 'I just wanted to know what it felt like!'.

Wamster it's true you are not hearing horror stories here, there are plenty of other threads for that. However, if a man cannot accept a simple 'I'm sorry but I don't want to speak to you right now' and back off it is a warning sign for the horror story to come. If it's not too personal, are you male or female? Are you approached by men in a club who refuse to take the first no? Or, are you the man who is confused as to why an apparently single ladies(s) is not responding warmly to your advances?
Ignoring a simple no in a conversation is a very bad sign. The complaints are for men whose entitlement overwhelms any common decency rather than the man who picks up on your signs and either walks away or doesn't interupt at all.

• signals or lack thereof

In my Pre-DP days I did like to go out to bars and clubs with female friends, sometimes with the intention of meeting men. If I liked the look of a guy I would encourage him to speak with me by smiling and making eye contact (or if he responded similarly, I would go and speak to him). If I wasn't interested, I wouldn't do these things. Why should I be obliged to provide elaborate explanations to men who refused to take note of these signals in the first place?

Why shouldn't they take the hint immediately Wamster? If someone said to you that they didn't want to talk to you or that they weren't interested wouldn't you take the hint immediately?

And what Thistledew said in answer to your previous question.

Well, exactly HDS. Why is it that in social settings, women feel compelled to deceive in order to extract themselves from conversations with people they don't want to interact with? Of course not all men are like this, but I'm pretty sure those who DO seem to feel entitled to a woman's time and conversation will accept a polite or even a not so polite brush off from a male, so why not a female?

Another element of it may be that girls and women are socially conditioned to "take care of" other people and be sensitive to their feelings. So rather than risk a guy feeling hurt because they've rejected his advances, they make up some false story to emphasise that they aren't rejecting THEM, it's just that they are already spoken for. Ah, but then if the guy finds out that they've lied, they'll place the experience in their expanding file of, "proof that women are lying, manipulative bitches."

Organicgardner, your post reminded me of a cartoon I saw many years ago. Two men approaching two women who are dining together in a restaurant. The caption is one man saying, "Since you ladies are alone, I thought you might enjoy some company."

Wamster - IME they tend to keep trying to talk to you, butt in to any conversation you are having, or demand an explanation for why you don't want to talk etc to them, as if saying that you are simply not interested is not sufficient justification.

Why should my lack of interest require justification in terms of attachment to a man? Why should I have to provide a reason as to why I "really am not interested"?

This is what I do not understand, because unless they do prevent you from leaving, or force you to listen to them, or attack you in some way, then so what? The fact is that I am not hearing horror stories here, I'm just hearing women moan that a man does not immediately take the hint.
They do take hint just not as quickly as you like.

Right so when you tell them you are not interested what exactly do they do to you? Do they follow you about, physically assault you?

It matters because he feels he feels entitled to carry on chatting you up despite you saying you are not interested.

If you are happy for your boundaries to be pushed in that way Wamster so be it. I'm not and neither is SGB and tbh honest why should we have to put up with it just because some men feel entitled to do it? Why can't they behave themselves and back off when told to?

The reason men back off when you say you have a partner is because that is when the penny drops that you really are not interested. So it makes them a bit thick and insensitive, doesn't mean to say they think you 'belong' to another man just that you have already selected another one to be with. Not the same as ownership.

So what? Really, so what? You want a bloke to stop chatting you up and he doesn't take the hint straight away. Big deal.
It's a minor irritant at best, surely?

UNLESS he absolutely persists to the point of physical intrusion or rape -which is of course never acceptable- why the hell does it matter?

solidgoldbrass Tue 02-Aug-11 11:36:23
Bandwithering Exactly. I have no objection to a man starting to chat me up, it's just that if I am in the middle of a conversation with someone else (ie another woman) I don't want him to interrupt me to do so, and if I am unresponsive or walk away I don't want him to persist.

That same scenario would apply to anyone regardless of sex.

And of course no means no and people who don't listen are invading a space.

In my pre DH days, when I used to backpack on my own around the world, I always carried a picture of a friend in army uniform. When pesetered by men who won't take no for an answer, I used to brandish it, claiming him as my husband. It worked because a) it explained why he wasn't with me (on manouevers, in Afghanastan etc) and b) implied that he was trained with guns . Between that and the £14 Argos wedding ring, I managed to dodge the worst.

Of course, all of theis would have been so unnecessary if men are trained from an early age to understand the meaning of the work "No".