''lovestruck student who was given a wrong number by a mystery girl''

True true. He might start going down that route of how he could satisfy her 🤢
Not to give too many details of my friend's situation, but she cannot avoid him, and cannot control what he says. She is motivated to be polite. I would tell him straight "you are far too old for me so stop now". If he is hurt he is hurt. Im 50 and i wouldnt have the delusion to feel hurt if a 30 year old man told me straight i was too old for him. Men!

My friend was just telling me that a man she knows in his seventies wants to marry her (she's 47). She is trying to be polite. I told her to say ''no thank you, a sexless marriage is not for me!''. I bet that would stop him in his tracks. Women shy away from communicating ''I find you so physically unappealing that it's a no, it'll always be a no''.

Yes in my experience, saying quite aggressively “Fuck off, I’m a lesbian, that’s my girlfriend, I’m not interested, what part of that don’t you understand?” Is heard as “I’d love to sleep with you, and furthermore we can have a threesome with my girlfriend over there”

There is literally nothing you can say, and no way that you can say it, that will persuade some men that you aren’t interested. After all, you’re a woman, so you don’t get to decide that. Produce a man though, and they fuck straight off (apologising to the man as they are leaving).

A creepy entitled student who was given a wrong number by a mystery girl he pestered in a park has penned over a hundred hand-written letters in a stalkerish bid to intimidate her.
Serban Raia painstakingly spent ten hours writing out the notes to the woman - known only as Amy - before posting them along the street where she told him she lived.

Serban began harrassing Amy in Radford Park, Nottingham, and decided she should have sex with him before she told him she’d go on a date with him to get rid of him.

Speaking to student news site The Tab, Serban, who, worryingly, studies Psychology with Cognitive Neuroscience, said: "Maybe things didn’t work out the way I wanted.
"But at least I know what kind of man I am, a persistent creep who women know to avoid, and it makes a hell of a good sob story for all the other incel types out there who feel entitled to women and won’t take no for an answer.’
“Given that I’d decided I should have her I decided to bestow my unwelcome attention on her, and I did not expect her to have the audacity to reject me.’

Fixed that for them.

i really object when i am on a night out with just the ladies and men - or a group of men - decide to come and join us, uninvited. It's ladies night, we want to gossip and catch up, not spend our time making small talk with blokes we have no interest in....

i am usually very cold and unfriendly towards them, sometimes going so far as to say that we don't want to talk to them, we want to talk to each other. However, my pals nearly always chat, flirt, laugh, giggle - then complain that the uninvited fellows won't leave them alone... this has happened dozens of times, from when i was young and absolutely gorgeous to just earlier this year before lockdown (45years and counting..)

one of them once did the old 'can we pretend to be lesbians so he will go away' routine. I said 'no, you are flirting and chatting with him so he thinks you are interested, just tell him to go away and stop flirting!' a few minutes later, she said 'i have told him i have a boyfriend, he still won't go away.'

So i said, why are you still chatting with him, then. Tell him to go away. Be rude. You are acting as though you are interested and he is not listening to what you are saying, he is reacting to your body language.

She said that she was too scared to tell straight in case he got nasty.... this really concerned me ..... i am perhaps not afraid enough of men and will get gobby and unfriendly very quickly if they don't leave me alone..... but obviously other women are too timid, too scared of how men react, too polite maybe?

So we always react positively to unwanted attention. So that's maybe where men get the idea it is WANTED attention?

How many men have to negotiate this minefield on a boys' night out!!??

Ugh yes, being shouted at or chatted up by older men when I was wearing my school uniform 😣

Or my lesbian friends being told they "just need to try the right man"...

Or having to pretend my male flat mate was my boyfriend because "belonging" to another man is the only acceptable reason to turn someone down 😡

It was, to my astonishment, standard practice for young students in London to keep a second phone for precisely this purpose, as some of the men who pursued them were a bit too intimidating to be refused a number, and would check it there and then. Bastards.

When I was younger I often gave a fake name or number to avoid confrontation

Same. Happened especially often when I was 13-15 and they wouldn't take my age as a deterrent. In fact, that seemed to spur them on, wonder why (#sarcasm)

The look on his face was hilarious 😂

One thing that really used to wind me up was men who just started dancing closer and closer without attempting any conversation or even eye contact 😡

On one memorable occasion I just stepped off a revolving dance floor and let him spin away from me!

Bloody brilliant.

When I was younger I often gave a fake name or number to avoid confrontation. I also used to go to the toilet to escape persistent men. On one memorable occasion I just stepped off a revolving dance floor and let him spin away from me!

Less funny was the time a guy showed up outside my friend's house where I was staying and shouted for me until my friend's boyfriend went out and chased him away... That was after dancing with him for a couple of minutes at a Hogmanay party 🙁

There was a really good Cracked article about this trope in films, and how it teaches men that this sort of persistence is romantic and will pay off. I’ll see if I can find it and post a link.

She’s probably not even called Amy. In the late 90s and early 00s there were quite a few men in London who believed my name to be “Sarah” and my number to be 2 digits off what it really was.

But actually, telling them you're not interested doesn't work.... And a lot of the time, neither does pretending to be a lesbian...

Of course it doesn't. Men like that believe only male ownership matters. And they think (thanks to porn) lesbianism is an act for their titillation to be cast aside when the right man (them) shows up.

Dear creepy-guy, here's how it works. You give the woman your phone number. You make double sure it's correct. If the woman doesn't ring you then she is not interested. Do not contact a tabloid. Do not pass go. Get over it.

When out and about and bothered by unwanted men, my friends always used to employ the old 'let' s pretend to be lesbians' trick. I found it annoying - just tell em you're not interested!

But actually, telling them you're not interested doesn't work.... And a lot of the time, neither does pretending to be a lesbian...

This is creepy as fuck. to anyone who has been affected by stalking behaviour.
Hope Amy knows to contact Women’s Aid, Suzy Lamplugh Trust or other organisations that will provide her with free advice and support.

To be clear, it obviously wasn't the same man as pictured in the paper. But the story is very similar.

Happened to me too. I'm being a bit vague here as it's outing but he saw me at an event and figured out my email address. He then sent me emails every single day for a month about how we were meant to be together. I ignored them all. A month in they turned seriously nasty and he told me he knew where I lived. Absolutely terrifying. It's incredibly irresponsible of the papers to be printing crap like this.

In Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear he talks about how the media/movies have encouraged the idea of persistence as a rewarding strategy for men:

"This Hollywood Formula could be called 'Boy wants Girl, Girl Doesn't Want Boy, Boy Harasses Girl, Boy Gets Girl'"

It also teaches men wrongly that women's 'no' doesn't mean no.

There was a guy hanging round our flats which are quite secure, trying everyone’s bells till someone let him in, he then went round all the flats. Day 2 saw him lurking in a car outside. Following day when challenged asked me if I knew young woman pictured on phone. At which point I said that she clearly didn’t want to know him, he was stalking her , and I would be calling the police (who round here take this seriously) never seen again..

I think cultural differences may be at play here, too. He’s Romanian. They have different ideas about „romance“ and „chatting up“ in that part of the world, in my experience.

This is disgusting

@PatriciaPerch, yes, I like him too and a lot of his views on things align with mine, just pointing out that despite all that, I know he can still be an arsehole at times

I was saying that I think he in general does get it, which is why when I remembered that "joke/anecdote" my guess was that it was him who said it.