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

[solidgoldbrass]

inspired by a couple of other threads including the separatism one. Have you ever noticed that if a man you don't like or know or fancy is trying to persuade you to date him or spend time with him or even just talk to him, the only really effective way to make him fuck off is to tell him that you are another man's property. Just saying No, leave me alone, no thanks, actually I am having a conversation with my female friend and am not interested in talking to you, never seems to work until you throw in My Boyfriend or My Husband.

I don't understand what you mean by 'don't leave'. Do they stick like glue by your side in spite of being told to go away?

wamster 'It is not their fault that the woman they are talking to has failed to tell them to go away. The fault is with the women themselves. It becomes the man's fault if he then fails to act on the fact that the woman has told him to go away.' SERIOUSLY? The senario described by orangehat gives some very serious clues that even I could pick up on, the strained smiles, the ditched drinks, running away are all pretty good clues. If I can pick up on a fake smile, why can't men who don't have problems?

'I have spent so much time trying to take other people's feelings into account because I would hate for a misunderstanding to ruin my friendships and relationships, even with casuall acquaintances and it disturbs me that men are excused from this because they are men.'

YES wamster that is EXACTLY what they do.

That is what the OP is ABOUT if you care to actually read it.

I agree with queen as well. I think often men know full well that the woman they have cornered doesn't actually want to talk to them, they just don't care.

Gosh, this thread is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for types of male behaviour to complain about

There are also men who think married women are more fun to chase than single women...

OrangeHat - I had a lot of friends like that. :(

And yes, I know that a lot of people go to a nightclub to pull, but it's quite a leap to therefore suppose that any woman in a nightclub is there to pull, and what's more, to pull the specific man who is chatting her up, and that therefore he has a right to be angry if she isn't interested.

Well precisely OrangeHat - a point I made to Wamster yesterday but she ignored.

I am not sure why you are so invested in belittling people's feelings and experiences on this thread (take the comment "delicate flowers" as an example - yeuch) and trivialising the effects of unwanted attention, Wamster. Apart from anything else, as a woman I have the right to go to night clubs, pubs etc without being hassled by the opposite sex, whether you think they are pulling joints or not.

We have had threads in feminism before about street harrassment and small sexual assaults for example, where hundreds of people came on sharing their experiences. Again people came on those threads wanting to diminish the effects of the problem on those experiencing it. I just wonder why. If it isn't a problem to you, that is one thing, but why try and persuade other people that they are blowing it out of proportion or it is just something we should have to put up with? Why do you feel the need to do that? These are real people sharing real experiences and you are just being rude.

It's not just nighclubs though is it. I mean I don't know what nightclubs you lot go to but the ones I went to conversation wasn't really on the cards - they were too loud! Also in clubs you aren't sitting there and they are crowded so you can slip away easily if someone starts getting "stalky".

This has always happened to me in pubs, and sometimes when out shopping or walking.

wamster, do you mind me asking how old you are? I ask because about ten years ago I would have agreed with you that nightclubs were where you had to go to pull. There didn't seem to be a lot of other options.

But - and I did post this before, but it's a long thread - one of the major reasons people I knew went clubbing was that the pubs shut at 11 and we wanted to carry on drinking, talking, whatever. So we did. Most of my adult life I've been in long-term relationships, but that doesn't mean I don't like to dance with my mates!

When I see a girl in a pub getting collared by some awful bloke and looking like "how the fuck do I handle this" I feel really sorry for her. I am surprised that others don't have that response. I have been known to help out

That comment I made to OrangeHat was regarding her comment "I am sure that if someone said to queen - "Actually I am here with my friends and I want to go and talk to them now, bye", she would have got teh message, yes. Many men don't."

"The fault is with the women themselves. It becomes the man's fault if he then fails to act on the fact that the woman has told him to go away." Men can read body language just as well as women Wamster. If you were talking to someone and they kept turning away to speak to friends or even just rejoin the group they were with or looking over your shoulder at someone else etc etc wouldn't you get the hint that they weren't interested in speaking to you? Why would a man read that any differently? It doesn't have to be verbal communication, in fact it shouldn't have to be.

If I go up to people I don't know, who don't look at me or stop their conversation, I start talking to them (especially if I'm tipsy), and they reply no, they don't want to talk, I feel pretty embarrassed at missing the signs. It's pretty patronizing to assume men are some kind of neanderthal species who can't be expected react the same way.

Btw, very often when some man is pestering women in a pub, some of the sympathetic onlookers thinking 'what a rude prat' will be men. I have had men I don't know at all come up to me and check I'm not being bothered by a drunk guy. All this bleeding-heart 'ooh, you feminists being nasty to the poor men' is not only trite, it's also completely the opposite of the reaction most decent blokes I've known had to the situation.

I am in my early-thirties.
HandDivedScallopsrgreat, You know what? I think you are being really insulting now.

There is a world of difference between being peeved and a bit annoyed that a bloke does not take the hint straightaway because he is a bit of a dud at body language (if he becomes abusive, it is different, I agree) and actually being assaulted.

You don't like men making a move on you? Don't go out then. Men are designed to chat up women and, as long as they are not abusive about it, that is fine. I might think, 'God, that guy is slow on the uptake, it took a lot to make him take the hint' but I won't think him a sex pest or anything.

Scraping the barrel? Too right!

You are the one being insulting Wamster not me. You are the one who is saying that it isn't a problem and that we are all delicate flowers for being offended. I mean, suggesting that we shouldn't go out because we get offended by inappropriate comments and communication by men? Blimey - do you not think the men we are complaining about shold be the ones not to go out? It is their behaviour that is inappropriate, not our reaction to it.

I also gave the example of street harrassment - which isn't that far from what we are talking about, except often you don't get the chance to reply - you just get humiliated!

"Men are designed to chat up women" - what a pile of cobblers! Clearly demonstrated by the examples on this thread.

Wamster you are deliberately misunderstanding this entire thread.

SGB's OP was about men who will not go away even when you ask them to directly and that the only thing she has found to work is saying she has a partner.

Everyone else (read the examples) is about men who will not go away even when asked to in a direct and straightforward manner.

All this stuff about nightclubs and men not taking hints is in your imagination, because it isn't here on the thread.

I find the suggestion that unless women are being physically assaulted, they need to put up with whatever happens to them, quite disturbing TBH.

It is not what I will be teaching my DDs, let's put it that way.

I noticed the arguement from organicgardener yesterday about men's instincts driving their desire to mate and the persistance that derives from it. I belive that while both men and women have a hard-wired desire to mate and pass their genes to the next generation, learned behaviour overrides this to a large extent. Countless experiements on the 'nature vs nurture' debate have shown that nurture counts for far more than our instincts.
Insisting that men are just hormone/ instinct driven to ignore women and procreate no matter what resistance is offensive to men and women, learned social behaviour teaches us a correct way to behave, some men just ignore it.
Also, I can't spot where HDS was offensive to you wamster if it was about the age thing, I think it was a relevant question.

And the problem with this behaviour is that it comes from a place that is detrimental to women and is the same place that a lot of physcial assault comes from.

Men who think they are entitled to do what they like with women, even if then women don't want them to, and make it clear. Because the men think that their desires outweigh the desires of the women. That is not a healthy thing and not to be excused. Whether it is persistently harassing someone in a pub, making an obscene comment to them on the street, wanking at them on a bus or raping them in their home.

I have never, ever gone to a nightclub to "pull." I've gone with female friends, mixed groups or work mates and I've gone to have fun, full stop. I don't particularly enjoy going to clubs - one reason being that many a night has been spoilt by a man who wouldn't take no for an answer, constantly pestering on of our group. I resent the persistent intrusion of men who are like timeshare salesmen on speed. I resent the fact that they feel entitled to intrude on my life and often feel entitled to be abusive when their moves are spurned.

I don't understand how a person could argue that what someone's wearing isn't an invitation to rape (of course it's not) but then insist that by stepping foot in a nightclub, you must assume that men will believe you are up for a quick shag and have to just put up with their intrusive behaviour, including forms of sexual assault (e.g. feeling up your skirt, patting your boobs or bum, etc.)

Wamster, I can't see how it's the women who object to such intrusions are "delicate flowers." If anything, you seem to be portraying intrusive men in this way - that whatever you do, you must not upset their fragile wee egos by being rude to the poor loves or they might be permanently damaged. What absolute bollux.

Another thing I can't stand is cold-callers to the door or unsolicited phone calls. They often come right when you're in the middle of something and they can be SO persistent and try SO hard to make YOU feel bad for not listening to them. If I want double glazing/a new mobile phone plan/a new credit card/to change electricity providers/etc., I'll go out and do it myself, thanks. Perhaps I've caused them irreparable emotional trauma by saying "no" and hanging up or closing the door. Perhaps I should send them round to Wamster as I get the feeling she'd have no problem listening to their patter for hours! :o

Add up all the men, even just from this thread, who have 'been a dud' at reading body language. There's loads of them! They can't all be 'duds' at reading body language, fake smiles, cold shoulders, etc. If someone was consistently that bad at reading non-verbal communication they would struggle in daily life, not just when attempting to chat up a woman.

I have literally run through a nightclub, holding my friend's hand, dodging through dancing bodies, in order to lose a guy that just would not leave us alone. He wasn't particularly drunk and had been told point blank to go away. He'd followed us up and down three floors, six dancefloors, the smoking terrace, the chillout room, everywhere. The only way to shake him for a while was to run away so that he couldn't follow, then have half an hour of peace while he searched.

And let's not even mention the guy I did want to dance with, because he was HOT: until he started grinding his boner up and down my leg. I mean, honestly: can we really say these men are just 'endearingly' inept, or they just don't give a fuck about what women want?

"Insisting that men are just hormone/ instinct driven to ignore women and procreate no matter what resistance is offensive to men and women, learned social behaviour teaches us a correct way to behave, some men just ignore it." Agree.

"And the problem with this behaviour is that it comes from a place that is detrimental to women and is the same place that a lot of physcial assault comes from." Also agree.

Again I am struggling to understand why people are invested in excusing men's behaviour in these types of scenarios? Yes it may not be the greatest problem I face on a day-to-day basis but as queen and OrangeHat have said it is all linked in to gender stereotypes and other forms of more serious behaviour. Why should it be accepted?

wamster It isn't about hinting, it's about saying "no". We are talking about the men who refuse to accept that you mean "no".

I'd like to make one thing clear here: feeling up a stranger's skirt is NEVER acceptable, nor is calling them abusive names, or physically assaulting them.

What is OK, but admittedly not desirable, is a man chatting up a woman and being a bit thick and not taking hint straightaway and there is a lot of moaning here about men's inability to read body language. This inability does not make them monsters, just a bit dull.

And, yes, I do think that women who whinge about this should join a convent and become nuns if it offends them that much to be chatted-up. Sadly, it will not stop them being raped because rape occurs whatever a woman wears and is in a completely different league to being chatted-up, but will stop any man chatting to them in the hope of a bit of romance/sex, or both.

But, Wamster, I don't think that the vast, vast majority of men are incapable of reading body language. I think are perfectly capable: they just don't care. And there's nothing in society to make them care. Unless you invoke The Boyfriend or The Husband.

Actually wamster I'd be interested to know if you think I'm a "delicate flower", go back and read my post about being followed into toilets. That is the kind of bloke we are talking about.

Not someone who is a little bit crap at spotting body language, we are talking about the kind of blokes who wilfully ignore any attempts to get them to go away.