[Previous posts: one and two. Increasingly loosely a response to the arguments here. I realize I am asking for this, but IF YOU PEOPLE REHASH ELEVATORGATE IN MY COMMENT SECTION I WILL DELETE YOU ALL.]
One of the questions I’m trying to explore with this series is what would be some logical ways in which to organize the dating world.
There aren’t any.
Well, there are ethical rules. “Don’t do things to people’s bodies without their consent” is always a good rule. So is “don’t lie to people.” And “if you can tell a person is distressed by you hitting on them, don’t hit on them.”
But in terms of effectiveness? Fuck no. There aren’t any rules. There are heuristics.
For instance! Many people believe that you shouldn’t hit on women in an enclosed space like an elevator. To be perfectly honest, despite my female conditioning, I would not be more freaked out by a stranger expressing sexual interest in me in an elevator than I would by a stranger expressing sexual interest in me in any other circumstance. (To be completely fair, my general reaction to a stranger expressing sexual interest in me is sheer terror, so it is possible I just didn’t notice the elevator-induced additional terror.) Many people believe that sending a message through a friend that you want to have sex with someone is middle-school-ish, while I consider it a perfectly reasonable way to get in contact with me, given my aversion to phones, Facebook, and the outdoors. Et cetera.
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone else has all these preferences and I am all Liberated and Free Of Your Constraints. I have weird aversions too. Like I said, I tend to respond to strangers who want to have sex with me with panic, and yet somehow cruising places and one-night-stands and people who get drunk at clubs and hook up still exist.
The same sort of diversity applies all throughout relationships, but fortunately after the asking out stage you can just ask people what they like and then organize the relationship that way. But, Oz and Willow aside, you can’t ask people how they’d like to be asked out before you ask them out. So basically if you ask people out, there is a certain risk of people disliking the way you ask them out, complaining to their friends about it, etc. And there’s no real way I can see around it, except not asking people out, and even then you’ll probably get people complaining that you’re lurking around and they can tell you have a crush on them but they don’t like you back and you won’t make a move and aaaaaah this is so awkward.
So yeah. If you ask people out, sometimes you’ll upset people. There’s not a lot you can do besides being sensitive about signals that mean someone doesn’t want to talk to you or is uncomfortable with continued flirting (hint: they are basically the same as the signals that a platonic friend Does Not Want To Talk To You) and avoiding methods of asking people out that will freak out most people, such as yelling at random ladies about how nice their asses are. Also, convincing people not to throw a giant fit when a lady blogger mentions offhandedly that she wishes dudes wouldn’t hit on her in elevators? That would be nice.
I do, however, have an idea about how we can ameliorate this nonsense, at least for heterosexuals! And that is to end this stupid idea that women can’t ask men out.
Let’s assume that there’s group X, which is more-or-less comfortable with asking people out and the attendant risks. And group Y, which is more-or-less uncomfortable with this idea. Under the system that most of the dating world currently operates on, if a dude is X, it works out great. But if the dude is Y, either his partner is also Y, in which case they’ll just sort of stare awkwardly at each other in between writing torrents of impassioned poetry, or she’s X, in which case she is getting increasingly frustrated at him staring awkwardly and writing impassioned poetry and wishing that she lived in a sensibly-run universe in which she could fucking ask him out.
If we take away that stupid restriction, however, any couple with at least one X in it leads to happy funmaking romance times, which is a significant increase. The two-Y couples are still stuck, but I guess someone needs to write all the grief-stricken poetry.
Photo– Ken and Nyetta/Flickr.
About ozyfrantz
One problem I’ve noticed with women asking men out is that it often leads to the dude (and others) assuming that the woman is *really-super-mega* in love/lust with him. Which makes a little sense, since it’s possible the woman had to be really motivated by strong feelings to overcome the social conditioning telling her it’s desperate/slutty/unladylike to hit on men. But it can make things pretty awkward when you’re trying to say “Hey, I’d like to get to know you a little better” and the askee hears “I WANT TO JUMP YOUR BONES IMMEDIATELY.” Obviously, the answer is continue trying to normalize women approaching men, but until that happens, there’s likely to be more opportunity for awkwardness and misunderstandings.
That’s a fear I have too, if I ask a guy out, will he assume I definitely want to have sex with him and then get pissy if it turns out I don ‘t (at least not immediately?) Rightly or wrongly, that is one reason I have always avoided directly asking a guy on a date. Ibstead, I flirt and try to get him to take the hint. Which doesn’t always work.
I also find it hard to tell if guys are attracted to me, but if a guy asks me out, I can assume he is attracted to me and I’ve passed whatever hotness tests he has. If he doesn’t ask me out, I usually assume I probably failed his hotness tests so there is no reason for me to ask him out. I realize this system is imperfect but I’ve never figured out a good alternative because pursuing men who don’t find me attractive wastes my time and theirs. Because I’m only average looking, I have never had the luxury of being able to assune every guy wants me.
“because pursuing men who don’t find me attractive wastes my time and theirs.”
Welcome to the entire life of every man to live. Don’t get me wrong, I wish I had the luxury you do, but I don’t. You have legitimate excuses for why you don’t want to ask people out, but it doesn’t change anything because men have just as many good reasons why we don’t want to ask women out; however, we do not have the luxury to choose not to ask women out and still find ourselves in a relationship. As I’ve said in past threads, not only have I never had a woman ask me out, but I’ve never had a woman hit on me.
@Collin:
Women hitting on you carries its own baggage. I work as a pouring attendant (read: stripped-down bar tender) at a winery and am oftentimes “complimented” by buzzed, tipsy, drunk, or out-and-out trashed women for various reasons (I can only assume some of them think I’ll be more generous with the wine if they flirt with me and some actually find me attractive). I find this inappropriate for several reasons: first and foremost, it is DEMEANING. Secondly, if I were to call a female service employee “sexy”, “hot”, “cute”, et cetera while receiving service from her, it would stand a good chance of getting me hit with a sexual harassment suit and justifiably so. But as a man, were I to go in front of a civil court and accuse a female customer of sexual harassment, I would likely be laughed out of the courtroom. Thirdly, the single surefire way I’ve discovered to shut down degrading flirtation posthaste is to reveal to customers that I am dating a man. I should not have to discuss my personal life with drunken biddies to get them to stop sloppily trying to get in my pants or influence me into aiding them in their quest for more booze when they’re already blatantly intoxicated.
This is a good point, and I’m sorry you have to deal with such jerky customers. A lot of the men who say they wish women would hit on them more don’t seem to consider that it could involve rude, pushy, demeaning, or otherwise unattractive women doing it.
(Though as to the possibility of suing for sexual harassment, most people I know who’ve worked in customer service have gotten inappropriate comments from customers, and there’s no way they’d ever sue- there’s no law saying customers can’t be jerks to employees, and you risk getting fired for calling them on it).
“… If he doesn’t ask me out, I usually assume I probably failed his hotness tests so there is no reason for me to ask him out. …”
You’ve mentioned that belief several times now, and I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that concept. I’m a straight guy, and imagine I’m single and in a club Saturday night. For easy math imagine that there a re one hundred women in my age group who seem to be single in that club.
How many of them pass my “hotness test” (which I will define as “pushed enough of my attraction buttons that I will go on a date with her no questions asked”)? I haven’t done any statistical work on this, but my over the thumb guess would be: “less than half, but more then one third,” let’s call it 40%. So in this hypothetical club there are 40 women who pass my “hotness test.”
How many of them will I ask out? Between zero and two. I guess that there are PUAs and “natural players” who ask significantly more, but most guys I know will never try to chat up more than five women in a night.
So there are between 40 to 35 women in that club who pass my “hotness test” but I didn’t ask out.I used a club as an extreme example, but I think it is true in most social situations. Probably more so, because asking out more than one women in, for example, you art class will probably lead to the “he is so desperate, he hits on every girl” label.
Furthermore, the “hotness test” (sorry, I’ll try to lose the scare quotes) is, by its very nature, very superficial and therefore preliminary. Imagine one of the women who marginally failed my hotness test (i.e. my first impression is an indifferent “Meh!”) comes up and asks me out.
Now two things work in her favor: first the cultural narrative that women don’t ask out. I will imagine that she finds me either very attractive or that she is ignoring gender roles. Both are attractive qualities to me.
Secondly, women (or at least sober women) asking me out isn’t completely unheard of, but it is sufficiently rare that the experience is still a pleasant novelty. But I guess you can’t build on that, very attractive men might be more jaded.
There is another side to this. For me at least, it’s not really an *immediate hotness* thing as an *am I interested yet* thing.
Being INTERESTED YET happens when a) vague undefined crush starts, b) a sort of feeling of chemistry when dancing, the only time I have ever desired to ask somebody to participate in casual sex, or c) I talk with somebody and they are interested and interesting and there is also seemingly some kind of potential for concupiscence. If the other person asked me out, this would shunt the situation to c because it shows evidence that they think we are compatible and is a prospect.
In the past I have tended to pursue a) and c) the same way. (months of very halting getting-to-know-better without any suggestion of romantic or sexual interest). Being in the friend zone for a) sucks because I feel compelled to interact nonemotionally with somebody about whom I feel opera-grade emotions and even long after I have moved on there’s a sense of ‘what might have been.’ Being friend zoned by c) is awesome because I have an interesting friend. but due to nonexistence of concupiscent relationships in my life it is still frustrating.
I suspect that people who are going to end up in c) are those who would be likely to ask me out if interested. Unfortunately this has not yet happened.
What Collin said — your concerns apply to men too, but most men don’t have the luxury of having any significant chance of getting a date if they aren’t doing the asking.
As long as men asking out women is the norm, those concerns don’t really apply equally to the sexes. A man getting rejected after asking out a woman gets a “Well, good for you, at least you tried!” while a woman getting rejected after asking out a man gets a “Wow, how sad and desperate of you that you had to pursue the guy and got rejected anyway.”
We’re told (falsely!) that all men enjoy the chase and will happily pursue any women they’re attracted to. Flipping the script will get you a lot of social disapproval, especially if you fail.
Ask away ladies, would be nice to be the accepter/rejecter for a change.
I agree it would be nice every now and then, but ah, seduction is such a thrill.
It would be amazing. To be honest, I don’t even know how I’d react. It is like asking me how I would react if a spaceship landed in front of me or if I saw a herd of unicorns were grazing in central park. It is such an absurd concept that I’m not sure how I’d react.
That’s basically my view of it. When this topic came up back before the move to GMP, I had outright said that at any point in time if any woman asked me out whilst I was single, I’d give her at least one date regardless of anything else just out of novelty. I have yet to need to actually go through with that offer, and I’ve been single that entire span of time..
That’s true.
When I was in early high school a girl I did not even know asked me out and (I think) tried to flirt with me. I was still rather asocial (now very very social but an introvert) and committed to a life of celibacy because seeing sex on a list also containing drugs and violence gave me a low opinion of it and so on. Still, I felt really bad and confused about this event. It did not help that the asshole bullies in my Boy Scout troop thought I was completely idiotic.
For me, just having somebody unambigously care that I was a sexual being has been a one in a lifetime event so far.
Being the rejecter isn’t so nice either.
I agree. It’s not. I understand the frustration of the guys on this thread who want to be asked out, but there is no nice way of turning someone down. They are going to be upset, even if they don’t show it. It isn’t nice to have to make someone upset, even if they are a stranger. And women are socially conditioned to want to smooth things over, not make trouble and above all, be nice.
I had a situation once when I was in a long term relationship where a guy came up to me in a specialist music merch shop and started chatting to me about the bands. It was unexpected but soon we were having a nice chat about music we liked, and then he asked me to give him my number so we could meet up another time. Suddenly, all I can think is ‘oh shit, if I don’t give him my number I will have to say that I have a boyfriend because that is the reason, and then I run the risk of him saying “what, you didn’t think I was asking you OUT, did you? Get OVER yourself!”, but if I DO give him my number then he might ask me out and I’m in a relationship…’ I expect some of you are thinking that I was really stupid not to automatically assume he was asking me out. But I was pretty young, this was a few years ago now, and also I have always had way more male friends than female friends. (Proper friends, not men-in-the-friend-zone friends. Most of them have never been interested in me in that way and vice versa.) I always want to take the opportunity to make new friends, and the fact that most of my friends are and always have been male means that I have difficulty interpreting ‘can I have your number?’ as ‘I am interested in asking you out on a date’. Under the pressure of the situation, I gave him my number. Then about a day later he rang me to ask me for drinks in the next city over. That definitely sounded like a date, and also not somewhere I particularly wanted to go to alone to meet someone I didn’t know, but I was STILL conflicted about what to do and had to ring up a female friend to check what she thought of the situation. She told me not to go, because it sounded like a date to her to, and potentially dangerous, so I let him know I wouldn’t be able to come. But I felt awful about it, like I had led him on. I just couldn’t think of any way of saying I wasn’t interested when he asked for my number without him potentially getting angry or humiliating me for thinking he was asking me out. (If it ever happens again, I’ll use the Captain Awkward advice: ‘I don’t give out my number, but do you have an email address I could contact you on?’)
That was the only time I have ever been approached by a stranger and asked out (seriously, not as a HILARIOUS joke, that is). Not all women get asked out by strangers a lot. I imagine that some do, and I expect it is not much fun at all. I don’t feel sorry that strangers don’t ask me out more AT ALL. However, in situations where I am interested in someone and we already know each other, I WILL do the asking and not fear the potential rejection. That is a resolution I will make.
I don’t want this to sound like a battle of the sexes ‘who has is worse’ thing, but I think some people commenting are over-idealising what it could potentially be like when you’re asked out by a stranger. I think that is best when you already know both of you are interested in a date specifically, like if you’re connecting on an online dating site.
I suspect people are over-idealising it largely because they have little to no experience of success in this arena.
Not that I’m overwhelmed with experience either mind, although both of the relationships I’ve had started with me being pursued by the girl….which seems a tad anomalous.
It seems like a lot of the men here tend to have a pretty unrealistic idea of what being the “askee” is like. Regular, non-supermodel women don’t typically have long lines of willing suitors they get to pick and choose from, and in actuality most of us get approached pretty rarely, if at all. It can be just as restrictive and depressing and damaging to one’s self esteem to be told you have to wait to be approached by a man (especially when few or none are forthcoming) as it is to be told you have to strongly pursue women or risk being a romantic failure.
I’m definitely all for making the cultural dating script more gender-neutral, but we still have a pretty long way to go.
yeah. A further issue is that the dismantling of awful patriarchal social systems left a really ineffective system in their place. Our society, as far as I can tell, does not really have ways of signalling sexual interest or whatever, except for a few that are misinterpreted and then used by rape apologists.
Outside of online dating there hardly seem to be any elevated, formalized situations focused on matchmaking. And nobody seems to have ways to signal sexual interest or disinterest. Or availability even
When doing fictional worldbuilding I have generally included such signs.
I think that’s an accurate description of the situation. I think there are two contributing factors: 1 Single men and women are not distributed evenly across the physical geography of the world. Formalised signaling won’t help much in communities where the gender ratio is seriously skewed on way or the other.
2 Nobody wants to have to deal with the explicit rejection that any system of formalized signaling would require. And I mean both rejecting and being rejected. I think that’s a big factor in the demise of the old time courting rituals, and the lack of any formalized replacement. Also why so much of modern day meeting/courting has to be hidden behind other, seemingly unrelated activities.
A little light-heartedness could go a long way, if one can manage it. Approach the asking out with a bit of a sense of humor, and even maybe make a joke about how scary it can be, and maybe then it won’t be so scary. If the person is interested, then he or she will likely laugh along with you. Don’t invest it with the weight of a marriage proposal, for heaven’s sake.
If asking someone out is intimidating for you, then someone who has no empathy for how intimidating it can be may not be the person for you anyway.
Ok, I must throw in my 2 cents here. I have always been a very average looking girl, and to make my teenage years harder I have a sister who is pretty firmly in “babe” territory.
At some point between 17 and 19 I figured out that nothing I did would cause boys to flock to me, lining up for dates, they way they always have for my sister. Asking and getting rejected (or having to reject a 2nd date with someone I asked who turned out to be horrible,) became less painful than being alone.
When I met my husband, my opening line was a compliment about his hair, and an expression of mutual interest in a tv show. We chatted at work on and off. One day I asked if he’d seen a recently released movie. He had. I asked, “Was it good enough to see twice? Because I’d like to go see it with you.”
This is one of the things that I really, really like about the song “Call Me Maybe.”
yrs–
–Ben
really, its make me sad. Maybe some men are assuming that women ask them out want to have sex. But not all men are like that. If i have a girl asking me out i would be really flattered , i wouldn’t mind i have sex or not. I just want accompany from women, we could just talking, go to restaurant, or watching movies.
But i cant blame them, those guys who only want sex makes the others bad. It makes me sad cause i know that many women wont ask men out cause they afraid we assumming women who ask men out only want sex. Well i told you, not all men think like that. Really.
I have several times women ask me out and really, its one of the best things that ever happened to me. Because one of them are my gf. And i dont even have sex with them ( well not immediately )
It a woman tried to “pick me up” I’d feel uncomfortable and I’d try to maneuver myself out of the situation. I expect any woman to react the same way it I approached them, so I try not to do it.
The people who feel comfortable at the thought of approaching strangers with a romantic or a sexual intent seem like a different species to me.
Sometimes I wonder how come people (me included) actually do date each other once in a while.
As an aromantic ace, all of the mores and traditions surrounding sex and dating confuse me. I was perfectly happy being alone and always hated getting approached (unless it was by a girl, then it was flattering and cute). I mean, I’m married now and it’s awesome, but it just sort of… happened. It didn’t feel like either of us made any concerted effort at the “dating” thing. Which is really strange to put into plain english because we’re long distance and that takes a lot of work.
But still. I WISH it was all formalized and didn’t go hand-in-hand with a social life so I wouldn’t ever have to deal with it. And I still don’t understand the people that say their lives are miserable because they’re not getting any sex. Not in a relationship I can understand… but sex? Does life really suck that much without partnered orgasms?
Tapio, are you a Finn by any chance? I’m guessing mainly based on your name…but if that’s true, I think you may have also touched on the influence of culture on expectations. I’m a North-American/Finn (grandparents came over from Finland to flee the Russians/conscription) and I find that Finns are more naturally reserved and introverted, even those of us who are a few generations removed. I find the idea of approaching/being approached by a stranger to be completely awkward and uncomfortable, but I’m an introvert who prefers small group/friend/acquaintance interacts to big social events where people are aggressively pursuing each other. I have met my partners through shared activities or mutual friends because it takes time for me to get to know someone and build a rapport, though I have eventually asked out a couple of guys because we were both shy and someone had to make the leap
This post is beautiful and I love it.
However, I’m not going to ask this post out. I’m just going to stare longingly in its direction and hope that it gets the message. Hopefully it won’t be creeped out.
A couple of points.
One: I’ve noticed comments here or there indicating that women asking men out can lead to misconceptions. My only response: perhaps this is a matter of technique or implication.
When I ask someone out, my general technique is usually very direct. Having conversed with them at length and determined that there is common ground and maybe even chemistry, I say something along the lines of, “Pardon me for being forward, but would you like my contact information so that we may continue this discussion at a later date? [note: I never ask for contact information from women, owing to the perception that women are particularly vulnerable to personal information being in the wild; this both puts them at ease and puts the ball firmly in their court] Just so we’re clear, there are no implications here other than the fact that I’d like to get to know you better, though I wouldn’t mind if something more came about, unless it turns out that we’re not particularly compatible.”
In general, the only time it doesn’t work is when she isn’t interested in the first place.
Two: in response to those of you who say that men want the interest but not the burden of being responsible for rejecting people, I, for one, would welcome that responsibility, if only because I would use it as an opportunity to treat others the way I wish to be treated: “My sincerest apologies, but at first glance, you’re not really my type. I really do appreciate your bravery in crossing the room (so to speak), but I’m afraid I can’t respond in kind. There’s nothing wrong with you at all [note: because the idea of “right” and “wrong” looks is a fiction); I’m just looking for someone different.”
And, yes, I’ve really used that line, in real life. It worked spectacularly.
I ask men out the wimpy way I learned from them. I chat them up about work stuff and hand them my business card with ‘It would be great to discuss this over a beer sometime.’ If the date doesn’t go well, I just talk about work the whole time and escape. I think men started handing me business cards about 10 years ago. Before then, the ‘professional approach’ (masking a date as a professional interest) didn’t really happen much. It’s a good low-risk technique to ask someone out without appearing you want to jump his bones RIGHT NOW.
Like Oirish Martin upthread, I appear to be amongst the minority of men who have ever been in a relationship where a woman asked them out, rather than the other way round. To paraphrase said girlfriend, she eventually asked me because she got tired of ‘looking pretty in your general direction’. If she had waited for me to ask her out, we would probably have never got together.
Two observations from having been asked out by a woman, rather than the other way round: she got a lot of grief from her friends for ‘not being in a Proper Relationship(tm)’, a Proper Relationship being one in which you get the boy you want by looking pretty in his general direction. (I mostly avoided this, mainly, I think, because my friends have much less traditional views on dating). Secondly, she later commented that she thought that in general, relationships where the woman asked the man out were likely to see the man cheating, because Reasons. (I never got to the bottom of these reasons. I think they boiled down to that a man who is willing to say yes to one woman asking him out is more likely to say yes to others, even if he is still in a relationship, because all men are so distracted by BOOBIES that they can’t remember that their relationship is exclusive.)