I would like to add my condolences to those already expressed. It's terrible that things like that happen. I think that given what happened to you, what you say is perfectly understandable. But by extrapolating from your own personal experience to a general recommendation for women, you are basically saying that all or most men are potential rapists and need to be dealt with cautiously as such. I think it would be a pretty sad world if women had to base their romantic conduct on a constant threat of male rape. You just had really bad luck in terms of the guy you happened to run into. Please believe that most men would never be able to even conceive of carrying through with something like that. I tend to agree with AKA Smith in saying that the guy probably would have raped you no matter what - the moment he got you in the room with him he had decided that sex was going to happen one way or another.

However, in a more general context, here is one thing that I think might help in avoiding future miscommunication. If you are a woman and you meet a guy who seems interested in hanging out, ASSUME BY DEFAULT that he is romantically or sexually interested in you unless you can establish otherwise, and make your choices accordingly. Maybe my hunch is wrong, but it seems like a lot of women are either unaware of this or willfully deny it, which makes it a sort of ironic case where it is men who think they are being clear and women who are 'not getting it'. So if a guy is trying to get you to hang out and you have already decided that you don't have any such interest in him, either decline such invitations, or at least avoid those that would lead to situations where you are alone in a room together.

Obviously this is in no way meant to imply that if a woman gets raped it is her fault for going into a room alone with a guy - it is still unequivocally 100% his fault. I'm just suggesting that seeing such situations as obviously indicating some sort of sexual tension and avoiding them accordingly could avoid both awkward rejection situations and lower the risk of rape.

What I'm suggesting is that both men and women communicate as they do for good reasons. From a biological standpoint, men seem to have a tougher time dealing with emotional arousal. Their heart rates rise faster and sooner under stress, and take longer to calm down. Once the heart rate goes above a certain point, rationality flies out the window, in both sexes. Sexual arousal increases heart rate as it is. Why risk pushing someone past their limit when there's another alternative available?

Because that alternative operating widely in society is what contributes to the confusion and frustration that, in the case of some fucked up individuals, results in hatred for women and a need to assert dominance over them, and in the case of everyone else results in a lot of broken hearts and missed opportunities. I realize this is a chicken or the egg question, but I refuse to believe that women are from Venus and men are from Mars, and this is how it's got to be. I think you give rationality short shrift to the point that emotional/sexual arousal almost becomes an excuse for that kind of behavior. We are all rational beings, and we should always want to make communication as unambiguous and effective as possible, especially regarding important matters like this.

It's not like I have a clear idea of how to resolve this problem. It seems to me to stem from the fact that we are caught somewhere between traditional sexual mores and the new 'liberated' ones. Perhaps when feminism achieves its social and economic goals, sexual politics will undergo a drastic change and women will either have to pursue men as much as the reverse is true now, or no one will have to pursue anyone at all. Until then, those of us who are not rapists would prefer to at least strive for clarity.