Whether or not people get laid on any single romantic encounter is hardly life or death. The real purpose of good communication is so that no one gets seriously hurt. If people don't care if other people get seriously hurt, then there is no hope for them.

That's what I can't figure, either. I can't think how many times I've more or less thrown myself at someone who gently, and indirectly, let me down. It's not the end of the world. Rejection happens. It's part of life. Even when I was young and pretty enough to make money from it, I still wasn't attractive to everyone and I knew it, which brings me to another related puzzle. Why do so many men seem to think that our lives rise and fall on whether men think we're attractive?

I also genuinely like a lot of men, and it bothers me that overtures of friendship are seen as sexual overtures or attempts at using them.

That's some fine writing you did in your post "Appeasement." There are heartfelt lessons there.

Your thoughts about possessing beauty are very much like my own. Nobody wants to just be a trophy. Beautiful women are targets, trophies, aspirations all rolled into one. Other women don't trust them and men don't either. It is as if people resent this odd gift that is not at all deserved but just confered by nature and very destabilizing to the lives of many young women. And when you get older, you look in the mirror and try to figure out who you are now. The sure thing about being a woman is that people will judge you by your appearance whatever it is.

Anon Too's case is example in point why young women in years past were discouraged (if not prohibited) from mixing with men privately.

The thinking was twofold: First, a potential rapist wasn't going to try anything in public or in a place where help could be summoned immediately, and Second, lack of privacy was an excellent method of hormone management, keeping the heat of an encounter at a workable level.

Speaking as someone who was dumb and drunk and raped (by an older man) at 18, I can say no one deserves to be raped no matter what they do. In my case, I met someone on the street, went back to his apartment for what I thought was going to be a specific sexual act and was forced into other sex acts I had no interest in (and protested). I thought I was never going to get out of there.

The kicker?

He couldn't understand why I didn't want to stay over!

A woman I know told me about a year ago that she didn't want to sleep with me because "she liked me". Now, this is not what I usually expect as a result of being liked. But I accepted her reality, and we're still friends.

Sometimes you just have to accept what someone says without thinking about it too much.

This has all been quite fascinating, I think TC-F was running a bit of an experiment to see what would happen on the letters thread. I am pleased that some of our trollish men's rights wingnuts have had the grace to thank her.

Mr. Map, I think the biggest problem you have is your tone: you come across as patronizing, passive-aggressive, and petty. If you worked on that, you might find your ideas being received with less hostility. If getting your ideas across is your goal, not generating hostility that is.

Back to the topic at hand, I can't resist looking at it from the other end of the telescope. Twice in my life, I ended up in a situation where a woman was hitting on me, and I was trying to turn it all off. Without crushing her or making her feel bad, because I rather liked her in both cases. It was an extraordinarily difficult task. And it often seemed that things I did and said to discourage her actually encouraged her.

In one case I actually yielded, we had sex and a relationship, which I resented from the get go, and eventually had to be pretty direct and unpleasant to end. The other one, well, I was wiser, but it did drag on and get pretty uncomfortable.

I actually still do not think that being totally direct/honest/blunt would have been the best thing to do. I wanted to maintain everyone's dignity in an inherently undignified situation. It seemed the gentlemanly thing to do. But it led to a lot of confusion. I don't think there is a write or wrong answer hear, and I know from experience that women are fully capable of faulty introspection too.

I have never had much trouble having men as friends. One declared that we should be just friends when it was I who was interested in him. I confess, that I did not take it well, but my pride was wounded more than anything. I soon recovered. I think because I grew up with younger brothers and watched their psychological development that is what makes it easier for me to read men and get along with them. Even as just friends, they sometimes need a little ego boost now and then. I always praise what is praiseworthy in my friends.

However, my daughter, who grew up an only child and got attention for her looks from about the age of ten is rather a lonely person I think. Women are usually quite competitive with her and it doesn't help that she is much more cerebral than warm. Men are so focused on her looks that they often miss seeing who she really is. She is a mildly Aspie, hyper-intellectual avant garde club kid. That's just weird, isn't it? A bizarre combo. Hence, lonely. Beauty sure doesn't get you everything. Mostly it just gets her confusion. Reading people is not her forte. Neither is communication. Like most mothers, I worry that she will someday be in a situation she has no idea how to protect herself from.