Some phrases that spring to my mind, as a woman contemplating what you might do in that situation:

"Oh for God's sake grow up. You're what, 26? Do you want to have sex or not?"

"I'm not a rapist."

And for the gentleman whose lady physically shoved him away, and then complained that he didn't want to have sex, there is a phrase tailor-made for that situation: "What the fuck with you, bitch?"

Yeah, none of these phrases is likely to get you laid. But it might shock her into not repeating her bad behavior with the next poor bastard.

You did the right thing, and you're well out of that one. Do you really want to be with a little girl who doesn't know what she wants?

Thanks, but sometimes it seems hard to believe that this doesn't describe a majority of women out there. It's not like this was some young bimbo who unconditionally absorbs gender stereotypes - we were both in our mid-twenties and in grad school. If you can't find directness and maturity at that level, where can you?

The thing is that, at some level, I knew that her protestations weren't really sincere from the way they were delivered. But somehow I just couldn't force myself to conceptualize the disconnect between her words and what she actually wanted - it was like my mind/body couldn't conceive of going forward with my advances in the face of a 'no' even if I knew it was insincere.

You did the right thing, and you're well out of that one. Do you really want to be with a little girl who doesn't know what she wants?

I agree with what you wrote.

However I've also run into situations where I accepted the stop signal or what I believed was the stop signal only to find out later, I upset someone because I didn't continue. ???

Also the woman who does this creates the possibility of mixed signals later.

My father was a Navy officer and more than a little chauvinistic, but his viewpoint was to give the woman the benefit of the doubt always. Old school? Maybe? But there were less problems this way, unless, of course one actually runs into mixed signals situation.

These women are presumably being evasive in order to allow the man to save face and spare his feelings.

Don't do that - let him have it with both barrels. Tell him in no uncertain terms exactly how much you wish he'd have jumped out the window twenty minutes ago. Make him cry. Make him whimper and say, "You could have broken it to me more gently!"

A few decades of this and maybe men will be lining up for classes in how to take a hint.

Though I regularly join in the chorus of Broadsheet critics, I can acknowledge a fair and nuanced analysis when I see it. I imagine the usual trolls will still find something to rip apart though. And I just can't wait to see brightstar's take. I could do some critical analysis here, but instead I'm just going to share a story.

When the semester started I met a girl. We started hanging out, a lot. In the first week, we ended up hanging out three days in a row, going grocery shopping, having coffee, and eventually ending up at a hookah bar snuggled together on the cushions. Most other guys would tell you that was enough of a 'signal', but I was looking for something specific - (intentional eye contact, tilting her face towards me, etc) that just never happened. Regardless, the tension must have been obvious because the next day she IM'ed me and told me that she really likes me but she has an old boyfriend in Florida and she's not sure how things stand with him so she needs time to figure things out and would still like to hang out in the meantime.

I'm not stupid - normally I would take this as a polite rejection and move on. But she keeps calling me, IMing me, basically going out of her way to hang out with me more than one would for any normal friend. When we are out with other people from school she constantly looks and smiles shyly at me, to the extent that I later find out that everyone else just assumed we were going out. Then one night she invites me over to watch a movie at her place. Again, same tension, same lack of obvious body signals. Eventually I thought "fuck it" and went for it anyway, only to be stopped with a reluctant head-shaking. Same explanation from her again.

Fast-forward another month and we are sitting on my bed, her telling me that her boyfriend is now casually seeing another girl and she thinks it might be over with them. There is a long silence. Finally I speak:

"Does that mean you won't pull away this time?"

"I...should. I still haven't completely broken it off and I don't want to be involved with two guys at the same time."

"So does that mean you'll pull away?"

"I don't know...I should."

I try and she does pull away. The stagnant cycle continues until one day I resolve to tell her to forget about the whole thing. There is another night of hanging out where, at her suggestion, we first eat ice cream in the park, then walk over the Williamsburg bridge together, then end up at my apartment. We sit and talk for a while until she uses that famous line: "it's getting late...I should go." At this point I take a deep breath and say we need to talk. Before I have a chance, she says that things are over with the Florida guy, but she's not sure what to do now, because it's dragged on for so long that now she feels like I have more invested in this emotionally than she does and she doesn't think it would be fair to me. In further conversation, she reveals that if I had been more pushy and aggressive she would have probably forgotten about the other guy and just gone with it.

In conclusion, it appears that 'no' does not always mean 'no'.