[yummyfajitas]

It's not possible to know attention is unwanted until after it's given. Sometimes such attention is wanted.

I know at least two women who sometimes complain about unwanted attention from men at tech conferences and similar circumstances. On the other hand, they both slept with me within a few hours of meeting me under the exact same circumstances as a result of exactly the same type of attention. They just happened to find me attractive but other folks unattractive. This doesn't make the unattractive folks hitting on them sexist villains. It just makes me a guy blessed with virtues like being tall and having a symmetric face.

The fact that women receive more attention is solely proportional to the convention that men must approach women. Feel free to try to change that - I'm sure nerds with approach anxiety everywhere will thank you if you succeed.

Attention, wanted or unwanted, is of course always proportional to how desirable a person is. That's the cost of being beautiful. Similarly, being a hot commodity in the job market has some costs like unwanted recruiter attention, in addition to benefits like six figure salaries.

Is it really a worthwhile use of our time and attention to make life marginally better for people who are already at the top of the heap? (Not that you've actually provided any mechanism for separating wanted and unwanted attention.) Why not focus your time and attention on the folks who are really suffering - e.g., low skill workers who are barred from working in the US, or unattractive men who get laid once a year at best? Why is increasing social inequality such a priority of yours?

[peterwwillis]

"It's not possible to know attention is unwanted until after it's given."

It is totally possible to know in many different circumstances. Let's take the_af's example: sexual attention in the workplace.

IT IS NEVER APPROPRIATE TO GIVE SOMEONE SEXUAL ATTENTION IN THE WORKPLACE. So, right there we've got at least one way to tell when someone wants attention or not.

Another way to tell is if you are engaged in any kind of business transaction. Paying money at the toll booth, getting your strawberry power boost at Smoothie King, getting an adjustment in yoga class, getting help from tech support. Do not hit on people during a business transaction.

Yet another big hint is any time you're interacting with people you don't know in a situation where they would neither expect nor look for attention. Ask yourself if they came there to get hit on - coffee shop? Nope, they came for coffee. Farmer's market? Nope, came for vegetables. At a tech conference? They came to listen to tech talks. They did not attend so you could hit on them.

--

On a more personal note: you, sir, are basically the stereotype of a misogynist womanizer. You go to tech conferences and hit on women, and even as they complain to your face about guys who pull the same shit you do, you completely ignore the fact that they're telling you they do not want that kind of attention there. The fact that you can convince them to sleep with you does not justify this behavior.

You say women receive more attention because of a social convention about hitting on people, completely missing the fact that most women do not want to fuck everyone they meet, like most men seem to. Women actually receive more attention because of a different social convention - that men believe they have the right to objectify and pursue sex from every woman they find attractive.

Finally, men who don't get laid are not suffering. Except maybe by suffering under the delusion that they are owed sex.

[the_af]

You more or less have to assume sexual attention is unwanted in the workplace. This is merely a default, and is sometimes the wrong assumption; the problem is that the error is more serious when you assume the attention is ok but wasn't.

"But I'm polite and I'll back off if Cute Tech Support Gal isn't uninterested" isn't enough. When multiple customers decide to hit on her, this is probably upsetting to her regardless of whether you in particular were willing to back off. Even if everyone backs off it's still upsetting. It negatively impacts her work experience. Especially if her coworker, Tech Support Guy, is not constantly flirted with and customers treat him more professionally instead.

To me it's self-evident that hitting on someone using a tech support form or chat is especially lame. We're not talking about a couple who are coworkers, go to lunch frequently, talk every day, and then something blossoms between them. I've no problem with that. Instead, this is creepy male customer behavior, which decide to abruptly hitting on a staff member just because she was a girl and they liked their tiny profile picture. This really screams "inappropriate".