[dijit]

I suspect people will be reactionary because of the title, but the content is much different than what I was personally expecting.

As a corollary to the article; I've always felt it's critical not to assume too much as a man.

The line between being assertive and creepy is very fuzzy and depends entirely on the womans perception of you (which, is essentially unknowable).

There is no easy answer, men will in most cases have a certain level of physical dominance over a woman and thus we will always be a potential threat and _must_ endeavour to walk on tippy-toes.

However this requires women to meet us half-way. Make your intentions known and don't think less of men for not being instigators.

As another, unrelated point; As a guy it is _scary_ to attempt being what men are told they should be (confident, assertive, charming) and it takes a significant amount of bravery to do it in what I would assume is the majority of cases. If our intentions are misconstrued or our conduct falls to the side of what's acceptable (remember; we're usually winging it) then we risk a significant amount of social ostracism. Even approaching a woman is exceedingly difficult.

The irony here is that those who don't care about their social credibility are the ones that give the rest a poor name by sending unsolicited pictures of their genitals, cat calling and pestering women in workplace environments. </rant>

[MRD85]

I'm a single man, I date, and it's confusing as hell. The examples given in the article are no surprise to me since my whole adult life has been peppered with similar events. Women who later tell me they wanted to sleep with me but I didn't push hard enough, etc. Not pushing women to sleep with me has likely cost me a lot of opportunities, but it's also meant I haven't accidentally assaulted someone. On my birthday I had 5 previous sexual partners call or message to wish me a happy birthday, so I figure my philosophy of treating people well is doing ok.

How assertive should I be when interacting with women I am dating, given that every woman is a unique individual with their own preferences?

[zozbot123]

I suspect that "how assertive should I be" is the wrong question to ask-- there are many ways of being "assertive", only some of which work well! As a society, we are still in the process of developing-- and raising awareness about-- workable and effective sexual/dating "scripts" that men can stick to, and trust that they won't run into obvious problems. As the article hopefully makes clear, even the outwardly-trivial problem of how to ascertain full consent in a way that doesn't "ruin the mood" for the typical girl who was expecting the guy to "just man up and go for it!" is far from easy to solve. (This is not to say that such solutions, and more generally, such workable scripts don't exist somewhere already - the whole problem however is how to coalesce trust around them, from both the "male" and "female" perspective.)

[MRD85]

If we develop a set of working scripts to indicate availability, then women will still go for men who are "bold" enough to deviate from the script and seize the day. It's a complex issue, and it's my belief that the traits that women find attractive in men and the traits that women would like to find attractive in men are two different sets with less overlap than you'd imagine.

[krapp]

>If we develop a set of working scripts to indicate availability, then women will still go for men who are "bold" enough to deviate from the script and seize the day.

Some will, some won't, some will in some circumstances and won't in others. Women aren't actors playing roles to deceive men or buggy data sets for which a properly efficient sexual algorithm has to be discovered, they're just human beings and you just need to deal with them as individuals, get to know them as people, and communicate with them. And accept that if they don't find you attractive, or don't want to sleep with you, that's fine.

[zozbot123]

> ... women will still go for men who are "bold" enough to deviate from the script and seize the day.

There will be lots of ways to signal the kind of "boldness" you (and women) want, while still staying well within the 'script'. So hopefully this won't be a big issue in practice. (Though it's hard to say since we don't even have broadly-acknowledged 'scripts' yet!)

[StrictDabbler]

Since my bisexual wife has very similar problems when dating women I'd say the answer isn't simple.

There were times early on where we'd gone on a triple date with a nice girl and eight hours of talk had elapsed without any action. I could tell the girl wanted to be kissed. I could tell my wife wanted to be kissed by the girl. Real movie lean-in moments. Neither of them could bring themselves to be the initiator.

It would have been easy for me to initiate both because I'm good at reading those signals and good at feeling and accepting implicit rejection in an unenthusiastic kiss, but if I'd taken the reigns my wife wouldn't have had the opportunity to explore her own relationship with feminity. So I sat and chatted and watched the opportunities float by.

The next day my wife would express a paradox of frustration that she couldn't just borrow my assertiveness and gratitude that I was letting her find her own path. (edit: Important to note here that the women would tell her the same thing, that they'd felt the moment but hadn't been able to take advantage of it.)

Eventually she figured out that more assertive bi women were an important group to look for.

So it isn't entirely a gender thing and it's not about "pushing" anybody to do anything. It's about learning how to sense signals, how to make signals, how to recognize people who want you to take the level of initiative that you're comfortable taking, and how to gracefully accept that incompatibility on this one point is incompatibility per se, not just a missed opportunity.

[perfmode]

I’ve simply come to believe that online dating is the safest way for people to evaluate partners. There is demonstrated intent on both ends. It’s like google’s search intent being the value. Online dating provides safety through... intent of intimacy I guess

[fucking_tragedy]

> I’ve simply come to believe that online dating is the safest way for people to evaluate partners.

I came to the opposite conclusion. If your potential partner can overpower you, then you have to worry about being assaulted or murdered by a complete stranger before you even get the chance to evaluate them.

Sure, you might meet a drifter at a bar that no one knows and thus can get away with harming you more easily, but online dating significantly lowers the barrier of entry for malevolent actors, especially those who wish to remain somewhat anonymous.

[hanging]

Online dating sites unfortunately have become a convenient fraud vector.

[King-Aaron]

All I ever find with dating sites is an endless stream of bots and constant 'seen'/'deleted' receipts.

My feeling is I don't have enough "marketable" photos of myself to make the few real users out there take notice among the endless stream of spam they must get.

I end up feeling that the psychological impact from 'playing that game' results in diminishing returns, so fall back to just doing my usual hobbies in the real world and hope in the back of my mind that one day someone might find the things that I do interesting.