Body language is so personalized that expecting someone to be able to read your OBVIOUS SIGNALS is a joke. In fact, it’s been turned into a real joke…
Man: What’s wrong?
Woman [in tears]: If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you!
Next you’ll be saying you can give people directions with your eyes.
Is silently thankful he’s gay
Could you be any more ridiculous if you tried? I’m not the one who brought up body language to begin with in this thread, or am I the recipient of your lame joke because it doesn’t work as well on Alex_Dubinsky because he’s a man? Honestly, you don’t have to reach so hard if you want to make a sexist joke, just go ahead and make one. Next time, a funny one would be better.
Let me make it a little more plain for you, my response to him was to let him know that his idea of expecting people to read body language (or as you put it OBVIOUS SIGNALS) isn’t always going to work.
That may be what you meant, but that is not how your post reads. But whatever you say, I’ll drop it.
But if you think my “lame joke” was meant to be a joke and not a real life recounting of a conversation every man will have in his life at least once, you’re dreaming.
Body language is also notorious for giving you away. For instance, a woman might have a boyfriend, be content with her boyfriend, and still find you attractive. She isn’t consciously flirting with you, but because she does think you are hot, there are those signs she gives that says if you asked her out, she’d say yes.
This leads to those threads where someone says that this woman was a horrible tease and they wasted the whole night flirting with her, only to discover at the end of the night she had a boyfriend. Had she only mentioned such a thing early in the conversation!
Of course on the the OTHER hand, if most women would actually stop all this chase me and read my subtle, contradictory clues that I only know the meaning of, and just be blunt about whether they interested or not, then men wouldnt have to chase incessantly in the first place…
Its probably a big reason for being/“becoming” gay than most realize 
Well let’s go slowly, okay? He suggested that body language was used for a reason and for her to be like a “normal animal” to communicate. Reading that I think to all the times I’ve given serious “stand back” body language and “fuck you” stares to no avail so I explained that body language doesn’t always work as some people cannot or will not read it.
You decide now is the time for the big debut of your TEH FUNNAY! joke and somehow read that me telling him that body language doesn’t always work means that I think I am a master of it and next I’ll think I can give directions with my eyes.
I’ll let you in on a secret, although body language and be misinterpreted pretty easily, I have a death stare that I can give that maybe even you would get exactly where I’m telling you to go, so maybe I can give directions with my eyes!
damn good post / userame combo!
Dick her man (quick!)
Well, duh. But make sure those subtle contradictory clues communicate clearly to us whether you find us attractive and don’t have any containdications for us jumping your bones - like say, a girlfriend, because we wouldn’t want to make a mistake and have you say “thanks, but I’m not interested.” Because then we’d go back and rant on a messageboard about what a tease you were.
This just happened to me by a guy I went to high school with. I just found him on Facebook, and I sent him a message letting him know that I’d had the hugest crush on him in high school, and even when he had asked me point blank, “Do you like me?”, I always denied, denied, denied. So I figured I’d just let him know, like, haha, remember that time over twenty years ago when I liked you? He comes back with the usual “oh yeah I remember you, how’s it going and by the way I met my WIFE and had a SON, etc…” Oh damn, dude- and here I’ve been sitting here for 22 years crushing on you and hoping you were still single. It’s a good thing you let me know right up front that you have a WIFE. Whew.
I’ve mentioned my wife and son early into Facebook messages with long lost female friends because, well, those are two of the most significant events that have occured to me in the past 10-15 years so I thought they were worth mentioning in the “Good to hear from you, this is what’s up on my end” bit.
I never thought of it as name-dropping to stop them from coming over with a bottle of wine and a box of condoms.
In this economy, its never wise to pass up anything thats free
Interesting story. A girl I knew in high school would always have that problem with boys. She’d just get mad, and they wouldn’t know why, and then she’d get madder that they didn’t. So she just starting dating girls. It was easier.
I’ve had a situation where I left the “I have a girlfriend” line a bit late and the flirter got a bit pissed off. Also I didn’t handle it very well. I was drunk.
After several hours of chatting and drinking and general flirting (which I cluelessly became aware of fairly late in the piece), I invite her outside. We sit down next to each other.
Me: So, you haven’t asked me if I have a girlfriend.
Her: You haven’t asked me if I have a boyfriend either.
Me: True. Do you have a boyfriend?
Her: No. Do you have a girlfriend?
Me: Yes.
Her: :mad:
Me: 
Easier than just telling the men why she was angry with them?
I do this if I think someone is gearing up to ask me for a date and I’m not interested (I’m single). I don’t know a better way to communicate “You may or may not be romantically interested in me, but just in case you are, it’s not worth it” politely and without killing the conversation.
I think it’s roundabout enough that the presumptuousness is minimal. Any “just in case, the answer is no thanks” message is going to seem presumptuous if the receiver actually isn’t interested. And, like other women in this thread, men who barely know me ask me out enough that it’s worth establishing non-interest very early on. (That’s not a statement of how omigawd hot I am, but how lame some men trying to play the numbers game are!)
The trouble is, all (most?) of us have had at least a few encounters early on where we had no clue the guy was interested until he made his move. This told us a few things, 1.) ya never know when a guy might decide to make the move 2.) I suck at being able to tell WHICH guys, are going to make a move.
Ergo, just in case, whenever I find myself in a situation where I may possibly be hit upon, I’ll try my best to head things off at the pass.
Nowadays shockingly I still get hit on occasionally (shockingly because I’m old, fat and hideous enough to scare small children into therapy for years). I guess men my age have eyes as bad as mine! Snort!
Anyway, nowadays it’s no longer the boyfriend/husband name drop, it’s the career/too busy name drop. And yeah, like the boyfriend name drop, it’s a preemptive strike. 
So now you’re saying we have to wait until we’re actually hit on for that? sigh…It’s so much more uncomfortable that way.
No it’s not. Not as a whole anyway, most are ancient, longstanding body signals that are as old as time, or the battle between the sexes.
As someone else pointed out, most people GET them, and there are some that don’t. And there are some men that assume that the mere fact that a woman is in their vicinity means that she “wants” them, and as in the post about Megan and Rich, will scream bloody murder when they feel someone’s been “leading them on”.
Some “old as the hills” body language is the old crossed arms, a person’s stepping away from you, body is turned away, the person is not looking at you, looks at their watch, or around the room for rescue, answers you in monosyllables, or perhaps even disagrees with you…pretty damned obvious stuff, not anything that takes a translator or rocket surgeon.
I still don’t get it. You’re realize you’re being presumptuous and offensive to guys you shouldn’t be to. For what purpose? So you’re not forced to confront the guys you should? So you don’t have to examine your presumptuousness and realize that 95% of the guys you think might be hitting on you aren’t actually going to ask you out? It’d be a total letdown.
We’ll there’s the choice. Inconvenience yourself by waiting to be asked out (or to see obvious signs of being hit on), or just reject everybody. It’s your choice, I just think one of them is the not-nice one.