Well, I can see how it could get awkward if things don’t go right, but then again…that’s life, isn’t it? I mean, friends express attraction to friends sometimes and that can wind up awkward if wires get crossed and so on. Life does have the potential to get messy but at some point, you learn to live with it.
Which is to say that I don’t see what you did as harassment or anything. Just that things can get creepy or weird between people as the OP talks about but at some point, people act on their attractions. And I think for the most part, it goes more or less okay.
“Man = Chaser / Woman = Chased” is not “just a system used in the US” nor should it be blindly posited as “how things are”. It’s a loaded scenario, imbued with gender issues (“gendering” issues, even, the active formation OF gender itself), it’s unavoidably political, especially in the sense of sexism & patriarchy and analyses thereof, and the mere observation that the male in this context, in order to “play”, needs to engage in actions that come at least right up to the edge of behaviors indicted in the Rape Culture thread, is not a counterargument, it’s a vindication of the very core of the Rape Culture claims.
That the scripted behavioral patterns that result in hooking up (for sex, for long term relationships, for whatever in any combo or variation thereof) are set up as very polarized behaviors is FAR more often identified as the cause of Rape Culture than “MEN ARE BAD”.
It is undeniably true that females’ behavior is implicated in the analysis; one cannot on the one hand complain as a female about Rape Culture in such a way as to imply or state outright that male behavior (on a “one man at a time” basis) needs to be examined (again, by “one man at a time”) and changed, and then participate (ending up “hooked up” with a male, whether for one sexual romp or as a mate or anything in between or variations) by playing the female role script of responding to male initiative and not doing any initiating of your own.
But the observed fact that some women DO exactly that doesn’t let you off the hook as a male. The indictment is seriously meant, the experiences as described by females do (in my opinion) constitute an intolerable problem that makes YOUR participation politically problematic if you “chase”, and as anyone who has ever had a mommy or a 2nd grade teacher oughta know, “Well, everyone ELSE does it” is no excuse.
The thing is, it isn’t going to get fixed by a tiny handful of individuals boycotting (or girlcotting) the rules, even if some of us do exactly that. It can only be fixed by a culture-wide discussion and raising of awareness of it all as a problem in need of our consideration. Full credit to the feminists of the late 1970s and early 1980s for their efforts in doing so: no matter what you may think about the overreaching claims and absolutes touted by some people in the movement, this was something that was honestly being said, came from the heart of their felt experience, and it took courage to say it and make an issue of it.
Indicting someone or another isn’t really the point. You might, for example, indict people for not doing a better job at planning ahead, but then if you consider hyperbolic discounting, it’s being a bit shortsighted to say that they’re being stupid, rather than saying its likely that they’re physically incapable of doing better.
Saying that the natural order of things is less-than-optimal is simply accepting reality. Moving to something more structured isn’t a punishment for anyone, it’s simply improving upon the state of the world.
That is an argument that could be used either to support “Man Chaser / Woman Chased” as a more structured improvement upon the natural state of human sexuality or to support replacing it with a less polarized & more flexibly structured alternative. It does seem to posit something as “the natural order of things”, while not accepting that the nat order is what we should conform ourselves to.
While I do not posit “Man Chaser / Woman Chased” as the “natural order of things”, I’m fine with going on board with people who do if their inclination is to think we can substitute a set of structured rules & behaviors more to our benefit.
The problem with this mentality (and I say this as a man who has had extensive insight into the female mind and discussions they have with each other regarding romantic issues) is that women themselves often don’t know what they want and/or are very mercurial about their feelings. I was in a situation very much like that described by The Tao’s Revenge, and it wasn’t just my own observations that the lass in question was interested; indeed, several other people we had in common had concluded that we either were already or would soon be seeing each other. Despite my reservations about the overall situation, I finally did ask her out, to which she responded no. Several months later, she called me unsolicited and asked me out, and then backed out, and has subsequently pretended like nothing ever happened (which I suppose it didn’t except in my imagination). There is little point in spending much effort speculating on the specifics of what was going through her head during this process, but I know by listening to female friends discuss similar situations that it involved a complex n-dimensional manifold of co-weighted decisions described by a metric tensor that makes the Kähler–Einstein metric seem like playing tic-tac-toe.
The answer to this sort of reasoning, insofar as I have any insight to offer, is not to enter into the Cretan labyrinth of female thought, from which there is no return to sanity, nor to futilely attempt to impose some ritualized set of rules and regulations that are in complete defiance tens of millions of years of primate socioevolutionary development, but rather to proceed as if the result–either positive, negative, or ambivalent–is of no consequence whatsoever. If a woman is of the opinion that no man who is incapable of accurately reading the constantly shifting winds of her disposition at any moment is worthy of her interest, that says more to her own inability to own and communicate her feelings and needs than it does about any man who might be courting her.
In other words, don’t try to sail to her wind, or expect to understand every signal she puts off, however mixed. Motor to your own course, and if intersects with hers repeatedly you might be able to negotiate a convoy agreement, but don’t go out of your way for a flickering light in the morning fog.
why so much debate when you could just go ahead and try it? If the miai technique works for the Japanese, you could try to come up with your own Americanized variant (probably without the parents…) and institutionalize it as a business or non-profit in the same general industry as the “speed dating” outfits.
It should be self-evident that American system is not for everyone, Japanese system is not for everyone and any other system imaginable as well. So there must be various potential customer niches out there, including one for the structured dating, for unstructured dating and even for “drag away by the hair to the cave” dating. And nothing is stopping you from working to implement a niche which is currently not available on the market.
If our society moves towards a more formalized system, in which women express interest or disinterest using an unambiguous method of communication, men need to be prepared to face unambiguous rejection all the time.
One drawback of the current “system” is that you have to wade through a number of encounters before you hit upon someone you click with. It’s not always easy or fun, and sometimes you have to go out on a limb a little bit. But on the plus side, sometimes, just sometimes, in the process of going out and talking and putting your best foot forward, you’re able to win the affection of someone who otherwise would have not paid any attention to you.
Switch to a more formal system and you risk losing opportunities. Require women to express how they feel about you upfront and bluntly, and you may end up being the victim of snap judgements because you’re not allowing enough time for someone to make up their mind. And also, no sane, emotionally-healthy woman I know would be willing to advertise their desire to be groped or taken to bed by a dating partner. It would be like walking around with a stiffy. Not. Cute.
I agree with even sven as well. Men who are capable of sizing up situations well and react accordingly are desirable commodities. All other things equal, a man who knows how to gradually work his way up to the “fondling of your body” stage without having to be explicitly told what to do and when to do it is more impressive than the guy who needs a red pin to tell him that grabbing a chick’s chest within a few minutes of learning her name ain’t such a swift idea.
The thing that sticks out to me about the OP is that his thesis boils down to not knowing when its okay to grope someone, whereas most of the responses in this thread seem to be about initiating a dating relationship. These look like two different things.
The biggest problem in developing new behavioral norms to replace the rather sloppy barnyard dance that all of us know, and none of us know well is that no one knows the new rules at all. So, you can barely tell who is in the dance, and once you start following the new steps, you pretty much are dancing on your own.
Such concepts as “lowering her standards” or “the system of social cues and unspoken communication that exists” contain an assumption of rational thought, and strategic thinking I personally have never observed in the interactions of men and women.
This isn’t rocket science, nor in fact, any sort of science at all. It’s about just taking the risks, and living with the consequences. Some times you lose. It’s gonna hurt. If it doesn’t, it’s because you are not actually in it for the real personal reasons that you are so actively pretending. And the hard facts of life are that some of you are never going to win at all, and will die lonely, and unrequited. Sucks, don’t it?
Why should we expect the man who is blind and deaf to social cues and non-verbal communication to be just as successful with the opposite sex as the man who fluent in both languages? It’s just as unreasonable as expecting an ugly, shy woman to have as many suitors as a beautiful, outgoing one.
Don’t we, though? Would you tell someone like that, “Well look son, you’re just not good at this. Make sure your cats are well fed so they don’t eat you when you die alone.” Or would you tell him to keep trying, get back on that horse, be persistent, there’s someone out there for everyone, etc.
I’m big on communication in relationships and really like being up front about things, but I think the idea that a relationship can be built without both people being able to read the social clues of the other is probably a mistake. Yes, maybe the initial types of signals are the hardest to read, but human beings are constantly giving social clues to one another. We have to learn to read them in order to have a successful relationship. If we skip the reading part to initiate the relationship, we’ll just doom it later through insensitivity and just plain cluelessness. Someone doesn’t have to be trying to deceive in order to fail to spell out every single nuance of their emotional lives–nuances that are perceptible to most people, just as dating nuances are.
The attitude expressed by the OP and others seems to be “I’m not doing well at this whole dating thing, therefore, something must be wrong with the system. So let’s dream of ways we can change it so that I can finally succeed!”
That’s completely different than telling them to not give up, someday you’ll find the right one, it just may take a little more effort, etc…right? Like so completely different that it’s weird I’m even having to type this out.
We shouldn’t. But if the SDMB is anything to go by, the amount of men who miss social cues to a greater or lesser extent is enormous. I’m not just talking about those who are completely blind and deaf, mind. Similarly, different sets of people have different cues. Put two people from two such sets together and watch the fireworks!
I think the SDMB is a good example of something else. All communication on here is explicit. There’s no body language to read, no facial expressions to parse, no confusing physical signals. It’s all right there in black and white.
Most men manage to hook up at least one woman in their lives. Even the certified sociopathic ones who have dead bodies in their basement. This tells me that the so-called game of dating is a lot less rigimented and rule-based than what is commonly believed. Most women probably do favor a guy who is quick on the uptake when it comes to social cues, but that doesn’t mean clueless guys have no chance. Just a harder chance, all other things being equal. Such is life.
Seeing as it started with a link to a study where 30% of women had been sexually assaulted and ended by commenting on reducing such mishaps, I’m fairly sure you are missing the point. Or do you now think that I’m a rapist?