I'm on the brink of turning thirty-one years old. As much as I claim to be a misanthrope I'm actually super-duper nice to about 99% of the people I encounter. A lot of them happen to be male. I don't consider myself to be coquettish at all (although my boyfriend disagrees — he thinks I'm a flirt but I swear I'm just being nice) and I have even taken steps to assure that I look as unattractive as possible to members of the opposite sex (lip ring, septum piercing, wearing big fake hipster glasses even though my vision is just fine) just to avoid men drawing the conclusion I'm about to ask about.
I am not a babe or a ten or even conventionally good-looking. I'm average-looking, I suppose, maybe a bit quirky. I'm not like offensively unfortunate-looking, I guess. I don't have a huge rack or beautiful ass that would make men want to rain on it. So please, O Wise and Powerful Sars (and readers) please help me figure out this puzzle and great mystery of life because I've come up with no logical conclusions on my own.
Why is it that if a woman is nice or polite to a man the dude automatically thinks she wants to bang him? Do all guys just have an agenda of banging chicks and mistake kindness for flirtation and think if a woman so much as asks them for the time that means they are sexually interested in them?
So far I've only been able to chalk it up to their inflated egos and out-of-whack sense of self. Kind of along the lines of, "Don't flatter yourself, dude."
What is up with this? Why do men make the assumption that if a woman utters a word to them it's a signal saying that they're DTF? It may sound dumb but this is a serious question.
Boys Never Stop Being Confusing, Even In Your Thirties
Dear Confusing,
You understand that, by generalizing about "a man," "automatically," "all guys," etc., you've just done to the entire gender what you resent their doing to you — right? That not all guys do this, and that it's just as unfair to classify them all as walking boners as it is for them to hit on you when it's unwanted?
Just in case: I don't know "what's up with" it because it's…not the case. Some men assume that idle chit-chat means you want to ride the mustache; most don't. Some men see any interaction with a woman as a means to a pink end; most don't. Sometimes people hit on you and you don't return the sentiment, but it's not per se sexist or meant to make your life harder — it's just getting hit on. Accept that it's happening, work in a mention of your boyfriend ASAP, and unless it's going on at your job or making you feel unsafe, remember that you don't have to care about it and…don't care about it.
You might also consider that, if this really is going on constantly, and if your boyfriend insists that what you think of as "super-duper nice" or rigorously polite is in fact reading more like "interested and available," it's time to tweak your interpersonal presentation. Don't interpret this as "noooo, you're the problem"; it's a matter of what's the common denominator, and also of it being a problem, i.e., this state of affairs is making you unhappy so it's time to contemplate a change. Try pulling back from "super-duper nice" to "regular nice." Ask your boyfriend and/or other friends to observe your interactions with strangers for a few days or a week and see if they can find instances where what you thought of as "polite" looked to them like "flirting." Again, it's not about blame; this is an issue in your life, so you should address it.
But indicting half the population as creepers isn't going to change anything. The vast majority of men, of people, just want to make connections with other humans. Don't turn it into something icky, because there's plenty of that to go around already.