A couple of snips from the web:

Fast forward to my thirties – the age at which most women, sexually, are finally ready to really rock and roll – and to New York City. Instead of sex in the city, I found depressed, beaten men – cautious and passive around women. They were, in other words, products of Ivy League universities. They were alpha, demographically, but they sure didn’t act alpha. They were coy; they sat on beds waiting for you to make the first move, they even waited for you to ask them for their phone number.

-- and --

While dating, I want to know the man has the strength and confidence to be assertive. And I want to know I can relax and be receptive and present. If a man gives me his card, so I can call him, I throw it away. He’s telling me he doesn’t have the emotional confidence I want in a man. I won’t rescue him and take the masculine role. This is so complex, it’s hard to explain in a few sentences. But sooo important!

Cuts both ways. A MILF and her two friends were leaving a downtown, big-city nightclub. As they passed my table, one of them grinned and tossed her business card on the table in front of me, and kept on walking, accompanied by her two smirking friends. For a brief moment I contemplated putting her card in the men's room, but I'm not that mean. The empty, strained bravado made it merely sad.

The new feminism-driven "affirmative consent" rules on campus will only make things worse afterward.

Some hunters "seed" the killing ground in hopes of getting the exact animal they want.

Of course most of these guys may not be acting out this way but it is a low effort way of getting into the prey's presence. Emphasis on "low effort".

It also offers an automatic second approach at a future date.

A casual "Hi! We met ________ . How are you doing?" is still just a conversational opportunity at no cost.

Bet Bundy used this approach w/o giving his number. (Google is the youngsters friend.)

Hmm. Seething with resentment. As I have aged, I tend to agree with Amy. However, her advice of "Men should ask women out in a way that gets them as firmly and unambiguously rejected as possible" has it's own dangers.

As a guy how has gotten shot down a time or two, a woman will twist like a snake to avoid having to 'be the bad guy'. So she will double talk, spin, deflect, avoid, and make excuses about how "I'd LOVE to do that but unfortunately my cat died and the funeral is Monday..." (okay, a bit more subtle than that).

ANYTHING to avoid saying 'no'. And if you press her, she will resent the Hell out of you for making her say something openly and honestly. She calls it 'sparing my feelings', but it is more "I want to avoid blowback or an ugly scene".

But I suppose her resenting me is better than my resenting her.

As a guy how has gotten shot down a time or two, a woman will twist like a snake to avoid having to 'be the bad guy'. So she will double talk, spin, deflect, avoid, and make excuses about how "I'd LOVE to do that but unfortunately my cat died and the funeral is Monday..." (okay, a bit more subtle than that).

Which is fine with me — if a woman is more comfortable saying "no" that way, I get the message.

If she doesn't giggle, toss her hair, touch my arm and smile, I'm not asking her out.

Sorry, let me write that in 21st-centuryspeak:

I M intrstd U B 2.

"This is so complex, it’s hard to explain in a few sentences. But sooo important!"

Actually, it's not complex at all. It's very simple. Women like dominant men.

mpetrie98,
Only if they look like Brad Pitt. The rest of us have to work at it.

Gogg nailed it. The women always pick you (see Brad Pitt exception). It's time wasted trying to convince them otherwise.

Confidence makes a big difference but you are not going to convince her she is wrong for not thinking you might be "the one".

I bet you ladies had decided that YSO was "it" before they got very far in the conversation. You probably had to "wait" for them to stop trying so hard.

Which is fine with me — if a woman is more comfortable saying "no" that way, I get the message.

It is my contention that she is NOT delivering the message. Because a guy who is 'kinda interested in me' is a guy on a hook. A guy who might do nice things for me.

Not to mention the 'adoration' fix. "Isn't it sweet that hopeless loser likes me so much?" I have met quite a few women like that: who didn't mind having someone to buff their egos on the cheap but had ZERO interest in reciprocating

But this is discussing blatant bad actors. I would think most women would say that they try the 'non confrontational' approach...but as anyone can tell you, 'hope trumps reality'. The men have an innate bias to NOT see these 'no messages'.

And let's also be clear. The woman may be diffident themselves, but when put on the spot, the 'maybe' becomes 'no'. So I am not a fan of 'nonverbal' communication any more here than I am in 'Affirmative Consent'

As I have aged, I can more clearly see when a girl is or is not interested. But what do we tell our younger men?

And frankly, when you have crap like Affirmative Consent, women have raised the cost of reading them wrong INCREDIBLY high, from 'humiliation' to 'legally guilty'.

Welcome to the world you made, ladies.

I think what is left out of this piece is the fact that the consequences of guessing wrong by men is a lot higher than in days of yore.

A man went to a woman, gave it a shot, she said yes, no or maybe and except for a red face, he walked away consequence free to try with someone else.

Now, with sexual harassment laws, social media shaming (which is more direct and personal and widespread) and things like Affirmative Consent, then this piece is sort of like Grandpa telling me about regulatory reform in the 40's vs. today: lacking current relevance.

Women's desires may not have changed, but boys are kind of getting that the bar is a lot higher. My son is very diffident about approaching a girl and I can't say I blame him much after 12 years of being programmed that sexual advances are almost always bad.

FIDO,
The sJWs have started ignoring the girls that said "It was not rape." and just filed a complaint against the guy anyway. Soon if you are not a Wall Street, lawyer, big bucks guy that's your future in the big city. (They know best.)

mepetrie: Actually, it's not complex at all. It's very simple. Women like dominant men.

Very true. For example, whenever I've gone on vacation with a girlfriend, I've always decided where we're going to go, how long we're going to be there, what we're going to see and do, and where we're going to stay and eat. And all of them found that to be incredibly sexy.

I think there are two things here that are at play.

1. I am guessing many of the guys mentioned here are actually the ones that many women are throwing themselves at so these guys are used to that and not having to work. It reminds me of a friend many years ago -- she would have been early 20s at the time -- complaining to me that men weren't approaching her -- what she really meant is the 2 guys who looked like they could be pro basketball players weren't approaching her...they were literally mobbed by women at the club.

2. Things have changed. Getting people on the phone at all now days is difficult. It is very easy to get black listed and everyone seems so connected. Of the 4 women I have put effort into this year I have learned via social media that 3 know each other though had no apparent connection when I met them. I got blacklisted in college by a girl I non-dated my freshman year... that really made things difficult for me. Her sorority plus friends/acquaintances was around 25% of the women at the school (a small school). I think it happened to me with one of the larger cliches where I used to live. Then there is all the policies, affirmative consent, etc. And who hasn't had someone they have to deal sexual harassment issues?

I heard something like this recently and it so true
A woman loves a confident man to approach her...she most hates a confident man that approaches her that she doesn't want to approach her.

"The men have an innate bias to NOT see these 'no messages'. "

Yeah, I reached the point where I had to reverse that. I was wasting too much time calling women who never called back, being stood up on dates, and putting my hopes into things that weren't going to happen. I eventually made it a rule that anything other than an unequivocal "yes" meant "no". Some women got pissed off at me for doing that. But I stuck to my guns because I found that it brought a lot of clarity to my dating life, and I learned some things about which kinds of women were really interested and which ones were just playing games.

I'm told by some of my younger compatriots (male and female) that a lot of women won't give out any contact information these days. That doesn't leave the guy very many options. What it does, for both men and women, is restrict their dating possibilities to their immediate social circle. That can turn into a cluster really quickly, when someone breaks up with someone and then starts dating someone else in the same social circle.

"It's a modern pussyman tradition"

Oh hogwash. As though ego were some modern invention (compatible with all mobile operating systems).

But more than that, who the fuck has a pen anymore? You can't even get matches from the bar to write on these days.

Yes, be direct, and then watch her squirm in response. No, this is not a trend. It is not the result of SJW, campus speech laws, consent laws, male circumcision, or people mistaking Islam for the religion of peace.

smurfy,

Guys always want a 'sure thing', a female they can approach whom they are absolutely sure will not leave their self esteem in bloody scraps on the ground. It is a human thing.

However, I think you are a bit too dismissive. 'Strong Independent women' (like THAT is new. You want strong and independent, be a prairie farmer wife) have given men the perfect excuse to try to weasel out with the least possible effort: "If you are interested, YOU call ME". Look how many female commenters generally dismiss this bit of insight from Amy...but then they generally never call if the men are to be believed.

And frankly, social media HAS raised the cost of pussy. Make a woman mad, justified or not, and she will leave pictures and savaging all over her tweets to her friends...who retweet and if your social circles are overlapping, suddenly YOU are the pariah, as a guy. A man would be a fool to approach a campus woman these days.

Yes, this has ALWAYS been a tendency of men to seek the easy route, BUT I would submit that sea change in culture are also part of the analysis.

"ANYTHING to avoid saying 'no'. And if you press her, she will resent the Hell out of you for making her say something openly and honestly. She calls it 'sparing my feelings', but it is more "I want to avoid blowback or an ugly scene"."

Well yeah. Why would I want to risk the total stranger becoming violently enraged when I could avoid that?

Cause men just get violently enraged for no good reason at all at the drop of a hat, right?

I sympathize with the whole 'size differential' thing, but men generally become violently enraged if they are A) humiliated publically or B) lead to believe that they have a chance because the woman is too much of a pussy to say 'no thanks' initially instead of wasting his time for several approaches and feels betrayed.

Granted, jerks be jerks and you can't say hello to a very small minority of people without starting an argument and some guys DO feel entitled to your time. But we are talking the run of the mill man.

Hate to break it to you FIDO, but yes, some men get violently enraged when rejected by a woman. Google news stories about women beaten, stabbed, or killed after turning a man down.

Yeah, some do, a small minority but you don't know who it will be.

The poison skittles, right?

Imagine for a minute the roles are reversed and you are about nine inches shorter than every woman you meet, and they have way more muscle than you, even the short ones. And imagine theynoften do use their superior strength against men. And imagine your whole life society tells you to avoi d provoking them and to be nice and to de-escalate. Think you might want to avoid pissing them off?

And imagine if you were constantly blamed for these violent outbursts. That you can't expect women to control themselves or be accountable for their behavior because "girls will be girls". That you should be sexually available to every woman who fancies you.

Or if you are attacked it's because your pants were too tight or you should have known better to accept a drink or a lift.