Good grief, Leah. Walk down to the Trader Joe's and ask the cutest guy you see for some "food advice." Wear yoga pants. Do you need more instruction than that?

She's probably a low ability person and thinks she's better than she really is, but this guy isn't falling for it.

Nowhere in the tweet does it indicate that she ever broached the subject of meeting in person. Part of the breakdown of traditional gender roles, which I'm all for, is that sometimes women have to take the initiative instead of just passively waiting for men to pursue them. LW better get to it before he gives up on her.

Girl up, woman, or vice-versa, and ask the fucking guy out, ffs. IT'S 2019.
Ffs.

Oh god, I absolutely despise this age of text smeared across ten tweets. Someday we will look back and this will look as stupid as a Livejournal full of flashing GIFs.

Urgutha @ 2 - Though it must be said in her favour that she seems to be aware of it.

“I’ve tried everything except asking him for what I want! Help me, advice columnist!”

@2 Urgutha—i was wondering if anyone was going to comment on that!

Why would any guy be on Tinder if he's not enthusiastic about meeting IRL? Isn't that the entire reason Tinder exists?

@8,
As soon as I saw her name I couldn't think of anything else. I didn't even read her problem or Dan's solution.

@7: Yup.

That's a good pen name, Dunning-Kruger.

"He lives 19 miles away but hasn't asked me to meet."

You wanna meet up? Say it. That's it! We should not be excusing this level of dis-agency in adults - folks this weak should not be told they're OK, they should be told that if they want to interact with the public world, they gotta step up or step off.

@9 Tinder has not been a "hook-up app" for a long time, it's a normal dating app.

Please copy each tweet into the post using indented paragraphs for an optimal reading experience.

"But at the very least.. ask him to meet up before you ghost."
No, you don't have to ghost! Step 1: Say something "Ah well, I'm only interested in an in-person thing. Nice talking to you, good luck and godspeed." Step 2: Cease contact, move on. Done!
Ghosting would be skipping straight to step 2.
[I don't know why I feel so strongly about this. In other situations I'm totally fine with the evolution of language and also things like literally used figuratively. But man, people saying "she ghosted me!" when that is not at all what happened...]

@13: Yes, but even on "a normal dating app", why would anyone be on there who isn't interested in, y'know, DATING? (aka meeting other people on the app in real life)

@16: They might be married or in a relationship and enjoy the attention but not want to meet, or be confronted with the practical realities of escaping their spouse or significant other's attention for the time it takes to meet someone 19 miles away. Especially if the reason they are after the attention is their current partner is a controlling fucktard.

They might just like the attention.

They might sign up wanting to meet, but suffer anxiety about actually doing it.

If LW hasn't asked, they may simply fear rejection.

Maybe they don't think LW is someone they actually want to meet, but like the interaction.

Maybe, as Dan suggested, they have some trait they worry will be a dealbreaker if revealed.

Or maybe they just enjoy fucking with people on dating apps.

Regardless, before LW abandons this entirely, she has nothing to lose if she says, "Is there anything about you I don't know that makes you worry I wouldn't accept an invitation to meet you? Because if there is and you tell me what it is, there's a good chance I'd still say yes."

@2 Nice!

@16 you'll find these folks on bumble and okcupid just as readily

Please don't just post Twitter conversations as a Slog post. Reading multiple twitter posts is an awful experience and the quickest way to get me to click away.

I find it a bit jarring that her full name is given here. I realize Twitter is public, but still.

Sporty @9: Yes, but in "normal dating" people meet up.

I, too, read the question as someone who was waiting for him to make the next move, not someone who'd asked and received vague dismissals. Do you want to meet? Ask him! It's not the fricking 1950s anymore, women are allowed to approach men without being regarded as hussies. Perhaps this man is erring on the side of not being presumptuous, which is kind of sweet. Or maybe as a single dad he just hasn't got much spare time and doesn't want to say "Let's get together sometime, how does October 2020 look for you?" ASK HIM.

@21 Marty, pretty sure it's not her real name. See @13. Or Google Dunning-Kruger Effect

Biggie @17: "Is there anything about you I don't know that makes you worry I wouldn't accept an invitation to meet you? Because if there is and you tell me what it is, there's a good chance I'd still say yes."

If someone said all that to me instead of just saying "so, want to go get a drink sometime?" I'd think wow, I've dodged a bullet by not asking this passive-aggressive weirdo out!

I’m assuming that this woman isn’t that attractive or she’d be messaging with several different guys and wouldn’t care about this one so much. So that’s probably the reason he isn’t making time to meet her. Sorry to be so crass but that’s how it works on these apps. Good looking women get overwhelmed by suitors and it’s easy to ignore those who don’t step up!

Cosmic @25: I would take that as more of a reflection of how few guys on Tinder are good conversationalists than on how attractive LW is.

@17. biggie. Yes. All of these are reasons that someone might be on a dating app without wanting to meet up.

@all. How much is there still a norm of a (straight) woman waiting for the man to move first--to suggest a meeting? I've heard of dating guides and individuals having arbitrary cut-off points--like 'if he hasn't asked me out in the first four messages, I conclude he's not interested and move on'--or continue with parallel conversations and guys. It makes some sense to me as an insurance policy--who would want to go through the motions of dating someone who doesn't find them attractive? But it's likely to exclude many of the most congenial men.

I'm asking out of a general interest--I don't date women online. I like the idea of a 'Generic Fuckfinder' app for the few times (say, a year) I'm that way inclined; but they are not generic enough, in that I depressingly don't meet people's specifications of whom they want to fuck (too old, too .... well, a host of other things, but I think, just too old).

Lotta shade being thrown at the LW! Maybe she's just shy?

Their tone aside, most of the commenters (and Dan) are right: ask him out, honey. Either it's a yes, in which case yay! or it's a no, in which case you've lost nothing but a slightly frustrating text buddy.

(Let's not forget Dunning-Kruger was the one who identified the effect, not the effect itself!)

@ 29 - Dunning-Kruger is actually two persons, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, and the effect they identified is actually called the Dunning–Kruger effect, so we are allowed to refer to it that way.

I had never heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect but it makes total sense to me.

For example, I've observed that it's pretty easy in person to recognize when someone is less intelligent (and how much so), but vastly more difficult to assess whether (and by how much) others are more intelligent.

@27 it's pervasive. I'd guess... One out of twenty? That's be roughly doubling my personal experience. Even women I've known who are open with the fact that like to sleep around still want the man to make the first move. There are a handful of women who will make the first move, but they're still an exception to the rule. I think our society is actually "regressing" in this regard - Gen X women are more likely to make the first move (or any move) than Millennials are.

@32. Sportlandia. One out of twenty women make the first move? Not to initiating contact online, but to saying 'let's meet up!'. Wow. Speaking personally, I wouldn't want to be the guy in that context because I wouldn't like the 'male' gender role ... but then there must be a hell of a lot of liberal straight guys who also don't particularly like the gender script?

Sportlandia's guess @32 sounds completely realistic to me. Although I recently made the first move in a sexual relationship ("Hey...wanna hook up?"), it was the first time I'd done so in my 20+ years of dating. Of course, I mean only that it was the first explicit move...I've certainly acted in various subtle (or not) varieties to move along most (all?) of my sexual relationships, actions which felt like clear indications of interest to me, but god knows how obvious they were to the other party. I don't consider myself the type of girl who is scared to make a first move--I never fretted that it would scare a guy off or anything like that. I just never needed to before. So I would guess that in addition to social conditioning (blah blah blah) there's a patience factor. I was generally happy to continue getting to know someone longer, to spend more time in a friendship space, before things progressed. I can't say quite why: because I had no reason to think I needed to make the move? Because I was more sure than your average guy might be that my object of interest wasn't going to move on to someone else if I waited? Because I was in less of a hurry to have sex? Or more interested than the guy in the anticipation, the seduction? Totally unclear to me.

But anyway, yeah, 1 in 20 seems fair.

Just to clarify my statement @34, I was often very interested in sex, I would guess as much as the guy...I just may have been in less of a hurry about it.

Proud five percenter (and GenXer) here. I guess because my taste in men is extremely specific -- with a strong tendency towards shy lads -- I had no choice but to do the approaching. Also, I delight in subverting gender expectations. It just seems bizarre to me that women can both be picky and not take the initiative when they do find what they want. Sounds like a masterclass in futility to me.

As a young woman I went after men I was attracted to, so it surprises me women today are hesitant to move the story along.
After a month, it’s time LW to insist on a meeting. Suggest a bar, and down a few drinks before he gets there.

I do think you need to prepare yourself for a no or a no show, LW. Why has he not asked to meet you, is he hiding something.
In future connect and meet, within a week. Unless you’re happy to have play pen pals, then continue as is.

One more clarification: if this LW is wringing her hands and hasn't yet just asked the guy out, that's just silly. How hard is it to say: Let's meet up for coffee? I've never done online dating, so my data points for what counts as "making the first move" are all different, but that seems an obvious one to me.

@34. ciods. Supposing that the aim is to get pleasurably laid, both the (main) genders in het dating would seem, very coarsely, to be taking up bad strategies.

For women, very many men would be willing to go to bed with them. A good strategy would be to take them up; then to discard the unsatisfactory lovers and partners, and cultivate a relationship with the man (or men) with whom the sex is happy. Instead, straight women stereotypically waylay themselves by asking whether they are in love, whether he loves them, 'is he the one?' etc. Returning to the basic set-up, men find it much harder to find someone to bed with them. A good strategy would be to make a big investment of time and effort in a particular woman, in order to persuade her he's committed (that the answer's 'yes' to some of her questions), or just to stand out. Instead, straight men stereotypically play the field, hoping (usually vainly) to have sex with many women, and engage in slighting behaviors like the scattershot posting of short messages on dating sites etc.

Obviously this isn't a characterisation of every straight male and straight female psychology.

Maybe the reason the mismatch of strategies comes about is that getting happily laid isn't equally the goal for straight men and straight women here. A sociobiologist will say both are seeking to maximise the chances of their genes surviving (but I dislike sociobiology). Whatever the aim in dating, though, it seems to me the two groups would do better if they swapped their strategies....

Harriet @40: Perhaps. Most of the "casual" sex I've had (by which I mean, sex without a larger romantic relationship structure in place) was nonetheless with men I knew at least somewhat already. In most cases, I enjoyed it, but the enjoyment was more from the anticipation and seduction and the excitement of interacting with someone new in a new way--maybe from trying to be an unexpectedly open and fun sexual partner myself--rather than because the sex itself was all that good, taken out of that context. (For instance, I've never had an orgasm in a casual sex encounter.) And the newness fades fast. That's still a fun thing to do, in my opinion, but it's sort of a different goal than to get into a situation where you can have consistently good sex with someone.

I think I would have been up for more casual sex were it not that whenever I did it, I found myself entangled with someone who wanted some sort of continuing relationship. I never figured out how to just sleep with someone and then stop. Perhaps that's because I did know the men already, but my girlfriends who slept with random people (of the sort you might easily never see again) reported even less likelihood of having good sex. I'm sure there are many factors, including youth and inexperience asking for what you want, but there's also some indication that a guy up for a random fuck may not be as interested in putting the time in to figure out how to work any woman's particular body.

For me, the most rewarding casual sex I've had is in the context of an open relationship. Because I have a primary partner (and anyone else I sleep with knows that), the pressure to make sure the other person is exactly right is reduced; I don't have to evaluate them with the expectation that they might fulfill all my needs, sexual or otherwise, and as a result I can appreciate more someone with some qualities I like, even if others qualities would be a dealbreaker were I considering a full relationship. When I was single it was hard to not have that calculation always going; even if you were up for casual sex, there was always some chance that if things went really well, it might turn into a relationship. So that quickly eliminated people who were fun to fuck and even fun to hang out with but whom I didn't want to date. Most men, I find, are just as interested in being in a relationship as women, and don't believe "it's just sex." Or maybe that was just the men I knew. Either way, it was akin to impossible to have ongoing sex remain truly casual for me when I was single. And frankly it's just hella awkward to tell a perfectly nice guy that the sex was fine, but not good enough to repeat. Or tell a guy that you'd be happy to fuck him, but you'd never want to date him. How does one do that politely? I never figured it out, and so for me it was easier to just not start a sexual relationship at all.

@41. ciods. For me, 'cruising' and gay clubs were tremendously liberating. I had a sense of ... not having sex with a particular person, or of pleasurably anticipating or retrospecting having sex with a particular person, but of being fucked by the whole scene, or whole night. No problems with casual, per se, for either penile or prostate orgasms. In this respect, that of the ethos one embraces in having a lot of casual sex, the history of patriarchy and extant forms of gender interaction just make it different for gays and straight women; lots of sex may be liberatory for women, yes, but is also 'slutty'; exposes women to greater degrees of stigma; threatens to trigger familial sanctions and violate social norms; carries greater physical, as well as reputational, risk for women, etc.

I'd have one question, 'how far is what gratifies an individual woman sexually particular to her?'--while what gets a man off remains generic? People certainly talk about arousal as if these mechanisms are more finely individuated in women. (E.g. you just did--about a man having the time and commitment to learning how an individual woman's body works). But the idea's a bit odd to me. The sexual organs develop from the same tissue in the embryo, after all. The idea is different from 'women typically only have orgasms with men they love' or 'are comfortable with'. My life-experience would suggest to me that cocks are all pretty similar; and while my sexual experience with women is much slighter, it hasn't seemed to me that the female genitalia comes in personally unique forms, or is unresponsive to (can't be 'unlocked by') a basic respectful competence in love-making. (My experience will be unusual in that I started having sex with women a long time after I had learned essential fucking etiquette, either in private or semi-public, in homo contexts).

@41. I think almost everyone, women and men, has a hard time separating out the purely erotic motivations for 'casual' sex--something like 'having a partnered orgasm', at least for men--and the ongoing life-management or life-filling ones, e.g. to find companionship, to find a cooking partner or 'someone to cook for me', to find, ultimately, a co-parent. It seems that even an absolute alpha like Jeff Bezos can't keep 'the wife' / 'no more than a fuckbuddy' distinction in place.

Whereas straight men tell themselves they want the fuck, and disavow how they might also like or crave a relationship, women are socialised, I guess, to project the whole setting in which they might have sex. I would think that straight male polyamorists wanting more playmates, though, can sometimes be unsympathetic in how they imagine social conditioning has made het women prudish ('it's patriarchy that has told you sex is bad; throw off the shackles of the patriarchy!'). A simpler reason more women don't have casual sex is slut-shaming.

@40 the problem is that women frequently have multiple suitors and the investment economy is limited. If you invest in one particular woman early on, you will invariably have nothing to show for it.

W/r/t casual hookups, why is getting off harder? I'd assume that's the point of a casual hookup, I know I'm much more likely to bring my A+ game with a new partner than a reliable one (where sex can have other uses)... In my opinion you've got to pay off a hookup. I would have assumed getting off more easily in those scenarios

Harriet @43: Slut-shaming is real, but another simple reason is they just want it less. I think that in a forum like this with a lot of high-libido women (myself included), that's easy to forget. When you throw in the various issues around casual sex--everything from concern for personal safety and health to concern for the feelings of others--for some women, it's just not worth the bother.

I consider myself high-libido, for a woman; my male partners have backed this up. A number of years ago I had some blood work done and was told I had high levels of testosterone for a female. (My doctor at the time offered to medicate me to "fix this," which is a different conversation.) I was not surprised to learn this (nor did I want it "fixed"), and I strongly suspect it's correlated (if not out-right causal) with my libido.

As to your question @42, it's a good one. Since I'm straight, I'm not very qualified to answer it: I never have sex with women, so my own body is the only female one I have experience with. I would be interested to hear answers from people who sleep with women. But I can share my experience, and I have some anecdotal data from straight girlfriends.

I started having orgasms at 15, with a vibrator, and never managed to have one without until I was 30. In that time I had many good lovers and excellent sex, and plenty with thoughtful guys who cared about my pleasure and all that. It wasn't their fault. I was sure it was just how my body worked and we would work a vibrator into our sex lives, usually without any issue. I may have had some sort of female death-grip syndrome going; unclear. When I was 30 I got a new partner who was able to make me come (or pick whatever phrase you find least offensive) through oral sex, which I had previously found nice but boring after a while, and it was completely amazing to me. By copying what he did with his tongue, I was able for the first time to masturbate to orgasm without a vibe. Now I can do it (fairly) easily.

Why the hell did that take 15 years? I was sexually active the whole time; once I started having sex, I never went more than a month without. I masturbated, I explored, I was not timid and neither were the men I was with. Somehow it was just complicated. Is that typical? I have no idea.

I've had exactly three vaginal orgasms in my life. Never could repeat that magic.

I knew many girls in my twenties who never had an orgasm, partnered or otherwise. Many more who only had them solo. I don't know a single man who can say that. I don't know what the explanation is--there are so many possible factors--but overall, it seems it's harder for women to figure out. I conjecture it's also more individual--I expect anything that worked on their ex-girlfriends, my partners tried on me, and clearly it didn't work--but I can't say for sure. Here's where we need some straight guys or bi or lesbian women to throw in their two cents.

Harriet @42: Your description of cruising and gay clubs sounds fascinating.

The LW is talking about a situation in which she’s already in communication with someone but she is literally waiting for the man to ask her out. Which seems futile and absurd. 
Are y’all saying that 1 in 20 in a situation like this, or 1 in 20 in which you’ve initiated the communication in the first place?



I’ve approached men and initiated plenty of times (also Gen Xer here if it matters) but even still, it’s far more common for men to have approached me. Some of the time, the man’s initiation did lead to something, but it’s not like I was playing coy or waiting for him to make the move. It’s literally that if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me (maybe I hadn’t noticed him, maybe I hadn’t thought about him in that way, maybe I'd just been thinking about other things and then once he started the initiation it put my mind on that track). I mean, it’s just generally true that men hit on women more often than women hit on men, and playing the numbers game I’d say that is going to skew how often interactions come from male initiation. But that’s a totally different thing than how often a woman who is already in an interaction with a man is the one to move it to the next level which would be the case here and what I assume Harriet was asking about.


The number might be the same and that’s the 1 in 20 answer y’all were giving, but I’m not clear on that.

Also yes what Ciods said about being in less a hurry. Especially when I was younger, interactions with men often felt like tugging on the reins - there is a real thing where it feels like every action escalates to the next faster when sometimes I'd like to linger longer in the pleasant moment. Which Harriet, I think is part of the answer to your question too. It's not about rushing off to the sex (except for when it is) - female sexuality doesn't always work like that. Male sexuality is way more linear- you get horny, get a hard on, ejaculate, with all the fun stuff in between. Female sexuality goes round and round, and yes, knowing someone's body makes a huge amount of difference. Also knowing your own body- I know what to do to make myself have an orgasm, and that made casual hookups fun. But it's nothing like sex with someone who knows my body can we can be more intense and I don't have to follow the same go-to in order to get off. Also bad sex can sometimes be unpleasant or painful.

Another thing... I think when guys get horny it seems like they just have this need to fuck something, and without that, they'll just masturbate, now they are relieved for a while of this need.

When women get horny, it's sort of a slow burn. You stay in this state, you can literally give yourself orgasms over and over and over again if you want (once you learn to use a vibrator) so this idea that you just go out and find this guy and then you take care of your horniness- that's not how it feels. In fact, sometimes it seems not really worth the effort as you are just going to be right back where you started anyway. What makes the difference is if the guy also makes you horny, if you are attracted to him, if you enjoy him, if you want to discover the mystery of his body. So it actually makes a difference what the interaction is like.

I don't think I have a high libido. I have moments when I do and moments when it seems to entirely disappear. I have an easier time with orgasm though so I think that has made me more open than a lot of women with average libidos. If I had this same average libido but also had a hard time having an orgasm with men who did not know my body very well, I can't imagine why I would bother with casual sex at all as the main incentive / turn on would be the shared pleasure of a shared interaction with a man I find really hot and with whom I have a lot of chemistry, and you don't get that from hook ups.

Male sexuality is more mechanical, generally. And this has nothing to do with being in love or with slut shaming or with patriarchy, though of course once you add all of those things to the mix, the situation gets even more complicated.

Harriet @40: You've just rephrased the old trope "men use relationships to get sex, women use sex to get relationships." But your observations have also been made by the PUA community, which essentially proposes underhanded strategies men can use to play to what women want to hear in order to get sex. You're right that most women's aim isn't simply to get laid -- hence our continued disputing of this idea that "women are lucky because they can get all the casual sex they want." Whether socialisation or biology or some combination of the two, women's aim in (online or offline) dating is rarely just to get dick.

Sporty @44: My experience is more Ciods's than yours. In a one-time hookup, the man has zero incentive to make sure you have a good enough time to come back for more; his only incentive is to get off and get out. Perhaps your "A+ game" is my "he's pulling out stock moves and doesn't care about what -I- like." The first fuck is never the best fuck, because you have no idea what they particularly like or vice versa, there is some degree of nervousness, and probably some degree of intoxication. Also, haven't you previously spoken of not being able to come with new partners? Why would it be the opposite for women in the same situation?

EmmaLiz @47: Now you have got me wondering what the "1 in 20" estimate represents. One in 20 women will -ever- approach men (that sounds way too low), or 1 in 20 opposite-sex approaches is a man approaching a woman? That sounds more likely, and I agree with you, that's not necessarily because the woman thinks she should not do the approaching but other factors like men think they -should- do the approaching and therefore get there first.

one in 20 approaches is a woman approaching a man, of course.

@27: In my experience, this is still utterly pervasive - and Science™ agrees!

(Psychology Today isn't the most consistent in terms of whether what's published is actually backed by research at all, but this is reporting on a specific study.)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201104/why-dont-women-ask-men-out-first-dates

@34: "I was generally happy to continue getting to know someone longer, to spend more time in a friendship space, before things progressed."

This is especially funny in the context of all of the dicussion about the concept of the friendzone. The consensus narrative I've seen in my spaces is that being friends with people you're interested in sexually is dishonest and manipulative by definition (woe to "demisexuals," or "people who don't want to have sex with complete strangers," as I call us, since our good-faith behavior resulting from only wanting to have sex with people we know and like is consistently interpreted as bad-faith deceit by people who do like to fuck strangers). I do think that it's a good rule to meet people in person after one, maximum two conversations online. It weeds out all of the people who never actually want to meet and a bunch of people who don't really know what they are looking for (who are exhausting to try to date, even if they're acting in good faith).

@52: My impression is the "friendzone" refers to a period after someone has made an explicit move, and been turned down, right? And then pretends that's fine, they can just be friends, but secretly hopes it turns into more? I was referring to the period before any declarations have been made, which I think of as distinct. But it's totally possible I misunderstood the phrase.

As for

being friends with people you're interested in sexually is dishonest

eye roll

Sorry, but that seems ridiculous to me. Friendship and attraction are often woven together, and to try to act like one never evolves into the other, or that you can't have the one if the other is there, is just hoo-haw.

Hmm, none of my special characters posted. Sorry if any of the above formatting is unclear.

@47 I recall a scenario - after a drunked night one, me and this woman made out. We already knew each other socially, so we made plans to hang out again. It was understood that we were gonna spend the night together. We had a drink or two at the bar, and as I was paying, I asked, leadingly, "so, what's next?". She replied "don't make me say it". So I said, OK, we're going to your place. We did that, and had a pretty hot fucking-until-6am-lets-try-to-get-45-mins-of-sleep-before-work type of night.

"Don't make me say it" was what stuck with me.

@53 No - the "Friendzone" is when you've waited too long to make a move on someone, and they've come to see you as a friend rather than potential sexual partner - and invariably see your friendship as a long con to get into their pants. This is what's called being a "nice guy".

@44. Sportlandia. Sure, the 'investment economy' is limited. The 'anything' economy is limited--'the time economy', 'the seriously supporting a sports team' economy. 'I wasn't too upset my Rams went down in the Superbowl because I've always had a thing for the Pats'. The question here, though, is whether it's a better strategy for het guys to split their attention up, say, six ways in the hopes of finding one woman it's promising to cultivate--for the purposes of casual sex. A lot of clichés in popular culture would suggest otherwise--the big romantic gesture, the bouquet of red roses, the 'sweeping a woman off her feet'....

@45. ciods. I am genuinely unsure whether 'good sex' for most women is 'sex in a meaningful relationship', sex that is worthwhile in whole-life terms. My suspicion is that more women would be inclined to pursue happy casual sex if ... well, if they thought they could get it; if it was routinely better; if relations between the sexes were less of a war zone. But I genuinely don't know. I have low levels of testosterone--for anyone; casual sex for me has been about being part of a community, and sex in a relationship about being wanted and needed.

@50. Bi. I was also saying that straight men are socialised to think they're looking just for sex, when they want love as much as anybody else.

Generally, I don't think any worldview, any religion, any organisation of sex and family, which believes 'women want it less than men', 'women have no interest in casual sex', is that equitable or good for women. In these social systems, some women gain status by observing chastity or celibacy. And they are often the most insistent voices in enforcing abstinence on younger women. But I suspect this is a malformation: that it's not the case that women want sex less.

@45. ciods. Very much the sense I'm getting is that inter-individual differences in female sexual response aren't down to anatomy. I've never had any difficulty finding my female lovers' G-spots (nor in accepting direction if proffered), though maybe younger men and less experienced lovers of any kind can't do this automatically. And the action during oral sex to induce a woman's orgasm right at the last (to tap or flick against her clit in a predictably repetitive way) is one of the most straightforward tongue-shapes in the repertoire. And so if it works with some women and not with others, that has to be down to ... what? Psychic factors? Psychosomatic factors?

Sportlandia @56: I don't get this. I mean, I believe you that that's the common definition. But, if you'll excuse me, it sounds like some boy bullshit: a retroactive rationalization to cover up the fact that the girl just wasn't into the guy. If she found him attractive to begin with, she probably still would after becoming friends; if she didn't, she won't later either, and it's not that he waited too long, it's that she was never into him anyway.

That's my guess, anyway.

Harriet @59: For what it's worth, tapping/flicking never works for me. I'm sure psychology has something to do with it for lots of people, but there are anatomical differences too.

@60 it's both. It's an easy ego-salve for sure, but what you're missing is that female attraction is more fungible than male attraction - generally, if a man is not attracted to a woman, no amount of displays from her can change that; however, it's very possible for a man to impress his way into a woman's heart - but also possible for a man to tarry his way our of a woman's heart. So what happens is that boy meets girl, girl is receptive to advances that the boy never makes, she eventually moves on, when boy makes move, it's too late. That's the "friendzone".