Saying "No" To Dates...

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It's one of the downsides of conforming sufficiently to the female gender stereotype
as men see women who do this as more 'valuable' and go after them more

It's NOT LEADING THE GUY ON. All it is doing is ACKNOWLEDGING THAT HE PAID YOU A COMPLIMENT when he expressed that you were attractive by asking him out.
Leading him on would be doing something like saying "Sorry, stud..." while fluttering your eyelashes.
It's not like you have to be either totally rude or "making him think you're interested". There's a middle ground here. Most guys aren't complete social morons: they can understand a polite let-down.

And it's not "conforming to the female stereotype" either! Men can have manners too, or hadn't you heard that?

It's encouraging to see some better responses this time around... when this question has come up in the past, overeager female members were encouraging other women to be aggressive and rude - "tell them to f**k off and die!" etc. They made it seem as if being asked out was an insult rather than a compliment of sorts.

If a man was polite when he asked you out, he deserves a polite refusal.

Of course, if he was NOT polite, one must balance curt, firm refusal without making a bad situation worse and turning a rude person into a hostile one.

I understand the "I'm flattered, but no thanks" line to be a standard, polite way of saying, no. However, the OP is talking about a complete stranger, someone she hadn't even talked to before, who asked her out having followed her into a book shop. In that case, I think it might be wiser to leave out the being flattered bit, and simply, and politely say no thanks.

When it's a stranger like this you really don't know how they'll react or what they might choose to see as encouragement so better to keep it direct and unambiguous.

sorry i dont date strangers and youve blown your chances of getting to know me better.
Please dont take it personally, I just dont date strangers.

"I have a boyfriend"

or wear a wedding ring.

Or just say you're lesbian.

Where is the poll option for "I would, but no one will date me in a million years"?

So because some men would see it that way means you have to be mean to all men? I sympathize with the original poster for receiving a lot of unwanted attention, and I'm sure that there are a few creeps in the mix, but that doesn't mean it is okay to be rude to genuinely nice guys who just want to get to know her better. It's not their fault she is overwhelmed with men, and being rude to them won't change that either.

B3dsage Nessa was *not* being rude!! !! !! !!

Just because some of us don't concur with saying "I'm flattered", it doesn't mean that we would go to the extreme of being rude! There is such a thing as middle ground. I know my manners thank you very much!

And Who_Am_I what's up with CAPS? Hello?

Getting a little too flustered?

Like Boo said, you can be polite and tell them you have a partner for example, so it gives them the "right" message that you are not interested by not beating around the bush.

Unfortunately some men might get the message with "I'm flattered", but others might not. And I stand my ground that I would *not* say I am flattered if I wasn't. It would actually annoy me.

She's not responsible for the thoughts or feelings of all men, nice or otherwise. She's responsible for her own safety though.
It's an imposition to ask a complete stranger if they want to go out like that. Society teaches women that they should be nice and compliant all the time so in this way they have been conditioned to always be nice if a man approaches. This conditioning can be dangerous though if the man is a pushy aggressive type, insistent on getting his own way.

I wonder what the response would off some nice looking young man if I went up and pestered him for a date? It would not be pleasant I can assure you!

I can't believe I'm even entering this debate to be quite honest as my initial thoughts on hearing about a person having to fight men off with a stick and moaning about it is FFS!

One can be nice without being compliant. And one can give a firm "no" without being rude.



This part doesn't make sense to me. It seems, to me at least, that if you succeed in getting a guy to leave you alone by being harsh toward him then he probably wasn't the pushy aggressive type in the first place. And that, if he is the pushy aggressive type, then being harsh just ensures that now you're dealing with an angry pushy aggressive guy.

I'm not saying that the aggressive guy deserves polite treatment. He does not. But I think it'd probably be safer for the woman to not make him feel like his manhood has been called into question, which is exactly what a harsh rejection is likely to do.

When trying to defuse a tense situation with some jerk, I've found that it's usually best to give him an out where he gets to save face. I know it's not the same situation for me as it is when a woman is being approached by a guy, but it seems like, if a woman is concerned for her safety, the same basic idea would apply.

And if the guy isn't the aggressive type, if he's just a regular decent guy, then (even though the woman isn't obligated to do so) what harm does it do to let him down easy?

If you read my posts, I advocated a non-provoking response ie no thanks or just walk away.

I did actually, and agree with that viewpoint. I probably should have quoted and responded to this bit of your last post;

I was just trying to say that, while I agree that she's not responsible for other's thoughts or feelings, it's still a good idea, from a safety standpoint, to take them into account. And that, even if taking them into account turns out to be unneccessary, it doesn't harm anyone for her to do so. That is, as long as she can find a balance between that and letting people walk all over her.

Agreed

I'm not familiar with having to let strange men down gently though; I'm usually having to ignore them being nasty hence I have a generally less tolerant nature of the behaviour of strangers all round.

Tell them that you're a ladyboy.

yes, make your gender presentation more ambiguous

ie no fashionable, low cut or tight clothing, little to no makeup and no false eyelashes especially, make no real effort with your hair and no smiling or friendly/approachable look on your face

(most women are incapable of the above btw so don't worry if you find it too hard to do)

Walk round with a 'Don't f-k with me', unsmiling look on your face and I bet these men wouldn't approach nearly so often
but then could you deal with the lack of ANY male attention?