I find it incredibly bizarre that this sentiment pops up consistently.

Eeehhh, maybe. It certainly gives them a talking point, but I feel if a guy already has to have warped views about women to decide "we'll now I'm going to just be a jerk to women back!"

If he asks, and you say no, give me yours, he's kind of a fool to expect a call. I am wondering though how I'd react in that situation. As soon as you said no give me yours it's clear what's going on, but it seems the accommodating thing to do would be to give it anyway. At that moment, I'm probably a little hurt, so…

Guh, that's just dumb advice, and if a guy thinks less of you for being interested in him he's not worth it to begin with. We'd ALL be better off if we moved away from the idea that the guy must ask the woman. I'm happy to let her come to me for a change, then I don't have to try to do any mind reading!

I'm amused by how many responses to you are complete strawmen completely distorting what you said. It shows they can't argue against your actual point.

Yeah, and I understand that there's no telling what someone is like off the bat and not taking risks, but you can make judgement calls about people after talking to them for a little bit. Context matters.

Exactly, don't even bother asking for a number. If she wants to give it to you, fantastic, and then you can certainly assume it's not fake. If you really want to follow up with her, let her make the decision to contact you. Anything that could help to put her at ease in case she is wary is a good thing.

You seem to be assuming all women behave respectfully and only do shitty things to people doing bad things to them. That's just not true. Women's motivations also vary. Maybe that's not what you would do, but there are plenty of women who find it an easy/humorous way to blow guys off regardless of how they acted.

Thank you, finally, some honesty.

It would be nice to have that option? Women already have that option, anywhere. They just don't use it.

The whole asking for money thing was totally unexpected. And way too common—apparently that wasn't just an unlucky streak of horribles for me.

Yeah, I'm glad someone admitted it first though!

De-contextualized penis. Is that a new instagram filter?

OOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Sounds admirable. How someone would belittle you for promoting initiatives to help young men get past their misogyny is mind boggling. Ignore the haters, seems you're doing much more good than they are anyway since they're just throwing their blind fury into the interwebs.

For people willing to listen, the issue is the message, not the messenger.

It's just the nature of ideologues. Everything must fit in their narrow interpretation of how the world works.

Yep. Aside from those who are just trolling, I think a lot of people can't really deal with the notion that there are multiple factors in play for behavior like this, and want to boil it down to one single thing to suit whatever viewpoint they're coming from.

So much this. We should always question our own assumptions, not to mention the assumptions inherent in any ideology. Ideology is essentially a prism through which to see how the world works and how humanity does and should navigate it. But humanity is very dynamic and diverse, and even more informed/less extreme…

Best of luck, fwiw, your posts are always very thoughtful and informative.