The complicating factor here, for me at least, is that if someone is "joke flirting" with me, I will not realize s/he was perhaps flirting until a week or so later. I have gotten a little less clueless about it over the decades; when I was in my fifties and younger, I would not have ever realized it at all. When I was in high school, so far as I knew, no girls were interested in me in the slightest. At my twentieth high school reunion, two women told me that they had really liked me in high school, but that I had not been interested. I was shocked.

I suspect that there is no way to resolve both of these difficulties simultaneously.

Well, again, I think escalation is key. Very gradual escalation. She joke-flirts with you. You, tentatively, joke-flirt back (instead of running away). She, encouraged, flirts a little more obviously. You respond in kind. And so on, until both people are very clear what's going on. :-)

"Well, again, I think escalation is key. Very gradual escalation."

Yes, a week later, when it occurs to me what was happening.

This debate is a red herring. It artificially narrows things down to a nice place/event at which nice people do nice things which might temporarily be soured by inadvertent behavior. The "NiceGuyTM Temporarily Derailed By Impure Thoughts" is a smokescreen distracting us from the real source of the real problem.

If you are being targeted, 3 requirements have already been met:

1) You have been identified as subordinate=weak.

2) You will not be asked for permission, opinions or feeback; any attempt at providing such unsolicited will be ignored at the very least.

3) You are surrounded by a critical minimum mass of people who can/will be depended upon to stand by and do nothing or aid and abet.

The root of the problem is encroachment, taken as an entitlement and way of life by white heterosexual "alpha males" with virtually no repercussions to this moment of this day. By "encroachment" I mean every imaginable permutation of creeping, expansion, monopolization, etc.

Right now I live on a block "commanded" by someone who may not even own the space he occupies. He announces his every movement as loudly as possible, cuts as wide an arc in his vehicle possible - never mind legally or illegally - and even loudly orders his dogwalker to march back and forth across from my house to tease my dog instead of going around the block. What happens if anyone contests his right to curse in florid detail in his driveway at his "normal volume"? He stands in that driveway with his engine and speakerphone running and shouts even louder that my dog is louder than he is - all while the rest of the block sits in silence. (Where are the cops? Nowhere ever. If anyone a shade darker than this man stops in front of my house because their child is a guest for a playdate, a cop will descend as if from heaven on a cloud out of nowhere to tell them to move along. I stood at my door and saw that happen, too.)

It's all very nice that NiceGuyTM polices himself at parties. Meanwhile real gangsters are out there who don't need a gun or a posse because they can rest assured nobody will say boo to them for very long.

Umm...Mary Sue, I think you're having a different conversation, about a different topic, than the one I'm having.

I'm not sure what Mary Sue's comment is really about, but I'm also not sure what your entry is about. Are you hoping to teach the subtleties of social interaction to geeky males? I agree with MS that it's a red herring, that nice guys are Not The Problem. "the predilections that can, and do, lead to rape and violence are not isolated."

www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/profile.html

PS - I think what's disturbing about this long-winded entry is the bizarre "give" someone a "graceful" exit. How about we teach everyone involved that "No" is always acceptable, graceful, and a complete sentence? Instead of "it sucks to reject someone", how about "rejecting someone is a kindness done so they can focus their attention on people who reciprocate?" Instead of working harder and harder to tell people they have to come up with The Perfect Approach, how about the opposite, that of the 1000s of people you will ever meet of the right age/ gender/ social strata, only a miniscule number will be available, interested, and in the same city as you, so go out there and ask lots of women, ask awkwardly and imperfectly, but just ask and accept no from the 80% who say it? That attraction and pheromones are usually determined in less than 30 seconds and, well, if someone happens to change their mind, they'll find you.

Um -- I don't know what to say to you either. Again, you seem to be talking about something different than what I'm interested in addressing.

And I wrote a long essay because, in my experience, I'm talking about a complex and subtle issue. Which is not the same issue you're talking about, I'm pretty sure.

This whole entry is great, but the crowning glory is the Bujold. I don't know how many times I've read A Civil Campaign, but I hope it's not half as many times as the times I will probably end up reading it.

Cool. Thanks for the thoughtful post.

As I noted elsewhere, I really like this entry, and wish that I had read something like it long ago, like in high school.

I wanted to add a couple of side notes about email apologies--the following are intended as elaborations on what you wrote, not as disagreements:

1. Be careful with subject lines. A subject line like "An apology" makes clear what the note is, which is a good thing to do if you really want to apologize. Whereas a subject line like "There's something important I need to tell you," on the other hand, or "Please read this!", or no subject line at all, may provoke more anxiety than it alleviates.

2. I think keeping the goal of the apology in mind is important—as you noted, it should be “to make clear [your] regret for behaving badly[...], without demanding forgiveness.” I haven't yet read A Civil Campaign, so maybe the following is redundant, but I thought it was worth noting:

Even if the apology is the best thing ever written, the recipient may not respond to it. Maybe they accepted the apology but don't feel the need to interact further; maybe they were upset by it; maybe they decided not to read it; maybe it got lost in the mail. If you don't get a response, you may never know why, and you have to be okay with that uncertainty. Because no matter how tempting this may be, sending a followup note saying something like "Hey, didn't you get my apology? Why didn't you respond telling me all is forgiven and I'm a nice person after all?" is not a good idea.

Another great post. (And I have no idea what those earlier folks are on about.)