This is a very good example of male privilege. What comes to mind as the first thing that would happen as a result of this?
Most women are smaller than the men that hit on them, and are constantly told they need to be vigilant against assault (this is a consequence of victim-blaming, which is wrongheaded, but nonetheless psychologically influencial). A woman saying "I'm not interested" is directly rejecting the man hitting on them, and only for her own reasons. I know people who have been slapped because they rejected someone openly. In a situation that wasn't a crowded environment (for example, if a woman is being harassed on a street) things could easily go worse.
On the other hand, if the woman says "Sorry, I have a boyfriend," the implication is that she would sleep with him, he's so attractive, but sorry, another man already owns her. Men respect men far more than they respect women. I am not a physically intimidating man, but I can defuse situations between aggressive men in clubs hitting on my women friends quite easily by claiming to be their boyfriend.
This has nothing to do with politeness and, like many interactions between women and men, everything to do with survival.
That is a very bleak, and, if I may say so, quite sexist world view. Or I guess I should count myself lucky that in my work/social environments, people don't base their respect of other people on gender, but on behaviour and attitude.
Also, I don't necessarily see vigilance against a potential attacker as wrongheaded. I see it as sensible, you're hedging against a very-low-probability but very-dire-consequence risk. No matter how close we come to complete gender equality, there will always be mentally disturbed persons who will attack people weaker than them. (Note that I am not saying that most assailants or rapists have mental disorders, it seems the research says only ~ 10% do.)
Men get slapped or hit with bottles or glasses when they come on too strong as well. I think this is bad behavior and it's because of the person. You think it matters if a girl breaks something glass on your face that she's weaker? You're still going to have glass pieces embedded in your face.
This is not a gender issue. It's an issue of not assaulting another person.
You made an invalid comparison and, interestingly, when analyzed your scenario exactly supports tedks' argument. Both scenarios hinge on a man acting aggressively against a woman who doesn't share his wishes. In both cases, the man controls the situation: he can choose to leave, deescalate or push harder. In contrast, the woman has no option to go back to enjoying her evening unless he chooses to allow it. All of the other options involve risk: calling for help (or the police) may not work and may have a social cost (“what a bitch, he was just trying to buy her a drink”). If she tries to leave, he can follow her to somewhere with fewer witnesses. Maybe she calls the police: do they send someone, does the officer arrive quickly enough, does the guy talk them into leaving without doing anything – and does any of this enrage him enough to assault her later?
Sure, the single most common outcome is that a drunken ass eventually gets the message and leaves her alone but all of those are possibilities which she has to weigh – and do so with the knowledge that if one of the low but still way too common terrible outcomes happens, TV and the internet will be full of people lining up to say it was her fault for making the wrong choice.
That's why tedks rightly called it male privilege: you or I can simply go out to a bar and have a beer without thinking about any of this. Given the circumstances, I can completely understand why someone who doesn't enjoy that privilege would choose an effective alternative even if some guy thinks it's breaking the rules.
You mean the guy has to take all of the risk of rejection because women don't approach men. Let's be real here: I've been approached by more gay men than by women in my life. You're saying having to work for something is privilege?
Some people don't take like to take no for an answer. Some people will continue to engage, despite a woman making it clear that they are not interested; some of those people, however, respect other men enough that they will disengage when they find out a woman is "taken".
And as for the politeness of lying, consider "white lies". Sometimes honesty, even non-brutal honesty, is not the polite option.
