Men need to get better at picking up on those signals. They are notoriously bad about it.

Again, to be fair, there's a double standard at play here. Particularly when you're young, women don't generally notice when many men are flirting or expressing interest either. Because they're awkward and weird about it, that's how it lands.

It's the young woman's friends who tell her as a 3rd party witness what was happening after they go off giggling and do a breakdown.

So she learns what flirting looks like and how to interpret some young man suddenly being up in her face and being g weird.

It's not like many of us come prepackaged with all this awareness and behavioral and relationship expertise.

We have to learn it. Slowly and painfully.

But it's not a focus for young men, so they don't learn it.

It's not that young women are being unclear signaling interest.

It's that young men are not socialized to care about it or to learn to recognize it.

They can learn to track game. They can learn to diagnose mechanical aberration and what those sounds, smells, and vibrations mean. They can learn to care for livestock and recognize health from the way cattle stand and look at each other.

So clearly they're capable.

They just don't develop or value the skillset or the inclination for relationship building. It's not "manly".

And that's why women don't approach or initiate. It's not because we're afraid of rejection. We get rejected all the time in so many more ways than you men do. Rejection is part of our daily life.

It's because we'd have better luck getting most men's attention and a response by literally beating our heads against the nearest wall.

And I think maybe young men are going to learn how crucial those breakdowns are in educating about awkward interactions because young people are more isolated then they were. I don't think young women are getting that education like they used to. And in conjunction with young men being trained to be more aggressive and gross about it, which is infinitely more offputting and dehumanizing, men are getting the response to flirting that women have always gotten from men.

Hostility or obliviousness. Apathy.