Setting prevalence aside and taking your case study as representative of some subset, there are some other things that might be going on.
First, a desire to have someone else initiate maps to the Allowing quadrant of the Wheel of Consent, which minimizes effort while maximizing feeling desired. That said, true Allowing should still be compatible with giving clear responses, so this doesn’t by itself explain the aversion you are seeing.
Second, emotional reactions follow the pattern: event ⇒ meaning (via priors) ⇒ affect ⇒ narrative. Suppose this woman holds strongly negative priors about men’s motivations. A consent request is not simply coordination, it’s an implicit demand for legibility. But if she sees the interaction as inherently adversarial, that’s giving you leverage. And if you do all the right things, that can be perceived as just more manipulation.
Now consider the internal conflict. She feels good about you initiating, then has a negative reaction to the consent request...while also consciously endorsing the belief that asking for consent is a Good Thing. Add the background tension of wanting to interact with men while viewing them as partially adversarial...and social advice to “trust your intuition” combined with long-term dissatisfaction with her relationship status and wanting to change it. That’s substantial cognitive dissonance with no widely shared conceptual handles. Hence the shutdown.
So the behavior you describe may be better explained by Allowing plus aversion to legibility (under distrust), rather than by a desire for nonconsent.
Other, non-substantive notes:
LessWrong may have high decoupling norms, but on charged topics like this, disclaimers may help prevent contextualizers from inferring views you likely don’t endorse.
Watch for selection effects! Women who give clear signals and are comfortable with explicit consent often pair off quickly. The women who remain visible in dating contexts—and thus command more of your attention—are disproportionately those who communicate more ambiguously.
Setting prevalence aside and taking your case study as representative of some subset, there are some other things that might be going on.
First, a desire to have someone else initiate maps to the Allowing quadrant of the Wheel of Consent, which minimizes effort while maximizing feeling desired. That said, true Allowing should still be compatible with giving clear responses, so this doesn’t by itself explain the aversion you are seeing.
Second, emotional reactions follow the pattern: event ⇒ meaning (via priors) ⇒ affect ⇒ narrative. Suppose this woman holds strongly negative priors about men’s motivations. A consent request is not simply coordination, it’s an implicit demand for legibility. But if she sees the interaction as inherently adversarial, that’s giving you leverage. And if you do all the right things, that can be perceived as just more manipulation.
Now consider the internal conflict. She feels good about you initiating, then has a negative reaction to the consent request...while also consciously endorsing the belief that asking for consent is a Good Thing. Add the background tension of wanting to interact with men while viewing them as partially adversarial...and social advice to “trust your intuition” combined with long-term dissatisfaction with her relationship status and wanting to change it. That’s substantial cognitive dissonance with no widely shared conceptual handles. Hence the shutdown.
So the behavior you describe may be better explained by Allowing plus aversion to legibility (under distrust), rather than by a desire for nonconsent.
Other, non-substantive notes:
LessWrong may have high decoupling norms, but on charged topics like this, disclaimers may help prevent contextualizers from inferring views you likely don’t endorse.
Watch for selection effects! Women who give clear signals and are comfortable with explicit consent often pair off quickly. The women who remain visible in dating contexts—and thus command more of your attention—are disproportionately those who communicate more ambiguously.