"You are practically a dude though"

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For all members here that identify as female, do you ever get this? I have, on occasion. For those that do, how do you feel about it when people say this to you (or something similar)?

Yep, I get it.

Men often have men conversations around me when they wouldn't with popular more pretty feminine girls. I'm under the impression that a lot of these women don't have any idea what men talk about with other men.

It's quite disheartening not only being exposed to some of the most awful sexist crap, but being treated with less respect than other females.

Well I don't know... sometimes, when there's three or four guys and me I do get treated like one of the guys, but it doesn't really bother me. In fact, I think it'd bother me more if I was treated very differently by them just because I'm a woman... but it's not like they have any sexual or sexist conversations when I'm there, so maybe that's the reason I'm not bothered by it.

I stay in that role intentionally. This way I can have male friends without them hoping for "something more" or accusing me of friendzoning or any other problems that could emerge.
I feel comfortable with this. But they don't dare to talk sexist to me. Well, they wouldn't be my friends if they did.

Unfortunately, in some cases it still leads to people wanting more despite being in that role. I knew a guy who I thought just wanted to be friends with me, we'd discuss crushes together, and he'd tell me about the women he liked, so I got the impression that he knew that the friendship was always going to remain platonic.

But I soon realised something was up when he started showing up with gifts out of the blue for no particular occasion. I told him that it wasn't necessary, but he insisted on it. I had mentioned that I'm gay before the random presents, and had made my disinterest clear already.

This left me in a difficult situation, because I knew that he had been suicidal before in the past, so I wanted to make sure that I let him down gently. He started hitting on me not long after the presents. Mentioning that I wasn't into men didn't deter him, in fact, it only seemed to make him more interested because he viewed it as a challenge, that I was "playing hard to get".

They would say that he's "not like the other guys", and was under the impression that something horrible must've happened to me in the past that "made me gay" or something , despite me explaining that this wasn't the case at all.

It was difficult to get him to leave me alone, he kept saying that I was perfect, and holding me up on this pedestal, and seemingly insulting himself as a means of complimenting me "I'm not as *insert complement here* as you are".

No matter what I did, he complemented it and tore himself down in the process.

A part of me wanted to physically shake him and tell them to stop doing that, I didn't want him to tear himself down.

So, I tried to point out how I wasn't this beam of perfection that he seemed to think I was, but that just made it worse- complements about how I was so humble about my perfection began.

I felt trapped. No matter what I did, he kept trying and trying. He mentioned how he'd never been as close to a girl as me, that he'd never had a female friend before that they could discuss girls with. Eventually, he got the message and we agreed to be friends, but I'll admit that I tend to just avoid him if at all possible. Thankfully we slowly fell out of contact.

Maybe if he'd respected me (taken my word for not being interested, instead of insisting that I was Bi and that I would realise this if I got with him) then we could've truly stayed friends. But our friendship just wasn't healthy, it was just leading to him inflicting self-hatred, and making me extremely uncomfortable.

Oh, yes, I had some such encounters too.
I decided the most fair way if I don't mean to give a guy a chance is being direct about it.
And if a guy refuses to get the message, I start to play an awful b*tch. I lose a friend but I had lost him anyway the moment he refused to get my message.

Luckily, now that I am married, it doesn't happen anymore. In Poland marriage is considered a very serious matter, so I'm no longer seen as "available" to lonely guys.

But I admit, before this, I ceased contact with some men I geniunely liked because they seemed too prone to my interest and I was afraid of this scenario.