Men don't know how they are

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Said my friend.

Really? They're just going round deliberately flirting with me oblivious to the fact that they are sending me signals of interest. And I'm in the wrong for interpreting signals of interest as... wait for it... actual f*****g interest.

Why do men get a free pass and women get the role of stupid idiot that believed she could be loved?

It's a double standard.

I think women are flirting with me and interested too so it’s nit just men.
Maybe nts just like flirting for fun, I know some do as they admit so.

Obviously I'm not doing too good with the trying not to be negative first thing in the morning when I get up.

I’m usually negative at night. Did you maybe dream about it?

No my friend really has a soft spot for this guy and she messaged me yesterday how he's probably unaware that he hurt me. Another friend said the above title. And I just feel like if a guy is charming and polite he can get away with anything and us girls are just silly stupid things with stupid feelings and can expect to get hurt for no reason. I was thinking about her text message this morning.

It just seems like women have this weird "boys will be boys" attitude. As though men are seen to be free of responsibility and can't be expected to actually care.

We don't. We just get told that other people aren't responsible for our feelings when this happens to us.

I don't know when I'm flirting, but that's likely due to ASD =)

I've been accused of it quite a few times in my life, when in my mind, we were just talking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cQoGNEcc5Q
The Science of Flirting: Being a H.O.T. A.P.E. | Jean Smith | TEDxLSHTM

Some Aspies could use help learning to flirt properly (or not).

There were times I came off as if I was flirting with teens online when I really was just trying to be friendly. I never managed to flirt when I wanted to thou or it came off like I was being friendly, weird, or creepy. I would NEVER blame a girl for flirting with me unintentionally, I likely would be oblivious anyways.

But does anyone give the whole of womankind a pass by saying "Oh they just don't know how they are?"

"Giving all of womankind a pass" does not even enter into it. Your feelings, your responsibility.

Basically, you're projecting because something that happens to men all the time happened to you, and you don't like it. Yet men are so used to being held responsible for everything that we simply grin and bear it rather than doing the old "imagine a gender-reversed version of your complaint" again and again. Though feel free to do so, you'll wind up with something similar to the old "why was she dressed like that if she didn't want my attention" excuse. Though in this case it's more "why would he bother being nice if he didn't want to have a relationship with me."

This is coming from a guy who was once invited to sleep with a girl I was dating, and she didn't understand that "come sleep with me" could be interpreted as "come have sex with me".

No. Our actions affect other people's feelings. If I flirt with someone I imagine they would think I was interested in them.

It's not the same as how men or women dress. I'm talking about the way we treat someone.

How we dress affects how people percieve us, does it not? Doesn't give us license to behave badly.

you're adamant that what he was doing was flirting. It may be that that's a one-way perception, and he felt he was just being polite. Now, if he really was intentionally flirting, I agree that's sh***y behaviour. Plenty of women do that same thing because it raises their self-esteem. And if guys complain about it, we're being "entitled". How's that for a free pass?

I don’t know your friend, so it’s difficult for me to discern why she would make such a generalization. Perhaps she might choose her words more carefully if she knew they’d be immortalized on the internet? In my experience, humans of all gender orientations who enjoy flirting do it for themselves.

People will often mistake niceness for interest.

A former co-worker was accused of harassment for saying, "Good Morning" to the receptionist on his way in to his office (she thought he was hitting on her). When he started using another entrance and avoided her completely, she accused him of harassment again for "shunning" her. He quit his job and went somewhere else. The receptionist later said that she thought he was a "nice guy".

(Yeah, I can't figure it out either.)

A former ship-mate was on his first liberty call in a foreign port. He went straight to a bar where he could pay to have a cute woman sit next to him and laugh at all of his jokes. The next day, he went back to the same bar and got in a fight because some other guy was talking with "his" girl -- he actually thought that she was in love with him, and that this other guy was trying to "steal" her from him.

A friend went to a new church. The Sunday School teacher asked if anyone could drive one of the women home. He volunteered. On the way, she mentioned she was hungry. They stopped, got something to eat, and continued on their way. He dropped her off, and that was it. Or so he thought. The following Sunday, he finds out that he and the woman had been "dating" and were currently "going steady". The woman had been spreading these rumors herself.

People are weird.

Without having witnessed the interaction between hurtloam and that guy it is impossible to tell if he intended to flirt or if it was a misunderstanding.

How friendly, warm or jovially people interact with others varies vastly between different people. A few men are slightly flirtatious towards every woman and it means nothing. What counts as flirting and what's part of normal social behavior won't be interpreted the same by everyone.

Then there's flirting just for fun and flirting because one has romantic and or sexual interest in the other. Someone could assume it is obvious to the other person that they're just doing it for fun when it isn't.

Or they're aware that they're leading the other person on and do it for their own amusement or self confidence.

As I and everyone else on this forum (except hurtloam) didn't see what happened we can not know if the guy was likely aware of the misunderstanding or even intentionally causing it, if he was unaware but anyone would have interpreted his behavior as flirting, or if he just has a sociable personality and isn't at fault for the misunderstanding.

Uh yes, actually some do but usually in a condescending way that implies we're developmentally arrested at the level of a child and can't do or know 'insert whatever' for ourselves or be expected to take responsibility for anything.