Lumifer comments on Open thread, Sep. 14 - Sep. 20, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'd rather people actually said "Do you want to come back to my room for sex?" rather than "Do you want to come back to my room for coffee?" where coffee is a euphemism for sex, because some people will take coffee at face value, which can lead to either uncomfortable situations, including fear of assault, or lead to people missing opportunities because they are bad at reading between the lines.
Or if you do want to invite someone for a drink, go somewhere public.
Edit: I'm not saying that people should go round propositioning people for sex without getting to know them first. I'm saying that drinks in public are good, and that I, personally, prefer to think that adults should be able to say what they mean without euphemisms. I'm not saying that I get to ignore societies' rules. And I realise that people find what I have been saying creepy, but personally, I think if I was a girl I would find it very creepy that there could be situations where I'm in a private room with no witnesses and I want to drink coffee and the guy expects sex.
Actually, it's often not -- it's a declaration of interest and an euphemism for "let's move this thing along for the time being and see where we'll end up".
Imagine the answer to your "Do you want to come back to my room for sex?" being "I don't know yet, why don't we have coffee while I evaluate you a bit more thoroughly?"
So, someone who wanted to take things slowly would turn them down, where they might have accepted an invitation for coffee in starbucks. If invitation to bars = drink , bedroom = sex then everyone knows where they stand.
Maybe? It's a negotiation. For example that someone could have counter-suggested a coffee at Starbucks, that's a "you're going too fast" signal. Or said "Sure, but I'll have to run in 10 minutes, I have an appointment to catch", that's a "yes to coffee, no to sex" signal. There is a VERY large variety of ways to signal interest, intentions, etc.