3. Rational adults understand and respond to signalling. They don't demand that all communication happen explicitly and on their terms, because they know that such demands are ineffective for all purposes, will not be heeded, and might make them social pariahs.
Which is why people behave that way in airplane cockpits and the bridges of submarines. (Actually, such behavior has gotten people killed in those contexts.)
If someone is insisting on an implicit level of signalling, they can be just as guilty of insisting foolishly as someone insisting on the explicit level. When implicit communications are demanded for 1) a higher stakes situation on the basis of 2) the supposed potential victim status of one party -- something is way out of whack. Not only is the safety of clear communications being abrogated, the danger being borne is skewed to just one party.
Beyond the level of the social white lie, if you're advocating deniability to "be safe" you're probably doing something dishonest on some level. Extending the mechanism of the social white lie to a situation where more is at stake is just foolish.
> Actually, such behavior has gotten people killed in those contexts.
Nobody is going to die if you can't date someone.
Again, I advocate a conservative approach to getting a date with a coworker. One request, declined for any reason, should be treated as a firm no absent explicit signals to the contrary (request for a rain check, some other sort of proactive, explicitly date-seeking behavior from the other party). Your odds of getting into trouble under this rule are so vanishingly small as to be nonexistent. If you choose some less conservative rule, including, apparently, whatever rule you've been following up to this point, your risks are higher.
Of course, there's also the issue of not wanting to make your woman coworkers uncomfortable. I would hope that would be something of intrinsic value to you, and that on this basis alone you might change your behavior after seeing its impact in the past. The fact that you're still arguing about this makes me doubt that you do value their comfort the way that I think you should. But I don't know how to tell you that you should care about other people in a way that's going to stick. :(
Which is why people behave that way in airplane cockpits and the bridges of submarines. (Actually, such behavior has gotten people killed in those contexts.)
If someone is insisting on an implicit level of signalling, they can be just as guilty of insisting foolishly as someone insisting on the explicit level. When implicit communications are demanded for 1) a higher stakes situation on the basis of 2) the supposed potential victim status of one party -- something is way out of whack. Not only is the safety of clear communications being abrogated, the danger being borne is skewed to just one party.
Beyond the level of the social white lie, if you're advocating deniability to "be safe" you're probably doing something dishonest on some level. Extending the mechanism of the social white lie to a situation where more is at stake is just foolish.