L V Anderson at Slate has some more thoughts on the wisdom of Dan Bacon.

The post does not appear to be joke. It does contain categorically incorrect declarations such as “if a woman wearing headphones is single and hoping to meet a boyfriend (or even a new lover), she will usually be happy to take off her headphones to give you an opportunity to create a spark with her.”

I didn’t fully notice Bacon’s soaring leap over logic there. Here’s the thing: a woman can be hoping to meet a boyfriend (or even a new lover) without hoping to meet him by being rudely accosted by some schmuck on the street.  You know? Because the boyfriend or lover she’s hoping to meet isn’t an asshole, and a guy who deliberately intrudes on women who don’t want to be intruded on is an asshole. So he’s dead wrong that a woman who  is single and hoping to meet a boyfriend (or even a new lover)  will be happy to take off her headphones because some stranger gets in her face and tells her to. (It’s telling, not asking. There’s no way to gesture “take your headphones off” at someone as a request as opposed to a demand.)

The essay goes on for 1,500 words, even though it could easily have been edited down to just, “Ignore women’s social cues and body language to try to get what you want.”

And that’s the kind of man that very few women are hoping to meet. It’s true that all too often that turns out to be the kind of man they have met, but rarely do they set out with that goal. One who just announces himself as such on first encounter – well that’s not too appealing.