Life is complicated. What more could a woman want in a man than his refusal to take “no” for an answer in every other aspect of life? For salesmen, the sale starts when the customer says “no.” “No” didn’t stop the American Revolution, nor did it stop the feminist movement. How many times have you been told “no” and thought “Screw that I’m doing it anyway”? Rejecting “no” is a positive trait until it isn’t. Knowing the proper limit of that trait is a sign of character, but people acting in good faith may disagree on where the boundary lies. Do you always take “no” for an answer?

“Don’t touch me” and “Don’t ask me out” are different forms of “no,” and they need not engender the same amount of obeisance. I once turned down chopped liver, saying “I don’t like chopped liver,” and the hostess replied “you haven’t had mine.” Somewhere between “You haven’t had mine” and rape lies a boundary on persistence. Whether “approaching” someone on line who has said she does not wish to be approached crosses that boundary isn’t clear, especially since we have no way of knowing whether you didn’t just state your position to weed out those who were willing to take “no” for an answer with respect to a completely harmless act.

A mathematician like Humpty Dumpty can say that when he uses a word, it means what he intends it to mean, but on the internet, things mean what anyone on the internet might intend them to mean. If some guy misinterprets your explicit statements because others make precisely the same statements with a different intent, that’s life in the big virtual city. You are free to be impossible to get, but you need to recognize that some people merely play at it, and you have no reason to expect that strangers can tell which you are.