2002
Flirtation

I.

Typically, women are exquisitely familiar with what occurs during flirtations while men are generally quite ignorant. Women can describe in great detail how they and other women flirt and pick up men, and what men do (and just as frequently, what men do not do). In contrast, men are unfamiliar with all or most of the events of flirtations. Even quite successful men had no idea how they attracted women and what happened during a flirtation. Often men create great vast and complicated theories...but they seem to possess little or no information.

Perper, T., & Fox, V. S. Flirtation and pickup patterns in bars. Paper presented at the meeting of the Eastern Conference on Reproductive Behavior, New York, June 1980.

II.
Study the flowchart.

III.
[Another] overturned cultural myth is that the man is always the sexual aggressor, eagerly pressing himself on the coy but reluctant woman. At least in the beginning of the flirtation process, men do not "swarm around a woman like bees about a lump of sugar." Instead, the woman often makes the first move. Because her move is more subtle—usually nothing more than standing close to her target—it is understandable that the man might erroneously come to believe that he initiated the interaction.

Elizabeth Rice Allgeier & Naomi B. McCormick, Changing Boundaries: Gender Roles and Sexual Behavior. Mayfield Publishing Company, 1983.