How to torture both straight and gay young men

Jonathan Chait has an understandable response to a particularly cruel scientific experiment:

This makes me really glad I didn't enroll in college until 1990:

IN A COLLEGE CAMPUS STUDY in 1989, physically attractive people approached opposite-sex students and asked, “Would you go to bed with me tonight?” Not a single woman said yes, but seventy-five percent of men accepted the invitation. 

The only way my college romantic life could have been any more painful would be if, at some point, an attractive woman randomly propositioned me, and then informed me that it was just an experiment to see if I'd say yes.

I symphathize. I'll also point out that the gay male equivalent of this are the attractive young men who approach me in cruisy bars, ask me if I'm interested in having some fun, then give me a "safe sex" packet of condoms and lube before walking away.

Of course they mean well, and now that I'm older, I immediately know what they're up to. But it was kind of crushing when they were about my age and seemed, just for a minute, to be hitting on me.

Comments

[Gonevertigo]

Sigh...I totally hear you. Although I've actually had the opposite: I was hit on once by a guy whom I was convinced was going to walk up to me and complain about my vintage scarf.

[Robert David Sullivan]

Good to know. I shall wear an ascot the next time I visit the Ramrod.