Why do guys think cooking for them means we want to sleep with them?

Every Stanford dorm has at the very least a postage-sized kitchenette. Being a cookie aficionada myself, I quickly set about turning my freshman dorm’s yeah-we-make-ramen-in-here room into a sugary, chocolatey heaven. Apparently and unbeknownst to me, there is something inherently sexy about food production.

A boy from my dorm asked if he could join me in my cookie-making venture. I eagerly agreed viewing it as a purely platonic request. Perhaps I was a bit naïve to not realize that a follow-up invitation to watch a movie was an invitation to smooch, but hey, can’t Netflix and Chill sometimes actually meant Netflix and CHILL?

Skewed expectations

The thing is, sometimes a girl wants to hang out with a guy without any romantic or physical expectations. But that message doesn’t seem to be heard.

Maybe the trouble started when we hooked into our technology. When you can virtually talk with a person on any subject at any given time of the day or night, why would a straight guy and girl hang out in person unless it was to accomplish something more? (Besides the fact that, you know, texting belays almost no emotion, and no one bothers to call on the telephone anymore… but that’s a separate article).

Perhaps the best example comes not from my life but from an episode of How I Met Your Mother. When the protagonist, Ted, receives an invitation to bake cookies at a single girl’s house, he arrives with an overnight bag. I am happy to say that this ends with the girl tossing him out on his ear.

Yes, sometimes we girls ask you boys over to bake cookies and mean make-out, but quite often, we don’t! Making assumptions makes an ass out of u.

Lunch does not mean interest

Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford students are no strangers to networking

Following a summer internship at a tech firm, one of my dear friends, we’ll give her the name Sara, was asked to lunch by a top member of the company. The stated goal was to discuss her work and future career opportunities… a sweet networking gig, right?

Nothing weird here, right?

She dressed conservatively and professionally.

She did not speak about her personal life or ask him about his.

She left feeling excited at having made a contact at a potential future employer.

She came to me in tears because he followed up with the following text message: “Had a great time at lunch. How about dinner and a movie next time?”

He was 51.

College men are free to talk and eat with business men without fear. This does not hold for us women, us young girls.

No matter the context, interest in a meal is taken as interest in a relationship. So when a man, particularly a man in a position of power, asks us to share a coffee and talk about our future, we are wary.

Sara told me, “I get it now why all of the women at the firm seemed stand-offish. The second you laugh at a guy’s joke or agree to meet with him, for any reason, it’s mistaken for flirting! Now I’m always going to doubt if I’m being recruited for my talents or because some guy thinks I’m cute.”

My point is simple: Sometimes working lunches can turn into dates and friendships can bloom into flings or romances, but often they don’t. Part of treating each other as equals entails understanding that; all genders need to be careful not to mistake kindness and common courtesy for flirting.