There is so many aspects to this, it's impossible to reasonably discuss it on an online forum. My perspective is living in a major western city that has a lot of culturally middle eastern people living here. The culture is very forward compared to western white culture. Women I know complain about it all the time. A woman living in an area without this culture may wish more men would hit on her.
Do you mind sharing more? I thought middle Eastern cultures were generally more traditional and conservative about dating and the like, so this sounds unusual.
So what?
Do people really rule out meeting a partner and having a family because of a fear of maybe inconveniencing someone?
There are plenty of social events that are appropriate for this sort of interaction. Running errands or just trying to go about your day is not one of those IMO, and if dozens of people accosted you per day you’d probably feel the same way.
Well that sounds too heavy and aggressive. If a lady is actually stopped by strangers while out, I'm not surprised she's sick of it.
There is so many aspects to this, it's impossible to reasonably discuss it on an online forum.
That is very true. This particular aspect of human interaction and communication, relying so much as it does on things other than the pure literal interpretation of words, is perhaps uniquely unsuitable for discussion on a text only forum where the words are all we have, and doubly so here on HN where the preponderance of people who joyfully embrace literal interpretation is so high!
But that is the whole point, if a person gets greeted a lot by strangers when they are out it gets annoying quick. So it is common courtesy to not greet strangers in typical every-day errand places like grocery stores. It might be different where you live, but that is how it works where I live.
If that goes well, ask.
All single men reading this, learn to flirt. Give them a look. Ask with your eyes first.
If they look back, smile, introduce yourself.
In effect, you ask them. However, this is not done in the literalist HN style - that is, you do not say "Hi, may I please hit on you?" or any other such set of words.
Nonetheless, one asks, and some will say yes, and some will say no; some will know they're answering, some won't even notice, and sometimes the asker doesn't even notice that they're asking.
To a number of people, this sounds crazy. As crazy as the idea that some authors cannot be read literally to get the meaning of their words. There are languages encoded within language and this is one such. If one happens not to speak this language, I guess it's dating apps or nothing :/