The fact that you have multiple men in your life saying this might be an indication of some of the difficulties men face. I'm making an assumption here that you chose good men to be your friends. Either you're picking sex offenders as friends or men have a difficult situation to navigate when dating?

Women are all different. Some women love the idea of men asking for consent, others would find this a huge turnoff. Not all women do non-verbal consent in the same ways. To make it harder, men are expected to be the one making the moves and taking the lead.

I just made a quick Google search - [1] contains a link to a Reddit post from ~2 years ago. This man keeps getting told "it's not sexy to ask". Some women responding love the idea, others say they would hate it. Ever since #metoo I've made sure to very careful about consent, I even get verbal consent, and I know it's turned some dating partners away. So until women make dating clearer for men maybe you should hold back some of your judgement.

P.S. I'm 35 and have an above average partner count despite actively not sleeping around. I'm not some bumbling awkward guy that's never dated women.

[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/alxofq/me...