Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never laughed at a man who expressed interest in me, and I don't know any women who do this. In fact, all the women I know have been conditioned to always "let him down easy because his ego and his feelings are more important than yours" - to say nothing of the fact that so many men become belligerent and even dangerous if you tell them you aren't interested in them.

As Jessica Valenti points out here talking about rejection killing, “There’s a reason that women give out fake phone numbers or invent boyfriends — we’ve learned that our own lack of interest in someone is not a valid enough reason to say no. Plus, we never know how angry a rejected man is going to get. Angry enough to send a cruel text or call us a bitch? Or angry enough to hurt us?”

I get that rejection isn't easy or fun, but at least some of the problem is that men have been messaged that women exist for their pleasure and if they like her that must mean she likes him back. Studies have shown that men tend to overestimate a woman’s interest in them, based on what she is wearing and how interested he is in her. However, when researchers prompted study participants to actually pay attention to emotional cues such as facial expression and body language, they did a much better job of accurately gauging interest. When men look past their cultural programming that attractive women are there for their pleasure, and actually pay attention to what the woman wants, they are quite capable of grasping if their interest is reciprocated or not, but they don’t always make that effort — in part because the culture doesn’t require them to.