Men do not, generally, get hints.

I know the common wisdom among feminists is that men are being deliberately obtuse by missing all the “obvious” hints. But that is not the case at all. What they do not understand is that men are raised in a completely different social milieu where hints are really not a thing at all.

And combine that with the fact that these days many, many men are taught that any expression of interest in a woman at all is automatic harassment, most hints will go unrecognized or unacknowledged by any decent man. It’s no one’s fault, exactly, but it is what it is.

(However, by going so far down the path of “all interest is harassment,” women have created an eqilibrium where only the most detestable, desperate and dangerous men will engage with them in public. Not great, really!)