I will say; men are stupid, but a lot of the good ones will try hard to convince themselves a woman is just being nice. I wonder if they're only ever hanging out with these guys one on one, or if they're hanging with creeps to try and be nice.

Mostly jw because while I'm sure gay men would do the same thing, I've anecdotally never had one of them think I was stringing him on. I'm pretty shallow and try hard not to associate with creeps though, and typically make new gay friends at parties/thru friends, so I have way more filters for new people than OP does. I wonder if that's protecting me.