Speak slowly, carry a two-by-four

Hmm. I haven’t RTFA yet (I must have been having a Slashdot moment), but according to the abstract

Rather, gender differences were captured by a relative perceptual insensitivity among men. Just as in previous studies, men were more likely than women to misperceive friendliness as sexual interest, but they also were quite likely to misperceive sexual interest as friendliness.

—abstract of Perceptual Mechanisms That Characterize Gender Differences in Decoding Women’s Sexual Intent at Blackwell Synergy

Perhaps the solution, to paraphrase Roosevelt, is to speak slowly and carry a two-by-four.