This is a very long read (that I’m sharing as a link because reblogging makes it hard to get to all of the post), but certainly worth reading. A redditor posting in /r/creepyPMs explores why it’s often counterproductive for a woman to reply to unsolicited PMs (or any such similar attention) with a denial: it’s the attention that carries the weight, not so much the content of the reply.
Reading through this, I was searching back through my own past to see if there was anything analogous in same-sex interactions, and I feel as though there was, but I can’t remember clearly (it’s tough to disentangle such interactions from role-play, sometimes, given the nature of furry, especially when the interaction may be between differently-sexed characters but same-sexed players).