That 'love interest as antagonist' stuff is scary as hell.

Yes. I mean, if it were even a real game I might find it fun, if I knew it's safe to push back at an unwanted overture, but I know it's not. Women and girls are not expected to push back, they're actively punished for doing so. If a woman is anything less than pleasant and deferential in the face of unwanted attention, for instance, she's seen as a bitch, someone who deserves to be despised and harmed.

I could live with being on a playing field if I were actually allowed to fight and win; say, if I could laughingly tell an interested man, "Fuck off, asshole," and we'd both know that's that and we'd still be friends. As it is, though, women know all too well that the playing field is so tilted it's vertical. To wonder why we refuse to play is to willfully ignore that reality.