Saying you're not interested should really be enough, but as every woman knows, sometimes men don't want to hear it.

To help women out of intimidating bar encounters, the Feminist Phone Intervention hotline number has been established. Already operating in the US, Canada, Mexico and the UK, the number leads unwated suitors to an automatically generated quotation from feminist writer Bell Hooks.

The rationale behind the service is explained in a Tumblr post:

"because we’re raised to know it’s safer to give a fake phone number than to directly reject an aggressive guy.

"because we’re raised to know that evasion or rejection can be met with violence.

"because women are still threatened and punished for rejecting advances."