I have had a version of this conversation several times in the past month.
Whiteman, with or without education: Public higher education in the United States is free.
Professor Zero: It is not.
WM: You are wrong. The United States is a rich country and the definition of public education is that it is free.
PZ: I have three or four higher degrees from U.S. institutions and I am tenured faculty at one; I know a little more about the cost of higher education in the U.S. than you do.
WM: I do not believe you. You need to come to dinner with me so that we can debate this matter.
PZ: Thank you, but I am not available.
WM: You need to be available, because this conversation is of great interest to me. What is your cell phone number?
PZ: I don’t know.
WM: What? You don’t know? That’s terrible! Why don’t you know?
PZ: Women don’t know things.
WM: You need to know your cell phone number for your safety!
PZ: I don’t know it so that, even when I am wracking my brain for ways to bow out of a situation like this one with some kind of grace, I will be unable to cede to pressure to give it out.
WM: You mean you don’t want to go to dinner?
PZ: That is what I said.
WM: Is there another man?
PZ: That does not concern you.
WM: Of course it does, because I am interested. If there is no other man then it is your duty to have dinner with me so I can explain the U.S. higher education system to you.
Normally I do not let the conversation develop this far but at an event where my interlocutor was a friend of a friend I had to.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Ah, yes, browbeating as an attempt at seduction.
The one thing I have learned in sparring is the way to take the heat off oneself is to put it on the other person. Also, at Cobra, we have a vaguely ethical system of combat, which seems to go along the lines of, “handicap yourself to the level of the weakest of the two of you, but it the other person goes hard, then you are also entitled to go hard.” So, what would that mean in your situation?
Well, if the other person asks intrusive and nosy questions, you are also entitled to make them feel uncomfortable in the same way.
You could say, “No — actually, the topic you are interested in is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The real topic of the day is the Zimbabwe political situation. I demand you tell me everything we know about it, and if needs be, we can continue the topic at a later date, until we have covered it thoroughly.”
OMG, what jerks. I forget, as a man, that there are other men like this. Thanks for reminding me (not that they’re a problem for me). I’ll have to look for this kind of attitude more carefully in my fellow men, and find ways to try to knock them out of it.
This conversation is familiar, and despite it being extremely annoying when in the thick of it, it made me laugh just now
Smart move on the cell number. I also intentionally don’t know what mine is in order to keep people from calling it.
“so I can explain the U.S. higher education system to you.”
There is almost nothing that makes me more nail-spitting mad than somebody (ahem, I’m using a gender neutral term…breathe, A.F.) trying to tell me what’s what about one of the few issues I know about and which that person knows nothing about. I don’t know how you contained yourself.
I am more than happy to listen to the *many* people who know more than I do about any of the things I teach, but surprisingly, they are the least forceful in offering their wisdom. Who knew I was plunging into significant student loan debt to achieve a level of expertise in areas in which almost everyone believes himself a born expert? Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, Professor Zero.