“ I am going to stubbornly maintain my belief that not every single guy that asks me to hang out is looking for sex-things. Some of the offers of friendship-type things are going to be genuine.”

Absolutely fair. And I get that painting everyone with the same brush is harsh.

Perhaps a more practical approach would be to start with the guys with whom this has been an issue already. There are no assumptions there, no generalizing. You know from experience what “hanging out” has meant for them before - it’s certainly reasonable to question their motives in the future.