When Saying “No” to a Man Is a Death Sentence
A few weeks ago, I got into a back-and-forth on here with a female CEO who couldn’t believe that young women would lie to men in order to get them to leave them alone in bars. She seemed to think that such women were both rude and ill-informed because they didn’t realize they could just say “no”:
Ugh. “Trick those guys into leaving us alone.” In our brief chat it didn’t even dawn on them that they could say “No thank you” or “Hey, it’s been nice chatting with you but I am going to get back to hanging out with my friend now” or any other version of “Thank you but I am not interested”.
I tried to explain that there are very understandable reasons for women to wish to avoid outright rejecting a man’s advances, even in a public place. I talked about rape culture (yes, rape culture is a thing, people) and well-founded fear.
Men are responders. That means that the way men behave is the way women have trained them to behave. Men don’t think no means no because women don’t stick to their no’s.
Men only harass us because we make them harass us, apparently. Our crafty feminine wiles leave them no other choice! If we would just tell them “no thank you” and mean it, they would instantly back off and leave us alone. If we don’t tell them “no” to their faces, we apparently have only ourselves to blame for what they do next. (Incidentally, this kind of thinking is insulting to men as well because it treats them like slaves to their subconscious impulses and robs them of agency, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Last week, a Pittsburgh woman said “no” to a man who approached her in a bar. He didn’t like that:
Investigators said McKinney attempted to talk to Talton-Jackson inside a bar but she declined. McKinney then followed her outside and shot her.
He approached her. She said “no.” Maybe she even said “no thank you.” That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, so he murdered her. He responded to her rejection by shooting her to death.
The author of the original piece accused me of exaggerating and being paranoid when I said that women are reluctant to say “no” because they worry about provoking exactly the response Janese Talton-Jackson received. Yes, sometimes women lie to spare men’s feelings. But when they lie out of fear, they do so with good reason. Black women in particular have even more reason to avoid potential conflict with the opposite sex: They are more than 2.5 times more likely than white women to be murdered by men.
Most men wouldn’t do something like this. Problem is, we have no way of knowing which group any given man falls into. Can you really blame us for not wanting to find out the hard way? I’m not alone in this opinion.
Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor…and of not getting murdered by a man who can’t handle rejection. Her murder is entirely the fault of her killer, but it illustrates the naivete of those who demand that we say “no thank you” instead of putting our own safety first and foremost.
Guys, if a woman lies to you instead of turning you down to your face, it’s almost never a slight against you. We’re just watching our backs.
Ladies, if you feel confident in saying “no,” more power to you. If you don’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using a method you’re more comfortable with. Please don’t feel guilty about looking out for yourself — no matter how many female CEOs call it cowardice.
