This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

Indulge me for a moment, if you will. Think about language, your native language and other languages that you function in. Think about individual words, specifically. If you could choose a word that is more important to you than any other, or falls within the top 10 important words in your life, what would it be? In choosing this word, consider those that give you a sense of or even actual freedom, safety, choices, closure, boundaries – anything that makes your life better. There is no right or wrong answer here; in fact, this may be something you’ve never thought about before. It’s not something we are ever asked to consider, as females. It’s selfish, you see. And if you are female, this might be an extremely difficult exercise simply because we seldom have control over the important things in our lives, especially the things that define and control us, namely language. We are also seldom asked our preferences or opinions on things that matter. Control over language and how the world works is the domain of men. As our creators -and I mean creators of the boxes we live in – they have always known us better than we know ourselves. At least they tell us that. It must be true. They define the experiences we are allowed to have, the crimes committed against our bodies, and what we are allowed to do, think and say as females.

Today, I’m going to consider an extremely important word, a word that is more important for females than it is for males, as we generally aren’t allowed to use it — without consequences. The result of using this word can range from simply being ignored, as if we didn’t say anything at all; to being misinterpreted, as if what we said was somehow different than what we really meant; to inspiring rage and violence in the person at whom the word was directed, as if by speaking our true minds and believing we are allowed to have boundaries, we are intending to harm others. It is truly bizarre and frightening, and it is a sex-specific phenomenon, meaning that males don’t experience it. It also has interesting sex-by-race effects and sex-by-trans effects that will be discussed below.

So, today, N is for No.

I think women don’t realize just how little they matter, and how little their opinions and speech matter. To men, but also to the women who serve men without question. Our erasure is so constant and normalized that we just don’t notice how often we must repeat ourselves, how often we give in to something we don’t want despite having expressed our opinion, and how often we decide to censor ourselves because subconsciously, after years of abuse and erasure, we know that what we say won’t matter or will lead to violence. But you have to wonder. Why is so much effort put into putting women in their place if they don’t matter?

Let’s look at some common scenarios. All females have experienced these many times, although most may not realize how often. As a regular reader of this blog, you are probably quite aware of how much power your ‘no’ has in this world.

Ignored

Women and girls are ignored all the time, but as ‘no’ is a very important word, this is a serious problem. As children, we are forced to endure touching, pinching and kissing from relatives and random strangers marvelling at how cute we are – even when we say ‘no’, or use body language that demonstrates ‘no’. It continues on through school. So many of us are bullied – it’s not oppression; kids are assholes, generally speaking – but for girls, sometimes the bullying can go on to become sexual abuse where we learn that it is pointless to say ‘no’ because nobody cares or pays attention. And on the rare occasion that a girl reports her abuse, she is usually ignored, or written off as an attention seeker or a liar. In adulthood, we are passed over for opportunities and promotions. We are ignored in meetings, and some of us wonder if school bullying was just preparation for the sex-specific degradation, harassment and sometimes terrorism of the workplace. We learn that saying ‘no’ has no impact. The workplace likes the ‘yes-girl’. The only way to get attention is to laugh at the rape jokes, the gay/lesbian jokes, and to pretend everything is great. The quickest way to fall off the radar as a serious employee is to say ‘no’ to what is going on.

Heterosexuality depends on women’s needs being ignored. We talk endlessly about compromise, but as many of us come to realize, men have defined compromise to mean: women sacrifice (i.e., shut the fuck up and submit) and men are catered to. Having had several, what I consider to be ‘normal’, relationships with men in my long-gone bisexual days, I realize, looking back, that my needs meant nothing. I don’t think I even knew what my needs were, as I was well trained to cater to males, see my needs as ‘selfish’, and ridiculously, to call it ‘equality’. If I did express myself, it was ignored or written off.

Deliberately Misinterpreted

When I was a teenager, there was an article in our local newspaper featuring a black and white photo of a couple of male university students at a hockey game holding up a hand-painted cloth banner that read “NO MEANS YES!!!” This was 1980’s-1990’s rape culture at its best. It wasn’t really anything new in the minds of males, but at this point in history, it had become a new ‘women’s issue’. But the males from the photo didn’t get in trouble or anything. Why would they? Men and boys have been raping women and girls with impunity and bragging about it since time began. Who cares? But it was an interesting, but simple, insight into male psychology and how they make rape okay in their minds.

There is this strange belief that men have and that men have been writing about for ages under the guise of ‘literature’ and ‘science’ that women secretly/actually want to be raped. Oops sorry, not raped – because that implies a lack of consent under male definition of their crime against our bodies. Men believe that women want to fuck. They want to be fucked violently. They want to be taken in animal-fashion and treated like shit. Women like to be hit and called all sorts of horrible things. We get turned on by this stuff. But to express these deep wishes goes against morality or something like that. So we have to say ‘no’. But see, when we say ‘no’, we really mean ‘yes’. We don’t want to say ‘no’, but we have to. So it is up to males to take the upper hand and see through our psychological games and just force us… I mean ‘help’ us to get what we truly want.

But do they really believe that, or is it just another bullshit male attempt to put the responsibility for their crimes on their victims? Some women have been convinced by these male arguments – convinced through faulty logic, gaslighting, and prude-shaming, rather than slut-shaming – and these women have become the sluts of the liberal feminism movement, which I’ll discuss below.

The whole ‘no means yes’ deliberate misinterpretation happens ALL the time for women. Whereas males need only say something once, and they are taken at their word, even when the word is ‘no’, females constantly have to repeat themselves to have a slight chance of being heard. I always have a sardonic chuckle when misogynists drag out that standard male reversal about women being ‘nags’. I would argue that men nag infinitely more than women, especially about sex and other self-serving wants and especially when a woman says ‘no’ to them. It is the basis of what I have termed ‘consensual rape’ – which is, at its most basic definition, the manipulation of a woman into saying ‘yes’ to penetrative sex that she doesn’t want. The ‘yes’ can be obtained through many means, including the deliberate misinterpretation of her initial ‘no’ (or multiple ‘no’s’) and protracted nagging, guilting and shaming.

‘Causing’ Violence

The first two reactions to a woman’s ‘no’ are bad, but this third category is very serious business. Men don’t understand and often make fun of female risk-aversion. They don’t understand female timidity in speaking up or acting out. In general, male speech is not met with violence or the opposition that the most innocuous of female speech and behaviours are frequently met with. I’ve described in other posts where males have reacted to my facial expression and/or my tone of voice with death threats and other threats to my safety. You see, I made them threaten me. I made them hurt me. All my fault.

Saying ‘no’ to males, and even some females, can incite riots, rapes, and murders. Not hyperbole, folks. I guarantee you that you know at least one woman who has been harmed after saying ‘no’ to a man. Not just no to sex – it can be absolutely anything. Men react poorly to female clerks in service businesses, to waitresses, to female flight attendants, and any female who cannot provide him with what he believes he is owed. And if a man pays money, it is so much worse. If he has laid out money, he believes a woman does not have the right to say ‘no’ to him. You see this with prostitutes, especially, but you can see evidence of this in any environment or industry. Men are much less likely to react violently to male workers. I believe this is partly the in-built woman-hate that all males have, and partly knowing that attacking a male can be dangerous. Women generally a) won’t fight back, b) physically can’t fight back as the playing field is not fair, and c) aren’t protected under law like men, the religious and racial minorities are.

Many women know all of this on a subconscious level and will self-censor or submit as a result. We see female workers frequently treating male customers better than females. This is in part because we know that males are volatile, and predictably unpredictable, and we have learned to submit to them and treat them with kid gloves, as governments won’t do the logical thing and exert controls over male behaviour. There are other factors that play into treating males better than females, but male irrationality, emotionality, violence, and poor self-control are the main reasons male customers are treated better and are less likely to meet with ‘no’, especially by female workers.

Further, within heterosexual relationships, many women learn that denying their partner can lead to violence. Saying ‘no’ can get you beaten, raped or killed. Long ago, in my bisexual days, that kind of shit sent me out the door faster than exposure to a bad odour, but many women trauma-bond with violent men, and then make increasingly bad decisions, including putting themselves in financial bondage to them and breeding with them. They learn to live with the violence and self-censorship, in other words.

Intersection

a) Sex x Race Intersection

I am NOT an intersectional feminist. It’s not that I don’t believe in interactional effects – if you knew the details of my educational background, you’d realize just how laughable it is to suggest that I am intersection-blind. I just think that intersection is derailing to feminism as it creates oppression olympics and blame hierarchies, and denies some women the right to be heard and to have boundaries. I’m going to highlight an example of intersectional misogyny that has been censored. I don’t centre it in my feminism, of course, but I do talk about it because it is an incredibly taboo topic.

If you are a white woman in a Western country, you will be very aware that you have to be nice and submissive and helpful to everyone. Otherwise, you are a bitch, rich, privileged – probably also a white supremacist, all kinds of evil. Many white women take this liberal-promulgated scapegoating to heart, feeling guilty for everything, and even virtue-signalling constantly and publicly to prove how repentant and unevil they are. It just makes things worse. As a result, white women are not allowed to say ‘no’, especially to people who are not white, and even writing or speaking about one’s own true and personal Twilight-Zone-esque, mind-fucking and degrading experiences of racist misogyny is called out as racist and is conveniently censored in order to maintain the perfect scapegoat. Note that white men do not experience this denial of the right to say ‘no’ and are 100% allowed to have boundaries. And women in Western cultures who are not white do not experience this either, at least to the same extent.

During the first 6 months I lived in the US when I was 24 – before Canada took liberal American social justice warrorism to heart – I had my first of many, many experiences with this kind of victimization: the denial of my right to say ‘no’ because of my sex AND race. I was an impoverished, foreign grad student teaching at a university catering to mostly wealthy undergrads and big-league athletic hopefuls. My first experience was with a black female student of mine who showed up unannounced at my office just as I was leaving for a meeting. She demanded that I see her then and there – outside my office hours and without an appointment. Pure entitlement. I said I couldn’t. But before letting me finish, she launched a high-volume, abusive tirade, the content of which I can barely remember as I wasn’t used to Angry Black Women that early in my stay in the US. As a woman from a race that is NOT allowed to say ‘no’, have boundaries or opinions, or even get angry without being slurred and shamed into oblivion, I actually believe this woman’s display and treatment of me was an act of privilege. After three more decades and a shit ton more of experiences like this one, I’ve come to understand that the privilege to get angry, even over nothing, is a black privilege, and of course, a white male privilege. I WISH I were allowed to express even half the anger that blacks and white males are allowed… Anyhow, if this racist misogynist woman had waited two seconds instead of immediately denying me my right to have boundaries and the right to say ‘no’, she would have been offered the chance to make an appointment with me. And you know what? I still gave her an appointment after I had to waste time calming her down, and I never did receive an apology.

b) Sex x Trans Intersection

I have almost exclusively interacted with females who identify as trans, and they are generally harmless as women generally are. Although I have always made sure to keep things light in the conversation department, as crazy ideologies can inspire violence and who knows if these chicks are on testosterone, which fucks with the brain and increases aggression. I have been in proximity to males who think they are women, and as a rule, I stay the hell away from them. They are generally mentally unstable, incredibly entitled as males and as self-appointed Oppressedest People Ever _TM and in doing female parody, show themselves to be incredible woman-haters on par with men’s rights activists. Dangerous combination. We’ve seen the damage they do to women, especially to lesbians and feminists, however. Women are NOT allowed to say ‘no’, to have boundaries, to speak biological and scientific truths in public spaces, to speak truth about trans crimes against women, and lesbians are not allowed to say ‘no’ to sex with these men without being called murderers and bigots. I’m waiting for the day they are rightly seen as domestic terrorists. It is what they are.

Adventures in Cultural No-ness

I’ve said it before, and I’ll likely write a whole post devoted to it sometime later, I believe culture is just the set of traditions and rules governing how misogyny manifests in a socially acceptable way in a particular part of the world at a particular time. Culture is the stuff of both fantasy and religion-like obsession. It is protected and untouchable – unless it is Western culture, that is. It is the stuff of nationalism and army-building. But really, culture is bullshit. It is just local, socially-accepted woman-hate rituals and traditions at its very core. Think about it some, and you’ll find that all the quaint things you discover about foreign cultures all trace back to the control of women and girls. Modern uses of the word culture (company culture, sub-culture, counter-culture, etc.) still describe rules and traditions governing a group, but do not quite have the same sacrosanct importance that standard usages hold.

I’ve lived, studied, worked and travelled around the world, and I’ve seen and experienced a lot of fucked up shit all rooted in culture and misogyny! Let’s explore a few cultural curios with regard to culture, language and the use or non-use of ‘no’.

a) Sluts Can’t Say ‘No’ – New Depths in Western Misogyny

I get so tired of liberal, usually, but not exclusively, white feminists talk about how much better it is for women in Western countries. I disagree. As I said, culture is the manifestation of misogyny in a particular time and place. It changes over time, but it never, ever goes away. Unfortunately, the changes tend to confuse people, as change is a word that is so often mistakenly conflated with ‘improvement’. So in Western cultures, women have been hoodwinked into thinking that things are so much better. But are they? Things have been sliding backwards over the past few decades in the US (and leaking into other Western countries). I think things are worse in the West than they have been in a long time.

In an earlier section, I referred to today’s Western slut-feminists. It’s hard for me to put those two words together, but honest to goodness, there are women who believe that fucking as many men as they want is an act of feminist liberation. I met one in Canada two years ago. I think I wrote about her before; the poor thing was so confused that she was dating a man whom she met on some app, and he was ignoring all her ‘no’s’ to his sexual advances. At this writing, I have no doubt that she has been date raped, and she has probably reframed the event as a slutty, feminist success rather than truthfully as consensual rape.

When women say ‘no’ and a man keeps pushing and pushing and guilting and shaming and nagging that woman until he breaks her down, she gets tired, annoyed, or confused, that is rape. He will make sure that she remains confused afterwards, or even better, that he can convince her that she wanted it. And Western women and girls are falling for this. This is one of the pillars of liberal feminism. Saying ‘yes’, even if you start by saying ‘no’, or you are feeling ‘no’ inside but are too ashamed of or worried about looking like a loser or a prude by actually saying ‘no’, is liberation. Saying ‘yes’ is liberation. Even if you don’t want it. Even if you are worried about getting pregnant. Even if you are worried about contracting one of the male sexual diseases. Even if you end up hurt because it doesn’t end up just being penetrative sex, but a nightmare out of porn or the BDSM handbook.

But you can’t rape a slut. And that is what this is all about. It is male liberation, not feminism. You cannot rape a woman who says ‘yes’. And guess what, the oppressed women in Afghanistan and whatever favourite African nation you like to cite are not clamouring for this kind of female freedom…

b) The Country of No ‘No’

I’ve alluded to this before – there is no single, specific word for ‘no’ in Mandarin Chinese. I lived in Taiwan and China for many years and found this quite curious and frustrating. In addition, there is no single word for ‘yes’. ‘No’ ends up being more like ‘don’t want’, ‘don’t have’, ‘is not’, etc. You basically take the verb in question and put a negative in front of it. I found it much less impactful than a single word that you can use in any situation. But of course, as a woman, does ‘no’ really have much impact at all? I think, like in any country, it comes down to your anatomy. The language is developed around your anatomy, and language is inherently sexist as men control it. And the anatomy of the person using a particular word is more important than the word itself. So what passes for ‘no’ in Chinese has about as much impact used by a woman as it does in any country when a woman speaks her ‘no’ in her language.

c) The Country of the Impolitic ‘No’

I won’t say too much about this, as my experience is less with the country than with my relationships with people from the country. And that country is Japan. I dated a Japanese for a few years, and what I gathered from stories and interactions is that while there is an explicit, single word for ‘no’ in Japanese, it is impolite to come right out and say ‘no’. When dealing with the Japanese, they seem to be agreeing or saying yes to you, and at first you are amazed at how easy they are to get along with, but quickly, you come to realize that a game is being played and you do NOT know the rules. Japan has a very complex and confusing culture, and while seeming courteous on the surface, interactions end up feeling rather duplicitous and insane to an outsider who prefers a more direct and honest and time-conserving way of dealing with people. And conversely, they may tend to see outsiders as crude and rude. The Japanese I have known who refuse to live there tend to be social outcasts who can’t stand the hierarchy and intense social pressure to conform and kiss asses they don’t actually respect. And with all the brutal and cruel television game shows they have as well as the disgusting cartoon rape porn, you have to wonder what the fuck is going on there.

I like origami and Japanese food and the sense of esthetics that you don’t see in any other country or culture, but you couldn’t pay me enough to live in Japan. Nevermind the earthquakes and nuclear contamination…

d) The Country of Double ‘No’

I am currently living in an ex-Soviet country where not only do they have a single, explicit word for ‘no’ in their local language, but they use it constantly AND they almost always say it twice instead of once. I’m serious. I am learning a bit of the language so that I can function, and no matter where I go, I hear ‘no, no’. And I hear ‘no’ much more than I hear ‘yes’. And they have 3 commonly used words for ‘yes’ and I recognize them easily in conversation. I wish I knew enough of the language to know what they are talking about and saying ‘no’ to though. Why do they say ‘no’ so much??? I’ve never encountered this in any of the other languages I speak or cultures I’ve spent time in.

I have little experience with Russia or Eastern Europe, so I don’t know if this is part of what seems to an outsider to be a rather gruff and abrasive set of cultures. I worked with a bunch of Russians in 2021, and although they weren’t super friendly, I seldom heard the word ‘нет’ to the extent that I hear the word for ‘no’ here in this particular place where I am, so there is something going on that I don’t yet understand. More exploration is needed. But it is nothing like any Asian culture I have experienced, and the cultural rules are very different with religion being a heavy influence.

Okay, I’m starting to veer off the path, and that means that I need to end this post. But I want to leave you with the following thought:

Language is important. It is inseparable from culture. As a woman, you have no control over such an important tool for your survival. Think about the words you use and the effects they have on your ability to get what you need to stay alive and safe. Are you allowed to say ‘no’, how many times do you have to say it to be heard, and are there repercussions for defining your boundaries? The purpose of language is to get what you need, but men control language. What does that mean for women? For you? And finally, think about why men and their female supporters put so much effort into making sure women’s words aren’t heard. Perhaps, we matter more than we’ve been led to believe…

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