"in conversation, “no” is disfavored, and people try to say no in ways that soften the rejection, often avoiding the word at all. People issue rejections in softened language, and people hear rejections in softened language, and the notion that anything but a clear “no” can’t be understood is just nonsense. First, the notion that rape results from miscommunication is just wrong. Rape results from a refusal to heed, rather than an inability to understand, a rejection...
explanations usually go like this: “I would love to, but I can’t …” The refuser situates the refusal in an inability, rather than an unwillingness, to accept. “I’d love to, except that I don’t want to” is a wisecrack precisely because it plays on that norm — the sentence is structured to disguise the unwillingness but ends with a twist by stating it explicitly. The authors note that “refusals are almost always accompanied by explanations or justifications”, citing literature. [p.302.]...
Reviewing the research, the authors find that people understand refusals to all kinds of offers in pauses, deflections, conditionals or even weak acceptances with certain tones and pauses."
I've been thinking a lot about how often 'no' is not heard. The post above focuses on rape, and that's obviously an incredibly important instance to highlight, but I also want to think about this more generally. It seems like there are some people who are just engage with the 'no' dynamic a lot less. There are people in my life who have been very capable of delivering semi-insensitive 'no's to other people, and also pressing back on others' more typically-phrased 'no'. And it's a really uncomfortable situation to be in, when someone is taking your polite 'no' too literally and suggesting ways out of your excuse; you have to slip fully into a lie, or you have to say 'yes', or you have to openly admit the seemingly-open secret that it was a 'no' all along.
The 'no'-unawareness isn't usually accompanied by general social disfunction; if anything, 'no'-unawareness can be a really socially adaptive skill, it can give you a special social tool that pushes people to do more things for you. It can lead to your friends developing a certain amount of cognitive dissonance, explaining to themselves that they are falling in lie with your wishes because you are such good friends and you do have good ideas about what to do and you do deserve that extra help and attention right now.
'No'-less people can be quite toxic when they develop a sense of possessiveness around someone.
And so I'm thinking two things: (1) we need to step up as a society and learn to be more honest with our 'no's; and (2) we need to learn to recognize when people are establishing boundaries and respect them.
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