Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

Today on my way to a coffee shop after purchasing a professional-looking coat for $7 at Value Village, I passed the usual telephone polls and blank walls covered in fliers for concerts and events. On one plywood board, however, the bright papers had been stapled over with plain white pages, each declaring simply, NO MEANS NO.

When we choose to publicly display an idea in such a way, it is because we believe it is an idea that is forgotten or ignored. If you add your name or a website, it may in contrast suggest an effort to gain approval, but there was no such attribution on these signs.

I wish I could believe the person who put them up was in error, that I could believe that there were not still people who need to hear this, but the NO of those of lesser status is simply too often ignored for me to do so. As a saying, NO MEANS NO is most associated with anti-rape efforts, but it has broader applicability because the sense of entitlement that underlies rape is enacted in other areas as well. (One example is what I experienced on the bus last November.)

Of course, in some of these situations, there is no opportunity to say no. Some women who are raped never have the chance to say no. Workers with little hope of finding another job may not be able to say no to an employer who asks them to do something unsafe or unethical.

NO is associated then with a degree of power. Ignoring another’s NO is to invalidate that power. Teaching someone not to say NO, which is the way so many women have been socialized, is to teach them not to grasp after even the basic sort of power we might call autonomy or bodily-sovereignty.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.