On the gender differences of what “no” means, and the interpretations of what “no” means for both sexes, translated…
The golden advice for sexual assault prevention is probably the most important: respect others, protect oneself, say NO. Whether it be in the lectures to the teachers, parents, I’d always reminded them, that these words sounded very gender unspecific, there’s no subject in front, but, what sort of a gender stereotype would we have for these terms?
We’d prespecified, that “males” needed to learn to respect, that “females” needed to learn to protect themselves, and just say, “No”. And these adults on the frontline, teaching the children this belief would usually, stutter a bit, then, nod in compliance to the ideals.
We’d always had two separate norms for gender education, but, both genders can be victimized. For instance, this society demands that girls need to uphold the virtues of conservatism, and keep themselves safe physically, but this sort of an abstract ideals, to young women who are starting to experience love, for those young ladies who hadn’t had the worldly experiences yet, may be quantified to certain standards, for instance, “even if I’d liked the guy, he’d needed to ask me out at least five times before I agree.” “After going out with him three times, then, I’ll allow him to hold my hands.”
As for the males, on the surfaces, they seemed to have gotten the controls of being proactive, but, they’d needed to cope with this uncertainty too: not knowing if the girl said no, was she really not into oneself? Or, was she just, working hard, to fulfill the stereotypical behaviors of women? So, the scripts they’d learned was, “I need to keep on trying to persuade her, even if I’d started, stalking her, after my long pursuits, and she gets moved, she shall be, yours.” So, the assortments of men who’d failed in the realms of relationship, either became horrid lovers, or, robotic men.
And, even if we lose these sort of extremes, I’d still asked the adults in the seminar: when you’re growing up, didn’t you have this sort of troubles? When the boys were in pursuits, they’d often wondered, “am I being, jerked around?”; while the girls were being pursued, they’d needed to, weigh the rejections and the acceptances carefully, because you never know, if you had, gone too far in rejecting someone, causing the individual to completely give up on hopes to love, and stop pursuing you altogether. In our teenage years, we probably all had encounters of these kinds of troubles, the “uncertain, flirtatious period”, is probably hinting at this mode of interactions, we’re having fun, guessing one another’s intentions, but we never ask straight up, is it because we believed, that this schema which males and females in pursuit of each other makes the females not admit to being in love, and the males unable to admit defeat?
What’s worse is, in this sort of a script, males and females don’t take the “no” seriously: “no” for a female, is her way of keeping up her stature, it’s something that males don’t need to take seriously over; “No” is never considered as a valid statement in the expression of oneself, and in this schema of love, it’d become, merely, a tool, to test each other out.
And so, in this agreed-upon rule of thumb of pursuit from men to women, women actually never got taken seriously when they said “no”, and the society never needed to take seriously, when a woman said, “no”. What women needed more courage over, is saying “Yes!”
So, this, is all due to the gender expectations, the gender roles that we take up in relating to members of the opposite sex, and, this is bad, because, when a woman says “no”, men easily interpret it as she’s toying with me, and, that leads to awful things like rape or sexual assault, because, there’s, NO clear cut definition of what “no” means when a woman said it!