Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

by Amanda Montell

I’d like to take a moment to offer a brief linguistic critique of what’s wrong with teaching women to say “no” and men to listen for “no” when we talk about sexual consent: analyses of real-life refusals show that there is a precise formula English speakers follow to decline things in a socially acceptable way, and it actually almost never includes the word no. Instead, it goes: hesitate + hedge + express regret + give a culturally acceptable reason. As in “Um, well, I’d love to, but I have to finish this assignment,” or “Oh, I’m sorry, but I should go home and feed my cat.” It is also our very job as listeners to make inferences about what other people mean when they speak, whether or not it is said in the clearest way. (Think of how strange it would be to reject a friend’s invitation out to coffee with a blunt “NO!”) Not to mention that in a sexual assault scenario, refusing something so brusquely might cause more tension or danger. The problem with teaching “no means no” is that it ultimately lets sexual offenders off the hook, because it removes their duty to use common sense as listeners, so that later they can say, “Well, she didn’t say ‘no.’ I can’t read people’s minds,” and we as a culture go, “That’s true, her fault.” Plus, as we’ve already learned, sexual trespassers actually don’t need an explicit no—they already get what they’re doing is wrong. They simply don’t care, because our culture teaches them that they don’t have to.