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.
