A man wanting access to a woman does not create a moral question for the woman. She can simply decline.At least we are getting closer to telling t
A man wanting access to a woman does not create a moral question for the woman. She can simply decline.
At least we are getting closer to telling the truth in plain sight.
A man wants something. And increasingly, we are being asked to behave as though the fact that he wants it settles the matter.
He wants her attention. He wants a date. He wants another chance. He wants sex. He wants her emotional reassurance. He wants to be included in something she created for herself. He wants access to a space. He wants her to reconsider the boundary. He wants her to change the language she uses to describe her own life and personhood. He wants her to rearrange herself so that his experience of the world feels better.
And somewhere along the way, the wanting begins to acquire moral weight.
That is where we need to be careful.
Because wanting is human. Entitlement is something else.
We Keep Explaining the Want
Women gained very little if we won the right to say no only when nobody is terribly disappointed by the answer.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, though sometimes I don’t think the people doing it even recognize the trick anymore.
We spend enormous amounts of time explaining why someone wants something from women.
He is lonely.
He has been rejected.
He feels excluded.
He has had a difficult life.
He needs companionship.
He needs affirmation.
He needs somewhere to belong.
He needs somebody to understand.
He wants his family.
He wants love.
All of those things may be true. Human beings deserve compassion. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Exclusion can hurt terribly. I don’t have to mock somebody’s pain to recognize that another human being cannot be assigned as its remedy.
That is the part we keep skipping.
We explain his need so thoroughly that somewhere in the telling, her consent quietly disappears.
And women know this story. Lord, do we know this story.
She does not owe you a chance. She does not owe you reconsideration. She does not owe you access because you asked “nicely.”
“Just Give Him a Chance”
Women have heard some version of it forever.
Give him a chance.
Don’t be so picky.
Don’t judge a book by its cover.
You might like him once you get to know him.
Why won’t you just talk to him?
He bought you dinner.
He’s really nice.
He’s been through a lot.
He likes you so much.
His future is important.
Do you know how hard rejection is for men?
Notice what happens.
The conversation begins with HIS desire and somehow ends with an investigation of HER character.
Nobody asks why wanting a woman should create an obligation in the woman being wanted.
Instead, she gets called before the little imaginary court.
Explain yourself.
Why don’t you want him?
Have you examined your preferences?
Where did your boundaries come from?
Could your discomfort be prejudice?
Have you challenged yourself?
Could you make an exception?
Are you sure?
She was sure before the deposition started.
A woman does not have to turn every no into a doctoral dissertation. Her no does not require a character witness, supporting evidence, three citations and a closing argument. Women are not required to search themselves for alleged “hidden prejudice” every time a man dislikes their answer. Sometimes there is no deeper reason. She doesn’t want to. We need to become adults about that.
Every no does not conceal a wound that needs healing, a bias that needs correcting, or a fear that needs overcoming. Sometimes a woman simply made a decision that was best for her life. A woman is not an unfinished social justice project because she refuses to give a man what he wants.
Wanting Cannot Create a Debt in Another Human Being
No woman should have to prove that excluding a man from some part of her life produces a measurable social benefit. She can simply not want him there.
This is bigger than dating. That is why I keep returning to it.
A society committed to human freedom has to understand a very basic principle: one person’s desire cannot automatically create another person’s obligation.
Otherwise, freedom belongs primarily to the person doing the wanting.
Think about how dangerous that becomes.
If your loneliness creates my obligation, what happens to MY freedom?
If your need for validation creates my obligation, what happens to MY honesty?
If your desire for intimacy creates my obligation, what happens to MY consent?
If your discomfort with my reasonable safety boundary creates my obligation, what exactly is a boundary anymore?
We cannot build a humane society by treating the person who says “no” as the obstacle standing between another person and fulfillment.
Sometimes the answer is simply “no.”
Because there are other people here.
Women Are People in the Equation
This sounds almost embarrassingly obvious. Yet history tells us it has not been obvious at all.
Women have spent generations fighting to become full decision-makers in matters involving our own bodies, labor, money, education, marriages, fertility, property, careers and futures.
That struggle was necessary because women’s lives were routinely organized around what somebody else needed from us.
A husband needed obedience.
Children needed sacrifice.
Families needed caregiving.
Employers needed cheap labor.
Churches needed service.
Communities needed women to hold everything together.
Society needed women to be pleasant about the arrangement.
Sometimes those needs were real. That still did not mean the woman ceased being a person.
This is the lesson we cannot afford to misplace. Women’s liberation cannot mean that women finally gained the right to say “no”,……….. provided nobody is terribly disappointed by the answer.
That ain’t freedom. That’s customer service.
Sometimes women’s freedom is wonderfully ordinary: “I don’t want to. I’m not going to. No.”
Compassion Has Boundaries Too
I believe deeply in compassion.
I also believe we have done compassion a terrible disservice by confusing it with surrender.
I can care that you are lonely without dating you.
I can understand that rejection hurts—hell yeah, it does—without changing my answer.
I can believe you deserve friendship without volunteering mine.
I can want you to have community without surrendering every community I have.
I can recognize your dignity without giving you authority over mine.
These things can live together. In fact, they must.
Because compassion that requires one person to repeatedly surrender herself to prove that she possesses it is no longer compassion. It has become extraction dressed in today’s latest fashions rather than yesterday’s.
Society Cannot Keep Solving Problems by Spending Women
This may be the part we most need to understand. Women are not an inexhaustible social resource.
Our time is finite. Our bodies are ours. Our attention is finite. Our emotional labor costs something. Our safety counts. Our privacy counts. Our friendships count. Our spaces count. Our preferences count. Our energy counts.
When society encounters a difficult problem, the answer cannot continually be:
What can women give up?
What can women accommodate?
What boundary can women loosen?
What discomfort can women learn to tolerate?
What risk can women absorb?
What language can women change?
What objection can women stop making?
Eventually somebody ought to look around the room and ask why the solution keeps arriving with a bill addressed to women.
There are other possibilities.
Build something. Organize. Create community. Fund services. Make friendships. Develop institutions. Teach boys differently. Challenge harmful behavior among men. Create healthier cultures among men. Solve loneliness without assigning women. Solve exclusion without compulsory inclusion. Solve suffering without transferring the cost to somebody with less power to refuse it. Tell people the painful truth.
That is harder work. It is also real work.
Men Need the Freedom to Hear No Too
Stop treating women’s boundaries like rough drafts waiting for male feedback.
There is something else here that doesn’t get said enough.
Teaching men that every deeply felt desire deserves accommodation does men no favors.
Life contains disappointment. People will not always choose us. Someone we love may leave. Someone we desire may not desire us. A group we admire may not invite us. A person may misunderstand us. A boundary may remain exactly where it was after we explain how much it hurts.
Growing into a whole human being includes learning that disappointment can be survived without turning another person’s refusal into an injustice that needs to be avenged.
Men deserve the opportunity to develop that strength too.
We should be raising boys who know how to hear “no” without hearing humiliation. Men who can experience rejection without needing to punish somebody for it. Men who understand that another person’s autonomy is not an insult.
There is dignity in that. There is maturity in it. There is freedom there too.
We have spent enough generations teaching women how to soften no. It is time society learned how to hear it.
Ask the Question We Keep Avoiding
Women are not opportunities that must be distributed fairly among men.
Maybe we should start asking questions like this…….
You have explained why HE wants it. Have you explained why SHE owes it?
Women are not a public service. Women do not owe equal access to their attention, affection, bodies, relationships, friendships or private lives. A man’s desire can be sincere without becoming a woman’s duty.
His disappointment can be real without making her boundary cruel.
His humanity can be honored without requiring her surrender.
And perhaps this is where we finally grow up as a society.
Not by teaching human beings to stop wanting things. Wanting is part of being alive. We grow up by understanding that there are other human beings standing on the other side of our wants.
They have lives. They have histories. They have instincts. They have boundaries. They have desires of their own.
And sometimes, after listening carefully to everything we have to say, they will look us in the eye and tell us “no.”
And then, after the “no”…….Life can go on for men, the same way that it does for women.
Hidden Misogyny: The Kind That Smiles in Your Face – WE Survive Abuse
Love Doesn’t Mean Lying: I Can Respect You and Still Speak the Truth – WE Survive Abuse