YesMeansYes: What coercive people look for in a “No”

By ChristineThis post is Firelight content.

This isn’t a post directly about 50 Shades but the concept behind it is one that is, I think, relevant to how Christian interacts with Ana in the first few chapters in FSOG. It’s about how coercive people aren’t interested so much in what potential victims have to say, but in how they it – and from that they make inferences about whether said potential victim is an easy or hard target.

The YesMeansYes blog primarily focusses on rape and the writing I want to recommend to you is titled “Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer“. My favourite bit is right near the end:

I tell my niece, “If a guy offers to buy you a drink and you say no, and he pesters you until you say okay, what he wants for his money is to find out if you can be talked out of no.” The rapist doesn’t listen to refusals, he probes for signs of resistance in the meta-message, the difference between a target who doesn’t want to but can be pushed, and a target who doesn’t want to and will stand by that even if she has to be blunt.

Content note: The post contains a few pro-rape exhortations though the author warns about these before they come up.

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