32 Ways Women Say No To Sex Without Actually Saying “No”

Because if she’s making excuses, it’s not a green light to start getting undressed.

The Aziz Ansari debacle that kicked off 2018 sparked a storm of debate over what exactly classifies as ‘consent’, and what should be shrugged off as nothing more than ‘a bad date’.

Most worryingly, it highlighted the fact a lot of people seem to think unless a woman indignantly screams, “No! Stop right now, you jerk!” and storms out of the room, the poor old simpleton man she’s with apparently can’t be expected to read between the lines.

In fact, attacks on the unidentified woman at the center of the Ansari scandal, known only as ‘Grace’ in the now infamous Babe article, get pretty nasty, ranging from suggesting she’s destroyed all credibility the #MeToo movement had built, to asserting she’s essentially a jaded fame-whore who couldn’t handle the fact her fantasy celebrity romance turned out to be merely an awkward sexual encounter.

So we thought it practical for educational purposes, to clarify all the ways women make it clear they don’t want to have sex.

FYI: a paper by researchers Celia Kitzinger and Hannah Frith, Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis In Developing A Feminist Perspective On Sexual Refusal actually proves that, in fact, both men and women readily interpret and understand non-explicit cues as indications of refusal, as we’ve been socially conditioned to soften the blow of a hard “No” with an “I’d love to, but I think I already have plans that night”. Rather, the paper suggests rape and sexual misconduct don’t happen as a result of miscommunication, but the perpetrator’s own willingness to find excuses to justify indulging their self-interests.

But just incase you were home-schooled in a cave, here are 32 times you definitely shouldn’t respond to your date or significant other by initiating sex…