While I advocate for women’s rights, I also work for gender equality, and it saddens me to see how, just like women, even a man’s “No” is not considered or respected as well as it should be in our society.
“No”, in my opinion, is a complete sentence with a full stop. There shouldn’t be more questions, and it shouldn’t be discussed any further.
When a man doesn’t respect a woman’s denial, we call him a pervert, but when a woman doesn’t respect a man’s ‘No’ we call the man a coward, and in both cases, a woman gets the system of people and society on her side.
When a man cracks a sexist joke and links up a woman’s name with other men, we point fingers at the man for being unscrupulous, but if a woman does the same thing to the man, we treat it with either silence or laughter and somehow normalise it because the society unfairly believes that being a man is all about being everywhere. We don’t acknowledge a man’s dignity or unwillingness. Linking up his name or gaslighting him on the name of females around him is also character assassination, just like it is if done to women.
Even when two adults mutually get intimate, we observe women blaming men for ‘using’ in case things change, but we don’t allow men to do so because we are conditioned to believe that men ‘need’ it. Sex done with mutual consent can’t be raised to accuse a man alone.
The worst part is that today so many women misuse society’s negligence towards men’s dignity to avenge themselves by representing something done with mutual consent as a forceful act which damages not only a man’s reputation but also the psychology as it dents the emotional indulgence in an intimate moment and fractures their ability to trust anyone else easily in future.
We don’t even allow a man to walk out of a toxic relationship or leave a narcissistic partner as easy because our criteria to judge a good woman are based only on her facial beauty, family handling and pleasing a man in bed, no matter how badly behaved she might be.
This society is genetically engineered to associate a woman’s individuality with the man she is with. A part of woman empowerment has somehow made it all the more mandatory instead of changing this notion as a result of which a woman or a girl who has been raised to keep men at the centre of her world develops an identity crisis when she gets a setback denial or rejection thus making her unapologetically rupture a man’s reputation instead of respecting the ‘No’ and boundaries. Such women enforce their presence on men making it very difficult for the guy because society doesn’t allow a man to be disrespectful to a woman even if she crosses her boundaries and makes a man uncomfortable with her actions.
Women have undoubtedly suffered all this for centuries, but now with empowerment, men too have reached a similar scale of problems.
So if a woman character assassinates or scrutinizes a man’s dignity or crosses her boundaries, it is wrong, and the man alone shouldn’t be blamed if he retaliates. Also, When a Woman says No, it’s a No, and when a Man says No, it is a No as well – Sexually, Emotionally, Socially and Verbally.
Both men and women have equal rights to set vivid boundaries, walk out of unhealthy relationships without being made guilty or gaslighted and above all be respected for their choices and decisions.
Chivalry is not an excuse to force a man into something he doesn’t agree with!