The Sunday News
Thandekile Moyo
MY father told me to teach my daughter to respect the word no when she was just a little baby, before she could even talk. He advised me against raising a spoilt brat with no respect for boundaries. He told me it was important for my daughter to learn from a tender age that she cannot always have what she wants and she cannot always do what she wants.
I followed his advice but would sometimes find myself feeling sorry for her when she looked at me with those beautiful eyes of hers and said “please mummy, please!” It would take all of my willpower to stick to my decision to not allow whatever it was she was begging me for.
She’s now five years old and knows that my no, means no. When I say no to her she just grumbles or moves on to the next thing but she rarely begs me to change my mind. I have heard her begging other people though. It seems her young mind already knows that some people yield to her demands if she puts enough pressure on them and some do not.
For example, when she is with me she sleeps by 6.30pm in winter and 7.30pm in summer, no matter what! When she is with my parents I have heard reports that she refuses to go to sleep and rarely sleeps before 9pm and sometimes as late as 11pm. I believe she tried it once or twice and got away with it so she now knows she can get away with that behaviour when she is there.
People are always silently testing us, watching us and classifying us without us knowing. We innocently give away certain vibes that people will rightly or wrongly interpret depending on their level of intellect, how they were socialised as well as their characters and personalities.
This has me thinking that people treat us the way we allow them to treat us. After studying us for some time, they know what we will tolerate and what we will not. Unfortunately sometimes they misread us and assume we are ok with things we are not ok with.
Take for example the workplace pervert, I am sure he doesn’t just go around grabbing every woman’s bum or telling dirty jokes to everyone. They have their targets who I suppose they view as weak or yielding. And even with those, he doesn’t go straight for the bums, no!
He will probably tell you an explicit joke and tap you on the shoulder as he laughs and watch how you react. If he finds you accommodating, next time he will shake your hand in greeting and hold on to it a few seconds longer than usual. If he thinks your response is positive then depending on how bold he is he will either continue to groom you or just go ahead and tap that bum the next time you pass by him.
Not everyone who tells adult jokes is a pervert though and not everyone who touches you is grooming you. How then do we distinguish inappropriate behaviour from innocent? At what point, should we stop unwanted behaviour in its tracks? Imagine screaming “do not touch me!” to everyone who so much as bumps into you by mistake in the office.
If your boss taps you on the shoulder as he commends you on how well you did on your last assignment; are you supposed to harshly brush his hand off and scream harassment? How do we know the difference between somebody who is grooming us for sexual harassment and somebody who is just plain friendly?
Our world is now a hotpot of cultures so it is difficult to know where to draw the line. Let us look at dressing for example. There are people who claim that there is dressing that invites sexual abuse. I have heard rapists being defended by people who claim the victim could have prevented the assault by dressing better. Or mothers who tell their daughters to cover up or they will get raped.
Seeing as we now live in a world where tight trousers and miniskirts are the order of the day, our mindset needs to change.
This is difficult to do when the world tries to drum into boys that NO means NO, in the same breath teaching girls to be coy, play hard to get and that good girls make boys wait. How are our boys supposed to know when a girl is being coy and when she clearly is not interested? Imagine if that handsome good boy from around the corner approaches your daughter, who you have taught to play hard to get, and she says no to him, hoping he will keep trying; but he immediately forgets about her because he has been taught that no means no. To what extent can we blame a pushy young man who keeps harassing your daughter with unwanted phone calls and messages; because he believes she’s only saying she doesn’t want him because she wants to test his resilience and weigh how much he really wants her?
Our culture teaches girls to be shy, reserved and a bit rude to men yet the world we live in demands confidence, assertiveness and cheerfulness from women, especially in the workplace. Imagine the disaster when you then meet this “brute” at work who thinks a smile from a woman is a sign that she wants to sleep with him and believes that confidence in a woman is a sign that she is loose.
We find ourselves with a group of people who believe certain signals are invites and another who gives out these signals, unaware of their effects. Because of this, we need people to understand that the world is evolving. In 1950 a miniskirt may have meant that a girl was available but in 2017 it just means it is hot outside! Red lipstick may have screamed: prostitute! in 1981, but in 2017 it just means: confident! To prevent yourself from landing in hot soup, stop relying entirely on signals and make sure you are on the same page before you grab that poor woman’s breast and land yourself in prison.
The signal giving group also has to accept that there are people who will misinterpret them hence they have to possess the social intelligence to know how to dress and behave in different set-ups. Just like my 5-year-old knows she can at sleep whatever time she wants at my parents’ house but never at mine; girls must know they can get away with wearing miniskirts at Ascot Shopping Centre but never at Egodini.
Everyone needs to learn to be assertive and to mean what they say, especially parents when raising children. From when they are babies, let’s teach them that no means no. When we say no to children, but yield to them when they beg, we are teaching them that if you put enough pressure on a person you can change their will. Society, as a whole, needs to have a clear position on whether no really means no, or no means maybe!
