Teaching Teenage Girls to Say No
by Gavin de Becker, Family Safety Expert(From Protecting the Gift. Copyright 1999 by Gavin de Becker. Published by The Dial Press. Reprinted with permission.)
How would it be if teenage girls had some initial wariness about every man they encountered? It would be realistic - sad maybe, but realistic. Here's why: rapes and other sexual crimes are virtually always committed by men, and most rapes and sexual assaults happen to girls under eighteen years of age.
Does this mean a teenage girl should have a ''Prove-to-me-that-you-aren't-dangerous'' attitude with all new men? No, because dangerous men are the very ones most frequently seeking to ''prove'' they aren't dangerous. The strategies such men apply are designed to gain your trust. Men who will not harm you needn't persuade you to trust them; they simply act appropriately from the moment you meet them and for as long as you know them. They do not exude forced harmlessness like the drama teacher everyone assumes is gay, or the understanding neighbor who says, ''If you ever need to just get away from your parents for a while, consider my place open to you.''
Other than by the passage of time, it isn't possible for a man to prove he isn't dangerous, nor is it his responsibility to do so. It is, however, a young woman's responsibility to heed intuitive signals if she gets them, and it is her responsibility to learn and recognize strategies of persuasion.
I'm realistic enough to know that teaching teenage girls about safety isn't easy. Warnings of danger haven't become any more compelling than they were when you first heard them from your parents. That's partly because there is an appropriate divide between teenagers and their parents; nature wants young adults to tear away for a while and find their own path. Also, while a mother is probably familiar with every important life-experience her teenage daughter has had (because she had them herself), their cultural experiences are hugely different. Here are some humorous but true examples:
Your teenage daughter has never feared a nuclear war; to her ''The Day After'' is a pill, not a movie. She's too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up, she has no idea that hostages were held in Iran, she knows there was a president named Reagan, but doesn't know he was shot, and if she's heard of Robert Kennedy, it's because he's John Kennedy, Jr.'s uncle. The expression ''You sound like a broken record'' means nothing to her - she's never owned a record player. She doesn't know who shot J. R. or even who he was, and the same for Mork and Mu'ammar Gadhafi. The Titanic was found? Until the movie, she didn't know it was lost. She has no idea when or why Jordache jeans were cool, and to her, America, Alabama, and Chicago are places - not music bands. Finally, there's been only one Pope, Jay Leno has always been the host of ''The Tonight Show,'' popcorn has always been cooked in a microwave, and Michael Jackson has always looked like this.
This list shows that many things in the world have changed, but unfortunately, there are many more that haven't changed, including intimate violence, date rape, rape, and murder. In our violent patriarchy, some mothers and teenage daughters may find that their shared target-status brings them closer together.
Of all the lessons a mother might pass to her daughter, the most valuable can be summed up with just two letters: N-O. Though the word No is one of the most potent in our language, it is among the least popular. In part, that's because most of us grew up associating that word with not getting what we wanted. Most kids hate the word, but as they grow, there is exceptional value from learning to love it. Though perhaps hard to imagine, this single word can play a central role in safety, particularly for young women, and particularly when she comes to dating age.
Teaching teens about this isn't easy because they've learned so much about dating from movies and TV shows. A popular Hollywood formula could be called Boy Wants Girl, Girl Doesn't Want Boy, Boy Persists and Harasses Girl, Boy Gets Girl. Many movies teach young men that if you just stay with it, even if you offend her, even if she says she wants nothing to do with you, even if she's in another relationship, even if you've treated her like trash (and sometimes because you've treated her like trash), you'll get the girl.
Young women will benefit their whole lives from learning that persistence only proves persistence - it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn't mean you are special - it means he is troubled.
Young women (and all women) benefit from understanding this paradox: men are nice when they pursue, and women are nice when they reject. The most troublesome part of this niceness is the too-popular practice called ''letting him down easy.'' True to what they are taught, rejecting women often say less than they mean. True to what they are taught, men often hear less than what is said. Nowhere is this problem more alarmingly expressed than by the hundreds of thousands of fathers (and mothers), older brothers (and sisters), movies, and television shows that teach most young men that when she says no, that's not what she means. Add to this all the young women taught to ''play hard to get'' when that's not what they are really feeling. The result is that ''no'' can mean many things in this culture. Here's just a small sample: Maybe, Not yet, Hmm..., Give me time, Not sure, Keep trying, and I've found my man!
There is one book in which the meaning of no is always clear. It is the dictionary, but since Hollywood writers don't seem to use that book very often, we have to. We have to teach young women that ''No'' is a complete sentence. This is not as simple as it may appear. Understand that when a man in our culture says No, it's usually the end of a discussion, but when a women says No, it's the beginning of a negotiation. This fact brings to mind a popular adage about selling: ''The sale begins when the customer says No.''
What starts as persistence often leads to unwanted pursuit, stalking, even date rape. I've successfully lobbied and testified for stalking laws in several states, but I would trade them all for a high school class that would teach young men how to hear ''no,'' and teach young women that it's all right to explicitly reject. If the culture taught (and then allowed) teenage girls to explicitly reject and to explicitly say no, or if more of them took that power early in every relationship, stalking and date-rape cases would decline dramatically.
Looking for Mr. Right has taken on far greater significance than Getting Rid of Mr. Wrong, so young women are not taught how to get out of relationships. That high school class would stress the one rule that applies to all types of unwanted pursuit: do not negotiate. Once a girl has made the decision that she doesn't want a relationship with a particular man, it needs to be said one time, explicitly. Almost any contact after that rejection will be seen as negotiation. If a woman tells a man over and over again that she doesn't want to talk to him, that is talking to him, and every time she does it, she betrays her resolve in the matter. If you tell someone ten times that you don't want to talk to him, you are talking to him -- nine more times than you wanted to.
When a young woman gets thirty messages from a pursuer, doesn't initially call him back, but then finally gives in and returns his calls, no matter what she says, he learns that the cost of reaching her is leaving thirty messages. For this type of young man, any contact will be seen as progress. Of course, some young women are worried that by not responding, they'll provoke him, so they try letting him down easy. Often, the result is that he believes she is conflicted, uncertain, really likes him but just doesn't know it yet.
When a girl rejects someone who has a crush on her, and she says, ''It's just that I don't want to be in relationship right now,'' he hears only the words ''right now.'' To him, this means she will want to be in a relationship later. The rejection should be ''I don't want to be in a relationship with you.'' Unless it's just that clear, and sometimes even when it is, he doesn't hear it.
If she says, ''You're a great guy and you have a lot to offer, but I'm not the one for you; my head's just not in the right place these days,'' he thinks: ''She really likes me; it's just that she's confused. I've got to prove to her that she's the one for me.''
When a young woman explains her decision not to accept or stay in a relationship, this type of pursuer will challenge each reason she offers. I suggest that teenage girls be taught that they never need to explain why they don't want a relationship, but simply make clear that they have thought it over, that this is their decision, and that they expect the boy to respect it. Why would she explain intimate aspects of her life, plans, and romantic choices to someone with whom she doesn't want a relationship?
The word rejection is weighted down with negative connotations; a better word is Decision, as in ''I have made a decision that we won't be having a relationship.'' This statement offers no reasons and begs no negotiations, but young women in this culture are virtually prohibited from speaking it. They are taught that speaking it clearly and early may lead to unpopularity, banishment, anger, and even violence.
If a teenage boy still pursues after hearing a girl's decision, he is saying, in effect, ''I do not accept your decision.'' If he debates, doubts, negotiates, or attempts to change her mind, her resolve should be strengthened, not challenged. That's because she can be immediately certain that she made the right decision about this person. Obviously, she wouldn't want a relationship with someone who does not hear what she says and who does not recognize her feelings.
An unwanted pursuer might escalate his behavior to include such things as persistent phone calls and messages, showing up uninvited at her classes or home, following her, and trying to enlist her friends or family in his campaign. If any of these things happens, assuming that she has communicated her decision one time explicitly, it is very important that no further detectable response be given. When a girl communicates again with someone she has explicitly rejected, her actions don't match her words. The boy is able to choose which communications (actions versus words) actually represent the woman's feelings. Not surprisingly, he usually chooses the ones that serve him. Often, such teenagers will leave phone messages that ostensibly offer closure, but that are actually crudely concealed efforts to get a response - and remember, he views any response as progress.
Message: Hi, it's Bryan. Listen, I just want to see you again. All I'm asking for is a chance to say good-bye; that's all. Just a fast meeting, and then I'm gone.
Best response: No response.
Message: Listen, it's Bryan. You won't hear from me again after today. I'm calling for the last time. (This line, though spoken often by unwanted pursuers, is rarely true.) It's urgent I speak with you.
Best response: No response.
Sometimes, what begins as persistence escalates to unwanted pursuit, and occasionally, outright stalking. There is an axiom of this dynamic:
MEN WHO CANNOT LET GO CHOOSE WOMEN WHO CANNOT SAY NO.
Many unwanted relationships start with a boy's pick-up strategies. These haven't changed much in a long time and aren't likely to, but the responses of uninterested girls could certainly include options other than ''You're cute but...'' Somebody recently sent me a list of funny comebacks to popular pick-up lines. I'm not necessarily recommending these responses, but girls benefit from knowing as many alternatives to compliance as possible:
Man: Your place or mine?
Woman: Both. You go to yours and I'll go to mine.
Man: What's your sign?
Woman: Do Not Enter.
Man: I know how to please a woman.
Woman: Then please leave me alone.
Man: I'd go to the end of the world for you.
Woman: But would you stay there?
Man: Is this seat empty?
Woman: Yes, and this one will be too if you sit down.
However she puts it, every time a young woman says No, she is actually saying Yes to something else: she is saying Yes to herself. One thing's almost for certain: if a teenager is fluent in the use of the word No, she will at some point be called a bitch. It needn't be an insult, as I learned from a young college student who learned it from her father: Bitch stands for ''Boys, I'm Taking Control Here.''
The man who will attempt to molest a teenager needs an environment in which that's possible. He needs to get her to a place where there is nobody nearby who will hear her if she resists loudly or calls for help. His other option is to get her in a frame of mind where she doesn't resist loudly or call for help. Accordingly, there are times and places where wariness is called for, i.e., times of vulnerability. There are times and places where wariness is wasted, i.e., times when teenage girls are not vulnerable. Dangerous men are only dangerous if they can get you somewhere. They are not dangerous on the dance floor, in the restaurant, in the crowded mall. That may be where they meet you, but it's not where they'd try to hurt you.
Do such men actually plot their opportunities? Often, they do, but there is also a type of sexual offender who is on autopilot, operating out of a second nature, an intuitive skill at knowing how to gain control. The good news is that just as he knows when a given environment serves his plans, so can his target intuitively and automatically observe, ''I am at a disadvantage here.''
Since much of what I've said about the nature of men is anything but PC - as in politically correct - I'll borrow the acronym from that tired phrase to characterize the contexts in which young women (and women in general) can recognize their disadvantage: PC will now stand for Privacy and Control.
If a man who intends sexual assault or rape has Privacy and Control, he can victimize someone. If he does not have PC, he is not dangerous, period. Accordingly, just the presence of these two features in a situation can trigger a young woman's heightened awareness and readiness. The presence of Privacy does not mean a man is sinister, but it does mean a girl is vulnerable. At that point, she'll benefit from carefully evaluating how the man got privacy: Was it by circumstance or by his design?
Privacy is defined here as isolation or concealment. A private place is one in which there is little or no chance that a third party will suddenly show up, a place that is out of range of the hearing of people who could assist the young woman. Cars, hotel rooms, apartments, houses, closed businesses, wilderness areas, the auditorium after hours, back corridors at work, a remote parking area, a stall at the horse stable where a girl is learning to ride - these all can afford Privacy.
The word Control defines a relationship between two people, in this case between a victimizer and his target. Control exists when one person is persuaded or compelled to be directed by the other.
Control can exist when a young woman feels persuaded to do what a man wants because she fears being injured if she resists, or because she doesn't want to hurt his feelings, or because she doesn't want him to hurt her reputation, or because she wants to avoid rejection.
Don't think of persuasion as something someone does to us; persuasion is an internal process, not an external one. ''We persuade ourselves.'' A predator merely manipulates how things seem to us. Whatever the method, persuasion requires the participation of the target, and human beings are the creatures who most cooperate with their predators. By contrast, the lion has a more difficult predatory challenge than does the man who would rape a teenager. The lion, after all, must walk around in a lion suit; he is burdened by the obviousness of the very assets that give him power (claws, teeth, muscle). Hunting would be easy if the lion could look like a timid kitten when it served him. Man can.
Some men with sinister intent seek control through physical power. Because the target's resistance might be noisy, the power-predator requires more privacy. He cannot retreat easily because there comes a point where there is no ambiguity about his intent. He commits to likely consequences in ways that most persuasion-predators do not. The power-predator needs more privacy, more space, more time, more recklessness, and more luck in order to get what he wants. Thus, the power-predator is more rare than the persuasion-predator, but also more likely to do serious injury.
The persuasion-predator gets a target to cooperate and is thus granted much more flexibility when it comes to privacy. This man can use a room in the girl's home, even if family members are somewhere in the house. For him, Privacy is adequately afforded by a room at work that people don't frequent, even if the business is open. For him, a few empty seats in a theater can offer enough concealment to sexually abuse a teenager. Accordingly, the teenage girl who can be easily persuaded appeals to a far wider group of predators and is more likely to be sexually assaulted than a teenage girl who cannot be easily persuaded.
Note that I've been using the word target rather than the word victim. That's because being a target need not automatically make one a victim. In fact, it's nearly impossible for a teenage girl to avoid being a target at some point, but it is very possible to avoid becoming a victim. The best way to do that is by recognizing PC at the earliest possible moment, and if things feel uncomfortable (even if it is just the vulnerability itself that feels uncomfortable), taking steps to change the situation.
Of course, teenage girls will often be in private environments with men who have no sinister intent whatsoever. The driving instructor who takes your teenage daughter all over town is granted some PC opportunities, but if he is a good man, no problem. Still, it's appropriate for a teenage girl to recognize the P in PC if several turns take them to some remote area. Ideally, if this occurs, she'd be more alert for the introduction of Control.
Right when a man begins to introduce the P or the C is the defining moment when one can determine - virtually choose - whether to be a target or a victim. A girl can say as the driving instructor's directions take them out of populated areas: ''I'd be more comfortable staying in the city,'' or ''Please stay in familiar areas.'' If the man had sinister intent, this girl has just asserted in the clearest language that she will not be easily persuaded, thus his options for gaining control are limited to force or fear, and that requirement will exclude the overwhelming majority of predators.
PC is easy to memorize and easy to recall because these concepts are already imbedded into the consciousness of human beings, including your teenage daughter. When someone acts in a way that alarms her, she instantly and automatically evaluates PC. She intuitively weighs whether anyone might hear a call for help or whether someone might come along, and she measures what degree of control the predator might have over her.
The key - the trick if you will - is to recognize PC before someone alarms her, and even in the absence of obvious sinister intent on the man's part. The impala who finds itself alone with the lion doesn't wait to see how the carnivore will behave. The impala evaluates its options and resources all the while.
Does this mean a teenage girl must be in a constant state of alertness whenever she is in the presence of men? Absolutely not. This is about being alone with a man in a situation in which she is vulnerable. And then, a recognition of PC might be no more than a passing thought that opens the girl to her intuition about this man. If she feels at ease with her boss at the restaurant even though there are no customers around, fine. But being cognizant of PC means she'll sooner recognize the slightest inappropriate comment or unusual behavior, like locking the front door before closing time.
Teenage girls: Memorize PC - Privacy and Control - and when someone has these advantages, be open to signals of that person's intent. That's all, not a fear of every man, just an acceptance of reality.
Survival Signals
Forced Teaming
Typecasting
Too Many Details
The Unsolicited Promise
Charm and Niceness
Loan-Sharking
Discounting the Word ''No''
I wish every young woman in America could have seen these signals as clearly as I did on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. I was seated next to a teenage girl who was traveling alone. A man in his forties who'd been watching her from across the aisle took off the headphones he was wearing and said to her with partylike flair, ''These things just don't get loud enough for me!'' He then put his hand out toward her and said, ''I'm Billy.'' Though it may not be immediately apparent, his statement was actually a question, and the young girl responded with exactly the information Billy hoped for: She told him her full name. Then she put out her hand, which he held a little too long. In the conversation that ensued, he didn't directly ask for any information, but he certainly got lots of it.
He said, ''I hate landing in a city and not knowing if anybody is meeting me.'' The girl answered this question by saying that she didn't know how she was getting from the airport to the house where she was staying. Billy asked another question: ''Friends can really let you down sometimes.'' The young girl responded by explaining, ''The people I'm staying with (thus, not family) are expecting me on a later flight.''
Billy said, ''I love the independence of arriving in a city when nobody knows I'm coming.'' This was the virtual opposite of what he'd said a moment before about hating to arrive and not be met. He added, ''But you're probably not that independent.'' She quickly volunteered that she'd been traveling on her own since she was thirteen.
''You sound like a woman I know from Europe, more like a woman than a teenager,'' he said as he handed her his drink (Scotch), which the flight attendant had just served him. ''You sound like you play by your own rules.'' I hoped she would decline to take the drink, and she did at first, but he persisted, ''Come on, you can do whatever you want,'' and she took a sip of his drink.
I looked over at Billy, looked at his muscular build, at the old tattoo showing on the top of his wrist, and at his cheap jewelry. I noted that he was drinking alcohol on this morning flight and had no carry-on bag. I looked at his new cowboy boots, new denim pants and leather jacket. I knew he'd recently been in jail. He responded to my knowing look assertively, ''How you doin' this morning, pal? Gettin' out of Chicago?'' I nodded.
As Billy got up to go to the bathroom, he put one more piece of bait in his trap: Leaning close to the girl, he gave a slow smile and said, ''Your eyes are awesome.''
In a period of just a few minutes, I had watched Billy use forced teaming (they both had nobody meeting them, he said), too many details (the headphones and the woman he knows from Europe), loan-sharking (the drink offer), charm (the compliment about the girl's eyes), and typecasting (''You're probably not that independent''). I had also seen him discount the girl's ''no'' when she declined the drink.
As Billy walked away down the aisle, I asked the girl if I could talk to her for a moment, and she hesitantly said yes. It speaks to the power of predatory strategies that she was glad to talk to Billy but a bit wary of the passenger (me) who asked permission to speak with her. ''He is going to offer you a ride from the airport,'' I told her, ''and he's not a good guy.''
I saw Billy again at baggage claim as he approached the girl. Though I couldn't hear them, the conversation was apparent. She was shaking her head and saying no, and he wasn't accepting it. She held firm, and he finally walked off with an angry gesture, not the ''nice'' guy he'd been up till then.
There was no movie on that flight, but Billy had let me watch a classic performance of an interview, that, by little more than the context (forty-year-old stranger and teenage girl alone), was high stakes.
Teach girls to protect themselves
By the time a girl has reached her teens, she has gone from being an occasional sexual predatory prize to the leading sexual predatory prize. Accordingly, I don't think there's much information she need be protected from. Her understanding of how persuasion strategies work and her understanding of how targets are selected, is now her armor. Often, merely seeing that armor will incline a predator to choose someone else. We never want him, however, to see the absence of armor that is revealed when a teenage girl violates nature's basic safety rules.
The example I see most often is a teenage girl jogging or walking along in public enjoying music through headphones. She has disabled her hearing, the survival sense most likely to warn her about dangerous approaches. To make matters worse, those wires leading up to her ears display her vulnerability for everyone to see. Another example is that while young women wouldn't walk around blindfolded, many do not use the full resources of their sight. A young woman who believes she is being followed might take just a tentative look, hoping to see if someone is visible in her peripheral vision. It is better to turn completely, take in everything, and look squarely at someone who concerns you. This not only gives you information, but it communicates to a pursuer that you are not a tentative, frightened victim-in-waiting. The message for every teenage girl (and woman): You are an animal of nature, fully endowed with hearing, sight, intellect, and dangerous defenses. You are not easy prey, so don't act like you are.
Unfortunately, modern technology has discovered a way to temporarily turn off all of a woman's defenses, and since millions of teenage boys and young men know all about it, teenage girls need to as well. Imagine a pill that costs as little as a couple of dollars, is tasteless and odorless, dissolves completely into a drink, incapacitates whomever ingests it for hours, and then erases the person's memory. Aptly known as the date-rape drug, Rohypnol has a slew of street names: Roofies, R2, roofenol, roche, la roche, roachies, and rib. In a typical Rohypnol-rape case a young woman accepts a drink and then feels dizzy and disoriented. To all observers she looks like she's drunk, but the person who dropped a Rohypnol in her glass knows better. Though he seems the gentleman as he walks her outside, he takes her somewhere to rape her. Most victims have little or no memory of what happened, but they piece together evidence that they've had sex with someone.
There are thousands of investigations into Rohypnol-rapes each month, which means there are likely thousands more women who never figured out what happened to them, or if they did, chose not to report it. An obvious way to improve what is already epidemic in some states (worst in Florida and Texas) is government classification of Rohypnol in the same category as drugs with a high potential for abuse, such as LSD and heroin. Hoffman-LaRoche, which manufactures Rohypnol, resists that and notes in their defense that ''Alcohol is the number one date-rape drug in the country.'' Okay, so Rohypnol is the number two date-rape drug in the country - but it is still aiding thousands of predators to victimize girls and women.
I consulted with prosecutors on a complex case of a man who drugged a female co-worker on more than one occasion. The young victim was raped several times over a period of months, but recalls little of what occurred. ''Someone had sex with my body,'' she says. ''Even now, months later, a sound I hear or something I see will ring a distant bell in my head. I am suddenly overcome with grief, fear or horror, and I know that deep down my brain is remembering something horrible that happened to me while I was drugged.''
The main defense against Rohypnol-rape is knowledge about the drug. Then a young woman can be cautious about accepting drinks and carefully watch that nobody puts anything in one's drink.
Nearly all of the hazards teenage girls face can be reduced by teaching and mindset, but parents must first un-teach the cultural lesson that girls are not able to defend themselves. The book to read on this point is Ellen Snortland's already classic Beauty Bites Beast. ''It's not a how-to book,'' she writes, ''but a 'How Come?' book. How come the females of every other species on the planet are fierce, regardless of size, and are the ones who train their offspring, male and female, in defense and hunting?'' Snortland says that self-defense training for girls should be as automatic as teaching them to swim.
