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May 1, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout

What do you do when someone says that they are the kind of person that is afraid of saying no? Do you just terminate the hookup and leave? That seems like the prudent course of action.

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I've never encountered this, and it would be a surprisingly self-aware response I'd want to understand better. Admittedly, much of the motivation behind asking someone if they're comfortable saying no is not really to garner a response but rather to establish a framework. By leading with that question, I'm telegraphing (through conduct and by implication) that I am someone that *cares* about consent without having to work within a rigid and unreliable framework of affirmative consent.

A frequent complaint about the affirmative consent model (see the Radiolab series for more) is that women feel "pressured" to say yes even when they're not into it. This is a catastrophic failure of the model and it's not solved by just asking more questions; you need a completely different framework and starting off by first encouraging someone to say no (or at least be capable of doing so) seems to work well for me.

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Doesnt it bother you a bit that the hyperwoke people dont adhere to the rigid consent model that they preach about to everyone else. I encountered someone like that once and was so disgusted that I ghosted her afterwards.

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I'm mindful to avoid painting groups with a broad brush but yes it bothers me deeply whenever anyone doesn't adhere to their own principles.

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