Hear Me ROAR: When A Woman Says NO, It Means NO!

Powerful poetry that narrates the tale of a woman’s consent in a relationship from being strangers to marital rape. When a woman says NO it’s a NO!

If she is a stranger she should let you scan her, If she is a co worker and, if she occasionally laughs with you she should be available for you, if she is a girlfriend she should give in to your sexual advances and if she is a wife to you, she simply has no right to refuse your demand for a regular dose of sex. A woman’s consent has never been given the due precedence and respect.

A woman’s No if it’s a feeble one, is a ‘yes’ in the knowledge of our esteemed members of the judiciary and for that matter most men have only encouraged that stereotype. In the same context, ‘marital rape’ is something that most men in this nation do not understand and accept. Its time men and the society take a woman’s No for a No!

That moment when you scan me
From head to toe in public
At a bus – stop, market, or walking on the roads
When your piercing gaze
Is fixed at me like a hungry eagle

When in fraction of seconds
You examine my vital stats
And your penetrating eyes
Are brimming with a profound craving
To have a slice of me
When your irrefutable lust
Engulfs your countenance completely

(ii)

When you are a colleague, an associate
A co- worker and a little more than an acquaintance

Never miss real stories from India's women.

Register Now

When in my casual interactions
A few giggles over coffee
And in those hearty conversations
You fancy that I am available

When you expect me to be
Forbearing to your sexual advances
And let you have a good time

(iii)

When you start admiring me
A little more than before
When you entice an alliance
And when you profess love

When you yearn for intimacy
And want me to surrender
When you wish to touch and feel me all over

When you intentionally ignore
All my non- verbal clues
To assert and uphold
The utmost significance of physical pleasures

But then
When I am not yet ready
I am not eager
I am not willing
And I demand time
To exude and reciprocate with conviction
But you cannot decipher the
Unsettling concoction of my skepticism and affection

(iv)

And
When you once for all procure me
Post that legitimate ‘matrimony’
When for the world
It is but an eternal bond

When you vehemently
Consider it your basic privilege
And proclaim your right as a partner
When you question the connotations of
Something called ‘permission’
When you reckon with precedence
That you have indeed acquired me
When your wish is supposed to be my command
At least on the bed

When my ‘consent’ is not imperative
But your need is grave and befitting
When you defy my feeble denials
When you grab and assault with full force
In order to relish me
And when savoring my flesh is by all means legitimate!

When you conveniently endorse the stereotypes
And demean saying
“A woman’s No is often a Yes”

When your quintessential manly vigor
Cannot stand a woman’s NO
That moment
When the life partner in you
Metamorphoses into a brutal beast
And when ‘marital rape’ is merely a phrase for you
But doesn’t parallel a crime

That is when you
Cannot discern my invisible afflictions
That is when you mercilessly smother
A woman’s self esteem
And belittle the purpose of her existence

That is when all your synonyms of love
And all its mighty expressions
Turn into nothing but trash!

However,
It’s time I renounce your patriarchal reasoning
Defy your decrepit practices
With the loudest roar

And here I go
“When a woman says NO
She only means NO”!

Header image is a screenshot from the movie Daman

Comments