BLESSING NYAHUMA
EVERY time a rape case breaks into the headlines, a whole country starts arguing about sex, power and whom to believe.
The names and details change, but the argument never does. At the centre of these cases is the question of whether a person’s “no” is recognised as a no. Sometimes a “no” is said plainly.
Sometimes it is communicated through withdrawal, fear, hesitation or through words such as
“I’m tired,”
“ I have a headache”
“Not tonight”
“Please stop.”
At other times, no valid consent is possible because the person lacks the capacity to give it. Yet too often, some men choose to hear a yes where there is only a no.
Careers have collapsed, families have fractured, perpetrators have gone to prison and survivors have carried lifelong trauma because a refusal was treated as negotiable and a boundary as an obstacle to overcome.
Rape has no single face. It occurs within marriage, dating relationships, workplaces, religious institutions and between strangers. What connects these cases is the displacement of one person’s freedom by another’s desire, power or authority.
It includes those too intoxicated, drugged, unconscious or asleep to consent, as well as children who cannot legally consent. The circumstances differ, but the violation remains the same. One person’s will is displaced by another’s desire or power.
Across much of recorded history, sexual violation was judged through the interests of households, husbands and fathers rather than through the free will of the woman herself.
Ancient laws organised sexual offences around virginity, marriage, family honour and male guardianship. Even when assault was punished, the law often focused more on damage to the household than on the violation of the woman’s freedom.
Hammurabi’s Law 130, written around 1780 BCE, recognised that a woman who had been forced was the victim and should not be punished.
Deuteronomy 22:28–29 is more difficult. Some scholars read it as rape, while others understand it as seduction or unlawful sex. The passage requires the man to pay the woman’s father and marry her, directing the remedy largely towards the father and household rather than the woman’s wishes. Centuries later, Augustine insisted that a woman forced against her will had committed no wrong.
Discussing Lucretia, he approved an earlier verdict that although two people were involved, only one was guilty. The guilt belonged to the person who used force.
Yet the older mistake remains alive. You can hear it whenever a man says:
“I paid for dinner.”
“I pay the rent.”
“She came to the lodge.”
“She is my girlfriend.”
“She is my wife.”
Each statement describes an expense, a place or a relationship. None establishes consent. Paying for dinner does not purchase another person’s body. Entering a lodge or hotel does not remove the right to change one’s mind. Dating does not create permanent permission.
Marriage does not erase the freedom to refuse. Money spent, intimacy previously shared and relationships already established can never turn another person’s “no” into a “yes”.
This inherited mistake feeds directly into the psychology of misreading. Psychologists use the term “Token Resistance” to describe situations in which a person says No while supposedly intending to participate eventually. The more dangerous problem is the belief that a woman’s refusal is not genuine. International studies show how social expectations can encourage this misreading.
Later research found that many supposed examples involved genuine refusal followed by uncertainty, changing feelings or a later change of mind. A later yes does not cancel an earlier no. The belief that women routinely say no when they mean yes encourages men to dismiss refusal, excuse coercion and deny sexual violation.
However, In ordinary life, human beings rarely refuse with a flat “no”. We decline with a pause, hesitation, explanation or a phrase such as “maybe another time”. People routinely recognise these indirect refusals. When the same signals are treated as incomprehensible in sexual situations, the problem may not always be genuine confusion. Sometimes it is a selective refusal to understand. If the message is not a clear and freely given yes, it must be treated as a no. Respect demands certainty rather than guesswork.
Even the word “yes” is not always consent. A yes given through fear is not freely given. A yes from someone too intoxicated to understand or choose is not consent. A coerced yes is not free, and a child’s yes is never adult permission. Power can manufacture compliance. Authority can silence a refusal before it is spoken. Compliance is not always willingness. Submission is not always agreement and silence is not always peace.
How Zimbabwean men understand consent is a conversation long overdue. Too often, persistence is mistaken for masculinity, a woman’s silence is treated as permission and refusal is regarded as a challenge to overcome. As society we must teach that respect begins where another person’s freedom is recognised.
Consent is not merely a transaction in which one person obtains permission from another. It is an act of recognition. Another person’s refusal is not an attack on my freedom. It is evidence that I am standing before another freedom. I do not become freer by overruling that will.
I merely reveal that I wanted an object when what stood before me was a person. As we teach women to communicate clearly and we must also teach men to interpret responsibly. Interpretation is a discipline while some misunderstandings are genuine.
Others are motivated by noticing every signal that permits desire to continue while discounting every signal that demands restraint.
Many violations begin long before the bedroom. For some men, rejection wounds an identity in which sexual success has become proof of manhood, so refusal feels like humiliation.
For others, it grows from entitlement or confidence that power will protect them. Both paths converge in the refusal to recognise another person’s will as equal to one’s own. Sexual aggression not merely to linked to desire, but also to entitlement, hostility, dominance, objectification and beliefs that excuse coercion. A man with healthy self-respect survives rejection because he knows another person’s “No” is not a verdict on his worth. It is simply information.
We have spent generations teaching boys how to pursue and almost none teaching them how to be refused. Yet rejection is where character is built or broken. We must teach the other half of the lesson. Rejection is not humiliation, and a “No” survived with grace is a mark of strength. Consent education must go deeper than slogans. Families, schools and religious institutions must confront the assumption that pursuit entitles a man to a yes.
A civilised society does not only punish violation after it occurs. It forms people who can feel desire without becoming its servants and disappointment without becoming dangerous.
Consent, at its deepest, is not merely the presence of permission. It is the presence of two freedoms, neither erased by the other. Manhood is not proved by whether another person can resist you, but by whether you can govern yourself when they do. When desire says “proceed” but another human being says “stop”, wisdom takes the side of freedom. Sometimes the most honourable and life-preserving word in the room is a “No”
Nyahuma is a German-based Zimbabwean public intellectual whose work explores human development, the psychology of leadership, family life and the formation of character in society.