When did saying no become a no-no?

When did it become taboo to say No.   There is a dog lady on the internet who maintains that you should never say no to your dog. Excuse me?   I have four dogs and they all know that No means No.   I am in charge of the pack – I am the head bitch and they all understand that and are happy, well balanced, cheerful thieves – well nobody’s perfect and they are Labradors!   And  children aren’t allowed to hear the ‘no’ word any more, much less have a clip around the ear.   The frazzled parent is supposed to crouch down and talk soothingly to the little thing who is having a temper tantrum in one of the aisles in Tesco – we don’t usually see that sort of thing in Waitrose!  There are new parenting expressions like  ‘gentle hands’ instead  of saying sharply, ‘No – you do not hit your sister’.   As for the American way that seems to be a matter of negotiation along the lines of ‘If you stop hitting your sister you can have an ice cream’!  And the overuse of the expression ‘Good job’.   It is as if people are scared that saying no to your child or your dog will make them hate you.   In fact the reverse is often true – boundaries make people feel safe.  Families aren’t democracies –a family run along those lines would be complete chaos with a diet of ultra processed foods and sugar.  

Social situations aren’t much better.   Mrs Ghastly-Bore rings up and asks you to dinner and instead of saying a flat ‘No’ you wriggle like a worm on a hook trying to think of a suitable excuse.   Would you like to go and see Little Miss Ghastly-Bore in the school production of Annie? Obviously not,  but your middle class upbringing forces you to tell a lie and say that you are having an operation that week, visiting a dying aunt, have your cousin’s wedding  and are then caught in a trap when you realise they haven’t  told you the date yet.   The worst invitations are the ones where someone rings and asks what are you doing  the 27th?   It would be logical to ask Why, but somehow most of us find that difficult.   Nothing, we say.  Ah good, comes the reply, because my great uncle needs a lift to the Ghastly-Bores and I know they are asking you because I checked.   Now you are trapped.   The best thing to do when asked what you are doing on a certain date is to copy Oscar Wilde and invent a Bunbury.    “Bunburying” is to have a mysterious relation of the name of Bunbury, who always falls ill and requires to be visited. Either when you want to go out of town on some unavoidable business, or when you receive an invitation to dinner which you wish to decline, there is always that invitation to Bunbury which comes in handy.   I had a much loved aunt who fulfilled this purpose – she was in fact perfectly healthy and only about fifteen years older than me, but I used her as an excuse to get out of anything I didn’t want to do.

Perhaps part of the problem is that ‘No’ can be quite a soft word, as opposed to the Russian ‘Nyet’ or the German ‘Nein’.   You have to put quite a lot of effort into the word ‘No’ for it to work really well!   Many years ago I was walking past a garden with my dogs when a large German Shepherd (the four legged kind) burst through the fence and started attacking one of my dogs.   I couldn’t think what to do so I screamed ‘NO’ as loudly and fiercely as I could and much to my surprise it slunk off back into the garden.   I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with the power of my voice or rather worried by how frightening I could be!

There used to be a fashion for notices hung up in offices that read ‘You Don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps’, and I believe it was intended to convey an idea of a scatty, fun place to work although it actually made one think ‘You don’t have to be clinically depressed to work here, but you probably will be.’   And there was another one that said ‘Please do not ask for credit as a refusal often offends’, and this was supposed to be a jokey way of softening the blow of saying ‘No’.   

My generation are pretty tough,  when we were young passing every building site was a minefield with wolf whistles and cries of ‘you don’t get many of those to the pound’ to every young and certainly well endowed women who walked by and for the most part it was good natured, if vulgar, and not frightening and on days when one didn’t attract any attention it could be a bit depressing.   In my youth nice girls nearly always said ‘No’ and nice young men didn’t push it.   And for the most part even the old roue who would ask you back to his flat at three o’clock in the morning ‘to see his etchings’, would accept a firm ‘no’ and ‘nice’ girls generally had the sense to say “no”.  But all that seems to have changed and I don’t believe that any teacher would say, as my old headmistress said to me ‘No one wants to buy a cake if there’s a slice missing’.   We were taught to say No to save us from ruining our reputation – sometimes modern girls might like to think about this!