"Don't take 'No' for an answer."

"'No' is just a slow 'Yes'"

"If at first you don't succeed..."

These approaches might be okay in certain professional situations, or if there is chocolate involved. Too often, though, it is also the philosophy men and boys use when pursuing women and girls. In THAT case? It is toxic and dangerous. Boys need to be taught that the first "No" is the final answer. Lives are at stake.

Apparently the teenaged boy who murdered 8 of his classmates, two teachers, and wounded 13 others at Santa Fe High school, near Houston on Friday couldn't take no for an answer from one of his victims. Shana Fisher's mother told the L.A. Times that he'd been pursuing Shana for the four months leading up to the shooting. Shana had repeatedly turned him down, and he'd become more and more aggressive in his pursuit of her until she stood up to him in class, which embarrassed him. This was the week before the shooting. Shana's mother believes she was the first person he shot and killed on Friday.

There are people who complain #MeToo has gone too far, when we're learning of the existence of Incel groups - men who hold such toxic misogynistic thoughts they believe they're entitled to sex with whichever women they want. An eye-opening and nauseating read from Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker spelled it out clearly.

What incels want is extremely limited and specific: they want unattractive, uncouth, and unpleasant misogynists to be able to have sex on demand with young, beautiful women. They believe that this is a natural right.

It bears mentioning that incels are also deeply racist, with white nationalist tendencies. So are our nation's gun laws, police forces, and justice system. Note the number of mass shooters in the U.S. who are white. (psssst: most of them)

Yet, there are people who think men are suffering from #MeToo "witch hunts" and are in need of protection, when we have "men's rights activists" like Jordan Peterson claiming the problem of incels would go away if they got married. "Enforced monogamy," he calls it. As if:

(a) married men don't perpetrate violence against their wives, and
(b) married men remain monogamous.

I cannot be the only one who sees all of this for the horseshit hypocrisy that it is. Nah, bruh. #MeToo is not over. It's not done. We still need it. It has not gone too far. You all understand that a woman is in the greatest amount of danger after she leaves an abusive partner or spouse, right?

Or in Shana Fisher's case, she does not even have to have made it that far. All she has to have done is to say "No" to him.