Women use passive language traits, because we are schooled by society that we should be agreeable and kind towards everyone in society. Guys, if you ever wonder why we don't just flat-out say "NO!" and instead hem and haw and step around the word, that's why. We also do that because based on firsthand experience, secondhand experience, or stories we've heard about on the news, we know just how badly this could end for us. Maybe that guy isn't a violent asshole with a sense of entitlement big enough to sink the Titanic, but we can't tell by looking, so we try to be gentle, tell them off without pissing them off. It's the equivalent of staving off a possibly aggressive dog by going, "Nice doggie, good doggie," until we can make an escape.

It's a terrible metaphor, because men aren't dogs, but it is the only apt one I can think of.

"I played the game I learned in seventh grade when a boy likes you. You make up some reason so that you protect their feelings, so that they don't get angry with you, and you still manage to escape. It's a skill a 12-year-old girl learns that she needs for the rest of her life." DR. JENNIFER KNUST, now a tenured professor at Boston University, on her struggle as a graduate student to avoid the attentions of a renowned Columbia University professor in the 1990s.