Image via Instagram/The Mary Sue

Sadly, this is a thing women need

Any woman who’s spent even 10 minutes in a bar knows how it can go. Guy approaches, guy attempts to flirt, guy tries to get your phone number, you feel too nervous to turn him down, and off he goes with your digits. Because for some (pathetic) men, “no” is not in their vocabulary, and women don’t always feel safe rejecting someone who could very well follow them home.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to shake a sketchy dude who won’t back off. It’s called the Rejection Hotline, and every woman who wants to ward off creepy men needs to save it in her phone.

The geniuses at The Mary Sue are responsible for this game-changer, and it’s quite simple. They provide a number you can give to a man who won’t back off and when he calls or texts, he’s greeted with a very special message:

“Remember the old reject hotline number? Well we have created our own!”

The number is (646) 926-6614 and the text reads, “Oh hello there. If you’re reading this message, you’ve made a woman feel unsafe and/or disrespected. Please learn to take no for an answer and respect women’s emotional and physical autonomy. K THANKKS.”

Maybe by the year 3017, men will have gotten the fucking hint that no means no and also, that we don’t want to ever see their dumb faces again, let alone surrender our phone number. But until that glorious day when a woman’s verbal rejection is met with a guy actually giving up, we have a low-key way out.

The hotline was created because, sadly, this is a thing that women need. “Sometimes at The Mary Sue we get messages and comments from our readers about feeling unsafe in certain situations. At times, our readers have told us, even, that they direct men who have bothered them to our site or our Facebook. With that in mind, we decided to do more. Hopefully this helps, and teaches a lesson,” they explain.

God, we hope so. It’s infuriating that women have to compile strategies to avoid being victimized, pestered, followed, or chastised by strange men, but unfortunately, that’s our current reality. The hope is that this hotline will teach guys on the receiving end of the text or voicemail (the same message on the text will play if he calls the number) that if a woman says no or is visibly not interested, they should back the fuck up.

The hotline was created with the user’s safety in mind, so the rejection text doesn’t come immediately, blowing a woman’s cover. It will arrive exactly one hour after the pushy asshole fires off his annoying text, thereby giving a girl plenty of time to get away from him.

Again, infuriating this has to exist, but glad it’s there for when it’s needed.

They’re not the first to come up with the idea of a rejection hotline, but this version includes actual advice on the right way to treat women. Which should hopefully educate some of these irritating bros who think the answer to a woman’s rejection is to press even harder.

As moms, many of us may be out of the dating world, but we still have our daughters to consider. I would like to hope that by the time my fifth grader is old to enough to be out at bars, we will have made enough progress that this hotline will be a relic of the past. Knowing that terrible men who don’t understand “no” will probably always be around makes me physically sick, but with ideas like this making the rounds, maybe we can (mostly) put a stop to the kind of behavior that necessitates it.

If a woman says no, a man needs to accept it. If he can’t? He’s going to find himself very embarrassed. Hopefully, enough to change his ways.