Saying "no"

A former colleague of mine always liked to say: “‘No’ is a complete sentence.”

Sometimes, we must simply refuse: for ourselves, for our friends, or even for our world. The mythology of our world depends on people saying “yes.” Thus, saying “no” can be just. Saying “no” can be praxis.

Back in 2019, Performance Space New York hosted the No Series. Here was its mantra:

No to the expectation to perform.
No to being representable.
No to fixed identities.
No to being exhausted.
No to being normalized.
No to having to relate to the dominant culture.
No to the capitalist yes.
No to constantly having to say no.
Yes to being together.
Yes to caring for each other.
Yes to making something out of nothing.

And as one of the GenderFail stickers on my laptop reads:

May we all continue a practice of refusal as a necessary form of resistance, survival, and refuge.