I want to share an anecdote about being predated on by a family friend when I was 18 years old.
When I turned 18, I started college in a city thousands of miles away from my parents' house. I had a family friend in the new city, and the week before school started, we all (my friend, his parents, my parents, and I) had dinner at my friend's house. Everything was hunky-dory.
A few weeks into the school year, my friend's dad offered to take me out to lunch. I accepted without thinking, because I knew their entire family. Things were normal at lunch. I was friendly and polite, he was friendly and polite. This man was around 60 years old, and I spoke to him appropriately.
Throughout that school year, this man took me out to lunch several times. Nothing untoward ever happened. We talked about books and academic subjects. I thought he was just trying to be a good family friend. I always made sure to be polite, because, after all, he was my friend's dad.
The following summer, I neglected to respond to one of his emails for about a month. He then sent me a nasty email that read, in part: "Do you just not give a shit?"
I felt so weirded out by his email that I never responded.
20 years later, and I have never emailed him back.
He never made any sexual or romantic comments towards me. To this day, I don't know exactly what he wanted to use me for. And I don't especially care to find out.
For the younger ladies: do not think for one moment that you have to spend time with an older family friend out of politeness/respect. It's OK to say no. I wish an FDS-aligned woman had stepped in and told me to say no from the beginning.
P.S. For those of you who are wondering why my friend never came to lunch with us—he was away at college in a different state, hundreds of miles away. And every time his dad took me out to lunch, I mentioned it to him. Our lunches were not a secret.
P.P.S. I don't know if this is relevant, but the dad was my friend's stepdad. Maybe stepdads are more likely to engage in fishy behavior, because—and I hate to say it—they don't care about their stepchildren.
Our one life is way too short to suffer fools or endure ANY situation or experience simply to be polite. Women and girls have been socialized to 'be polite' for millennia. This is a function of patriarchal societal control. Consider how easy it is to manipulate a person if they're simply too polite to say no to something. Predators and abusers know this and use it to their advantage.
You do not need to be polite TO ANYONE who gives you the ick, alerts your spidey senses or in ANY way attempts to impose upon you for ANYTHING (attention, money, time, effort, energy, emotion, etc) that you are unwilling or unable to expend.
No is a complete sentence. You do NOT need to explain, justify, apologize or expound upon your 'No.'
Full stop.
If they don't take your succinct 'No.' for an answer, is perfectly acceptable to give them a grey rock face, turn and remove yourself from the situation without explanation.
What's worse is when you stand up for yourself and don't hold back, and some pickme tells you that you're the problem and that you have no reason to make a man feel bad.