There’s A Rejection Hotline That Tells Creepy Dudes To GTFO

You know what it’s like when a guy asks for your number and just doesn’t get the hint that you’re not interested. You feel annoyed, irritated, and maybe even worried about your safety, so you might end up surrendering and giving him your number just so he’ll leave you in peace—even though you really don’t want to. Well, now you don’t have to because this rejection hotline tells guys to leave you alone on your behalf.

1. Welcome to the Mary Sue Rejection Hotline. When a creepy guy asks for your number, you no longer need to give yours and start thinking up excuses for when he later calls and you don’t answer. Instead, you can give him the Mary Sue Rejection Hotline number: (646) 926-6614. It was created by The Mary Sue, a feminist community and pop culture website.
2. Good riddance, loser! When the guy calls this number, he’ll get a voicemail saying: “Oh hello there. If you’re hearing 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! ” Awesome!
3. It works via text too. If a guy texts you instead of calls you, as most prefer to do, the service still works. The same message will be sent to his phone as a text message. Pretty clever, right?
4. It’s a game changer. Although there have been other rejection hotlines in the past, the Mary Sue one is the first to provide advice for creepy men on how they need to check their behavior and treat women better.
5. It’s a way for you to speak your mind. What’s so great about this rejection hotline is that it makes it crystal clear that men who put women in uncomfortable situations are the problem. These men make women feel awkward, upset, and/or infuriated AF. There’s no doubt that they’re the ones who need to change, and since you can’t always say this to the creepy guy who’s bugging you, this hotline gets the message across with no mincing of words.
6. No, it’s not a copout. For the guys out there who think that this rejection hotline is a cowardly way for women to deal with the situation, they need to walk in women’s shoes for a bit to see what women deal with on a daily basis. Some men can really be persistent, rude, and insulting. It’s also sad but true: if you try to tell a guy his actions are creepy or crossing a line, he’s likely to say you’re being crazy or a bitch. That’s why this hotline is so cool – you get your message across without having to engage with fools or put yourself in an unsafe situation.
7. Sometimes “no” doesn’t work in real life. We live in a sick society where some men don’t understand the meaning of the word “no” and don’t give a damn what they’re doing to make women feel like crap. Sometimes, the only way to get through to someone is with these kinds of services. Let him see exactly how bad he made you feel and hopefully he’ll think twice before doing that to another woman in future.
8. Its texting service has your safety in mind. When a guy calls the Mary Sue rejection hotline number, he’ll immediately be connected to the voicemail message. However, if he texts you, the service waits an hour to text the guy after he’s sent a message – which gives you a chance to GTFO of the club or pub before he texts you. If the guy checks that you’ve given him the right number by calling you when you’re still in his creepy presence, it could help to tell him that your phone battery’s dead so he won’t know you’ve given him the fake number until later when he calls you at two in the morning. Ha, he’ll get a really nice surprise then!
9. Women are feeling unsafe. As The Mary Sue has stated about this hotline on their website: “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.”
10. The hotline is already a hit. In its first week of operation, which was around the end of October, the Mary Sue Rejection Hotline got 2,300 texts and over 1,000 calls! It has also inspired a French version, which just goes to show that harassment is a global problem that needs to die.
11. How guys have responded to the rejection. Since starting the hotline, Mary Sue staff have received many messages from guys who thought they were texting the woman who’d given them her number. Some were aggressive, as stated on the Mary Sue website, with the guys not getting the hint that the women weren’t interested until they received the hotline rejection. And of course, one guy sent a NSFW image. SMH. Interestingly, after the rejection message was sent, responses from the guys were mixed. Some got angry or expressed confusion, some jerks denied their actions were wrong, but some did apologize. Ugh, there’s hope.