They will expect you to negotiate yourself, by either submitting, or attempting to fight back; what they won't be able to understand is someone who doesn't even participate in this sort of negotiation in the first place.

Yep. And depending on the way you opt out of the negotiation, you may be perceived as either very low self-esteem, or as an arrogant bastard.

The latter category (which I personally have been categorized as a lot) tends to happen when you assume that all people are supposed to be equal, dammit, and refuse to give ground to anything that isn't Right with a capital R. This results in the problem of causing others to have to lose face when you win... and people don't like it.

(Later in life, I've realized that it generally works better to arrange things so that other people can receive status strokes by siding with you, and they then tend to return the strokes.)