Not being able to see and manage the vast difference between flirting and assault symbolizes the lack of nuance in our dialogue, and is, to use the current jargon, "harming" all of us. I feel sorry for all the young women and men who are afraid to engage in this playful, HUMAN behavior. Yet, we've come to a point where we are told ALL males are dangerous, ALL females are victims, ALL whites are evil...etc., etc., etc. This juvenile thinking is one of the reasons our society is failing.
I think you could add many things to this Fill in the blank: "Not being able to see and manage the vast difference between a one time crude behavior of a man and sexual harrassment; asking where someone if from and racism; telling a black women here braids look great and racism; saying 'happy holidays' instead of Merry Christmas is anti-religion; etc We should abolish treating unintended, so-called micro-aggressions as mortal sins Plus, #metoo ignored the idea that women can often have agency to stop less threatening but very annoying episodes of harassment by walking away, tell the guy to shove it or laughing at crude come ons Plus, I'll never forgive Gweneth, Angelina and other 5 star money-making actresses for not for not challenging Weinstein's power over the lesser-known He needed them as much as they needed him They failed to flex the power they have and use to advance their careers on behalf of those he abused
I agree with the point of the article--what went wrong--but there's a distinct lack of concrete solutions. I understood the problem back in the 1990s, as I was a teen girl in a region where the moral panic hit early, not least because we had actually serious and pervasive violence problems. I was lucky to have been a tomboy, because having primarily male friends both demystified guys and helped me see how trapped they were by the idea that any advance could be seen as threatening (or worse).
I adapted by directing my attention toward older men when possible, and by becoming a clear-communicating instigator in any case. I gave up on passively waiting, and said all the things that girls aren't supposed to say. I also went out of my way to create a sense of safety for the guys I talked to: letting them get to know me in a group setting, making it clear that I didn't consider it their job to read my mind. I established that in every social setting, I mean what I say...I won't ever say X is okay, then blame you for X. I assume positive intent and accept that humans make mistakes (sometimes awkward ones).
I remember sitting up one long night with a dear friend of the drop-dead-gorgeous variety. She was sad, because she never got the kinds of guys I got...and to be clear, I was not gorgeous. I was an overweight tomboy nerd who had no idea how to dress and hated make-up. If you squinted really hard and turned your head, I might be called "cute", but never "beautiful". What I had going for me was that I was smart, adventurous, and assertive. I went out of my way to reduce a man's risk in getting to know me. I didn't need to be beautiful, I had more choice in a mate than I could possibly need.
Women, unlike men, can "opt out" of the system in our current society.
Very insightful comment; thank you for sharing it.
I disagree on one aspect: think men can opt out as well, though some of the costs for them may be higher.
Women who opt out run the risk of being labeled the way women who are willing to ask for and talk about what they want have been labeled for years: promiscuous, loose, and all the stigmatizing words we use.
Men who opt out face a similar risk (that used to be a much, much less troublesome risk): they risk being labeled predators or abusers of a sort. Used to be they would risk being labeled players, which is one of those part disapproving, part envious / admiring labels. The newer label is far more stigmatizing than player, but opting out is a choice, and at a certain point, you have to depend on your character cutting through the lights and noise of the virtue-crazed mob.
Maybe I misunderstood, but when she spoke of women "opting out" I assumed she meant that women can take initiative and become the pursuers, whereas for men to "opt out" would mean that they would wait to be pursued, which isn't much of an option if you actually want to dating to be more than a fringe occurrence.
I think JustAGeek did mean that. I also took it to mean, however, being up front about what she wanted and setting explicit expectations, all of which tends to come at a cost for women (part of the reason so few of them do it). And yes, men can opt out in the way you described (and I think that's a better reading of what she meant), and you're right, that's not really a viable option for them if they want to be with a person. Women opting out of their social position increases the likelihood of them finding a partner; men opting out of their social position dramatically decreases their likelihood of finding a partner.
I think the biggest difference is that if I get labeled a slut, it won't generally cost me my livelihood. I can weather derision from the Snotty Women's Club that haven't realized cliques were over in high school. If I lose a friend or a work relationship over it, well, they probably weren't a very good person for me to count on anyway.
In my experience, come to think of it, I hit that moment ironically when I was older and settled down, over a petty software-related dispute. A petulant person got a contact at a trade publication to write a hit piece on me, and it got published. I won't get into the specifics, but allegations about my sex life made a prominent showing. It didn't feel too good to read it, but then I sat up late with a loved one and laughed. When folks at my workplace saw it, they were mostly concerned for my well-being. It made for a stressful week, and a bit of social media vitriol aimed in my direction, but life moved on, and it didn't hurt my career.
If a man is labeled a sexual predator, he's likely to not only lose his job, but become un-hireable for the foreseeable future. This sometimes happens when the social media mob strikes, even if there is no evidence of actual wrongdoing.
There's a *big* difference between dealing with other's low opinions and losing one's ability to put a roof overhead and food on the table.
With the more pernicious feature being allegations = proof. They aren’t. Credible allegations? Not proof.
There is a studied movement that is actively seeking to convert the US away from presumption of innocence, which is a horrible idea —- but for more of a hazard for women then men should it succeed.
The main check on the illiberalism of MeToo in most of the world are defamation laws that align with the philosophical burden of proof. An accuser must prove the veracity of an allegation in order to avoid potentially severe penalties.
In the US, anyone can accuse anyone of anything, and it is the burden of the accused to prove the allegation false. This is interesting not only as an inversion of the rules of discourse, but is also at odds with the presumption of innocence as it exists in the US justice system.
This is a good example of what happens when a legitimate movement goes over the top. It is a consequence of separating people into binary categories - victims and oppressors; all suffer needlessly.
This suggests one might need to revisit the term “legitimate” and/or one’s process for vetting movements. It isn’t as if MeToo has ever been concerned with proof, or evidence, due process, or liberalism. It seeks to normalize a lower standard of evidence, and extra-judicial consequences as outcomes within those deficits.
Oddly, it was just a couple of days ago that I was prompted by Lenore Skenazy's Persuasion essay about "free-range" children to make a comment similar to the following:
I agree with the author's suspicion that the flirting baby has been thrown out with the harassment bathwater, and that relations between the sexes would do well to return to something less fraught. It's important that people understand, though, that there's no perfect solution.
People will misbehave, and to the extent that men and women are encouraged to pursue one-another with their former abandon, there will be an increase in abuse, hard feelings and even crime. There's a lot that can be done to minimize them -- though many of the techniques that worked well (not perfectly, but well) for millennia in traditional societies have been rejected by today's prevailing culture -- but we'll never get to zero. Trying to get to zero, an impossibility in any case, is a major driver of the attitudes that the author bemoans.
So by all means let the cute guy in the elevator chat you up, and do with your worry that he's a creep whatever you normally do with your worries. Just keep your wits about you, call on the clearheaded strength that many in the MeToo moment exhibited, and don't count on social pressure to protect you unless you want that guy to refuse to make eye contact.
You would first have to contend with the issues that it isn't obvious at all that a state of abandon even existed, or that each of the claims about the ubiquity of abuse were valid, and then decide that it is more desirable to segregate on gender based on this narrative (which isn't possible), establish the norm of males as second class citizens, possessed of less legal rights than women, or - to hazard the risk that some assaults occur and even that most are not resolved.
The degree to which it is true that critical gender theorists cannot find sexual partners does seem to suggest that if it is a wide-spread problem, rather than just a rabid vocal minority, it is a problem that will solve itself over-time. They will fail to reproduce and the pernicious mental model will die out.
One of the most important features of a virus is that it has to keep the host alive long enough to reproduce itself.
I'm not sure there's all that much evidence that critical gender theorists have greater than normal difficulty finding sexual partners (at least not so much so that there's a considerable difference in actual reproduction). I'm also not sure that adherence to critical gender theory is inherited.
I have to say, this is a subject that has always perplexed me. I know it's a cliché to say that men are simple and women are complicated, but everything I read about this seems to reinforce the idea that women are just all over the map when it comes to sexual desire and how they respond to male attention. Sophie Gilbert from the Atlantic wrote about this same controversy in British schools and had the exact opposite perspective.
When I first heard of the concept of "objectification", I was confused. Why wouldn't someone want attention from the opposite sex? I often hear women talk about getting breasts and curves as a traumatic experience due to all the sudden attention from boys that it brings. Some women, it seems, feel that this is a good thing, and others lament the lack of attention they receive because they're "flat" or remain with narrow hips.
Needless to say, this is a stark contrast to males. When (straight) men are going through puberty, there is no ambiguity - our minds become consumed with lust, and there is no such thing as bad attention from girls. Any obvious "adult" features we obtain (facial hair, deepening voice, etc.) that we think might make us more desirable to females are greeted as unqualified goods. Talk to virtually any man and they'll confirm this (I assume the same applies to gay men, though they usually have denial to work through which complicates things). We really are that uniformly simple on this issue.
Don't get me wrong - as we grow older it becomes harder to ignore that women are judged far more strictly on their physical appearance than men, so you can understand where they're coming from on the general issue of "objectification". But there is a difference between objectification creating unreasonable standards for female attractiveness and objectification making women feel "too attractive" to the opposite sex.
The article that Zoe links to here about the "omnivorous" female sex drive seems to unequivocally confirm the relative complexity of female desire compared to that of men. It talks of women's minds being separate from their genitalia in terms of what stimuli they respond to. About women being aroused by being desired rather than just from desiring their partner. About how women want a chivalrous man who will also throw them up against a wall and "take" them. Even the researchers seem to acknowledge the difficulty in drawing conclusions from the mass of confusing and sometimes contradictory seeming data on what turns women on.
Ultimately, it seems this is something that varies greatly from woman to woman, and depends a lot on self-image, strength of libido, previous experience with males, and personal values. I'm just glad to be reminded that women like Zoe exist, and that there are still those that don't consider my natural sexual desires to be a force of oppression.
I usually believe that the best path to tread is in the middle; that we can’t keep retreating into destructive polarisation. However, what this article doesn’t take into account is how much the internet and smart phones etc have changed the worlds of the young; in particular the rise of truly horrifying porn and the birth of incel culture etc. Women are objectified and abused all over the web and that pervades and pollutes the area of sexual relationships, warping the minds of some young men. This stuff wasn’t around in the 90s unless you looked pretty hard, now it’s almost unavoidable. It does far more damage than #metoo to male/female relations. Young women need to protect themselves until society gets to grips with the misogyny that threatens them.
Maybe girls should be taught that if we want to be equal to men, that doesn't just mean equal rights, it also means *equal responsibility*.
Saying that women are equal is pretty hollow if you presume that we can be "abused" via internet (my router hasn't slapped me even once!), and that their safety depends on men rather than themselves. I've never, ever met an incel who could throw a punch to save his life. I've never, ever met pornography that jumped out of a screen and hurt someone. 90% of men I meet today couldn't win a physical altercation with 14yo me, let alone now after decades of martial arts and life experience (not to mention a bit taller and stronger).
Despite the rhetoric, we aren't generally talking about physical threats, but social ones, and women need to learn that these are not the same thing. Misogyny doesn't reach out and grab someone, and the chances of a human becoming violent on the basis of their feelings toward or about women is dwindling. Fewer men are even capable of violence today than when I was growing up in the 1990s. Our rates of violent crime throughout the US are a fraction now of what they were then.
If you are over 18 and not capable of basic self-defense, you are part of the problem. Sadly, this is most adults today in America.
If you are over 18 and you don't know that sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you...you are part of the problem.
If you are over 18 and so afraid of the world that you will fail to assume positive intent, instead reading threats into every social mistake and awkward situation...yep, part of the problem.
If you are over 18 and you think someone can be guilty of bad faith for violating a boundary you failed to clearly and unambiguously communicate...you are part of the problem.
Many women don't think these things are their responsibility. They want to be equal to men in privilege, but don't take responsibility for their own comfort and safety, instead demanding that men provide it to them.
Isn't it time to get off that Victorian-era fainting couch? We're grown-ups, we can not just take care of ourselves, but kick ass. Taking a position of weakness is not only pathetic, it's irresponsible and hypocritical.
I'm receptive to much of what you say here. I have a tremendous amount of respect for women who realize that commanding one's own sex life is something that women had to wrest away from a patriarchal cultural order which regarded women as delicate flowers in need of being "kept" in order to protect them from male predation. Indeed, part of the problem may be that there are still a non-trivial number of women of the "delicate flower" variety, and while this brave new world was once on an opt-in basis for the strong willed and adventurous woman, it is now overwhelmingly the norm, whether it suits you or not.
That being said, at least from a purely analytical standpoint, it's reasonable to consider the effect the internet and social media have had in this area. And some sympathy for the unique challenges it poses is probably in order.
This is perhaps harder to appreciate for older people like you or me (I graduated high school in '91, so I had a completely internet-free childhood). We now have a generation of newly minted adults who have never known a social life *without* the internet, so the boundary between "real life" and "online life" may not be as well defined as it is for us.
Social media poses a problem of scale - it's easy to reiterate the old sticks and stones canard when one's circle of human interaction is relatively limited, and mostly to people you physically encounter. The internet exposes one to innumerable interactions with people subject to the "automobile effect" - the tendency to engage in more hostile behavior given relative anonymity and physical separation. And while each individual interaction may be relatively easy to slough off, the cumulative effect can wear on someone, especially when it ventures into the realm of threatening language and possible stalking. (There is also the disturbing phenomenon of revenge porn to contend with.)
And then there is the all-encompassing problem that social media is a petri dish for that all-too-human tendency: victim culture. Whenever people gather online to share their grievances, biased perceptions are reinforced and the benign becomes malignant. This is responsible for everything from incel culture to #metoo overreach, from the paranoid delusions of Trump cultists to the belief that we are living in a racist dystopia. And we still don't have an answer for it, other than to curse the sky for the failings of human nature.
On the question of misogyny and threat: how have you reconciled the perceptual issues related to threat in order to draw the conclusion in the final sentence?
“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” – Marcus Aurelius
Porn existed before the internet. Would you halt all porn? The porn viewed by women, who are the fastest growing cohort viewing porn? How about the porn made by women?
I don’t know that sexist myopia would be the best tool to apprehend the issue. If porn is viewed and made by both men and women and viewed by both men and women, then what?
All over the web? How about on the web domains of women? How about Persuasion? Is all or nothing framing not a red-flag?
The damage of metoo to relationships is trivial compared to the damage to civil society.
One ought also be cautious not to confuse social media with reality. I am given to believe vast majority of the wold doesn’t use it, and of those who do, 92% of the content is created by less than 10% of the users.
One related final note is that if one’s epistemological model runs through SM as a primary source, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that person severely at odds with reality, and potentially mental health.
Flirting is fine for adults who have equal status. Never for the relationships of those who are not equal such as employee and boss, student and professor etc. But, of course either party may still feel uncomfortable and thus the flirting should end. This applies to heterosexual as well as homosexual flirting; it is not just men in relationship to women.
Which is to say flirting is not ok for adults as there are no adults of equal status. This is of course impossible in the US, where “status” as a term is used to avoid specificity and clarity.
There is no standard of status upon which all rely.
I suspect by "status" Sally Bould meant "position of authority" and not simply something like social status. She's saying flirting is not okay when, say, the flirter controls the salary or employment of the flirtee, or controls their grade.
If we take status to mean only and specifically "position of direct authority", I agree with Sally...however, in my experience that is not the common understanding in the US.
I frequently observe the the false assumption of power differential based on age differences, when one member of a couple makes more money than the other, when one partner has more power in a general sense than the other, or when one is more well-known or has higher social status of another kind.
"If we take status to mean only and specifically "position of direct authority", I agree with Sally..."
That's what I infer because 1) the examples Sally chose were those with specific positions of direct authoritative power, and 2) it doesn't make sense to me any other way, so in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it seemed a likely assumption.
Naturally I can't speak for Sally (contrary to my previous supposition). In terms of myself, I might be willing to surrender just about all ground outside that from an ethical perspective (save situations where "flirting" rose to the level of harassment).
As for mapping onto MeToo, I don't think my ethical objections to certain types of flirting have anything to do with MeToo. What I think is or is not ethical regarding flirting behavior is irrelevant to that behavior's presence or absence in MeToo.
It is relevant to the degree that ethics are not entirely subjective. Also, I don't know that MeToo particularly cares what your ethics are - it seeks to rewrite them. It is a prescriptive movement.
Behavior deriving from the biologic wiring to reproduce only has the momentum of 300,000 years of evolution behind it.
What do you imagine that "society" could bring to bear upon that? Particularly given that it isn't really society at all, but an insurgent cultural movement that is represented across only a very small (the degree to which it is possible to measure) minority of the populace?
An issue would be the attempt to elevate social constructionism to the level of evolution.
The former is still being debated as even existing. The latter has won every contest ever put in front of it.
By the way, this isn't a contest that social constructionists should try to hard to win - the US is already facing a population replacement issue with fertility rates. No need to put one more bullet in the gun pointed at humanity's head.
As lefties succeed in emasculating the more sensitive males, they leave the field wide open to the predatory ones. Females have always had a weakness for these guys, and a poor ability to distinguish between healthy assertion and malignant dominance . Now, that problem will get worse.
Thank you for this, Zoe. I'm 62, had three sisters and three daughters, was raised Catholic, and have spent an enormous amount of emotional energy feeling guilty for "thought sins", and trying to avoid being a "creeper". I lived in Italy for a few years and envied men who could show their attraction so joyfully, and the women who were delighted with the attention. I wish I had been able to enjoy the playful behavior that Adrienne describes below. Such a loss for both genders.
Not being able to see and manage the vast difference between flirting and assault symbolizes the lack of nuance in our dialogue, and is, to use the current jargon, "harming" all of us. I feel sorry for all the young women and men who are afraid to engage in this playful, HUMAN behavior. Yet, we've come to a point where we are told ALL males are dangerous, ALL females are victims, ALL whites are evil...etc., etc., etc. This juvenile thinking is one of the reasons our society is failing.
With the emphasis on HUMAN. There is not a chance in the world to shut down the biology of reproduction, even if it were desirable.
I think you could add many things to this Fill in the blank: "Not being able to see and manage the vast difference between a one time crude behavior of a man and sexual harrassment; asking where someone if from and racism; telling a black women here braids look great and racism; saying 'happy holidays' instead of Merry Christmas is anti-religion; etc We should abolish treating unintended, so-called micro-aggressions as mortal sins Plus, #metoo ignored the idea that women can often have agency to stop less threatening but very annoying episodes of harassment by walking away, tell the guy to shove it or laughing at crude come ons Plus, I'll never forgive Gweneth, Angelina and other 5 star money-making actresses for not for not challenging Weinstein's power over the lesser-known He needed them as much as they needed him They failed to flex the power they have and use to advance their careers on behalf of those he abused
I agree with the point of the article--what went wrong--but there's a distinct lack of concrete solutions. I understood the problem back in the 1990s, as I was a teen girl in a region where the moral panic hit early, not least because we had actually serious and pervasive violence problems. I was lucky to have been a tomboy, because having primarily male friends both demystified guys and helped me see how trapped they were by the idea that any advance could be seen as threatening (or worse).
I adapted by directing my attention toward older men when possible, and by becoming a clear-communicating instigator in any case. I gave up on passively waiting, and said all the things that girls aren't supposed to say. I also went out of my way to create a sense of safety for the guys I talked to: letting them get to know me in a group setting, making it clear that I didn't consider it their job to read my mind. I established that in every social setting, I mean what I say...I won't ever say X is okay, then blame you for X. I assume positive intent and accept that humans make mistakes (sometimes awkward ones).
I remember sitting up one long night with a dear friend of the drop-dead-gorgeous variety. She was sad, because she never got the kinds of guys I got...and to be clear, I was not gorgeous. I was an overweight tomboy nerd who had no idea how to dress and hated make-up. If you squinted really hard and turned your head, I might be called "cute", but never "beautiful". What I had going for me was that I was smart, adventurous, and assertive. I went out of my way to reduce a man's risk in getting to know me. I didn't need to be beautiful, I had more choice in a mate than I could possibly need.
Women, unlike men, can "opt out" of the system in our current society.
Now, I just wish I knew what to tell my son. :(
Tell them not to date in college.
Very insightful comment; thank you for sharing it.
I disagree on one aspect: think men can opt out as well, though some of the costs for them may be higher.
Women who opt out run the risk of being labeled the way women who are willing to ask for and talk about what they want have been labeled for years: promiscuous, loose, and all the stigmatizing words we use.
Men who opt out face a similar risk (that used to be a much, much less troublesome risk): they risk being labeled predators or abusers of a sort. Used to be they would risk being labeled players, which is one of those part disapproving, part envious / admiring labels. The newer label is far more stigmatizing than player, but opting out is a choice, and at a certain point, you have to depend on your character cutting through the lights and noise of the virtue-crazed mob.
Maybe I misunderstood, but when she spoke of women "opting out" I assumed she meant that women can take initiative and become the pursuers, whereas for men to "opt out" would mean that they would wait to be pursued, which isn't much of an option if you actually want to dating to be more than a fringe occurrence.
I think JustAGeek did mean that. I also took it to mean, however, being up front about what she wanted and setting explicit expectations, all of which tends to come at a cost for women (part of the reason so few of them do it). And yes, men can opt out in the way you described (and I think that's a better reading of what she meant), and you're right, that's not really a viable option for them if they want to be with a person. Women opting out of their social position increases the likelihood of them finding a partner; men opting out of their social position dramatically decreases their likelihood of finding a partner.
You're right: men, too, can opt out.
I think the biggest difference is that if I get labeled a slut, it won't generally cost me my livelihood. I can weather derision from the Snotty Women's Club that haven't realized cliques were over in high school. If I lose a friend or a work relationship over it, well, they probably weren't a very good person for me to count on anyway.
In my experience, come to think of it, I hit that moment ironically when I was older and settled down, over a petty software-related dispute. A petulant person got a contact at a trade publication to write a hit piece on me, and it got published. I won't get into the specifics, but allegations about my sex life made a prominent showing. It didn't feel too good to read it, but then I sat up late with a loved one and laughed. When folks at my workplace saw it, they were mostly concerned for my well-being. It made for a stressful week, and a bit of social media vitriol aimed in my direction, but life moved on, and it didn't hurt my career.
If a man is labeled a sexual predator, he's likely to not only lose his job, but become un-hireable for the foreseeable future. This sometimes happens when the social media mob strikes, even if there is no evidence of actual wrongdoing.
There's a *big* difference between dealing with other's low opinions and losing one's ability to put a roof overhead and food on the table.
With the more pernicious feature being allegations = proof. They aren’t. Credible allegations? Not proof.
There is a studied movement that is actively seeking to convert the US away from presumption of innocence, which is a horrible idea —- but for more of a hazard for women then men should it succeed.
The main check on the illiberalism of MeToo in most of the world are defamation laws that align with the philosophical burden of proof. An accuser must prove the veracity of an allegation in order to avoid potentially severe penalties.
In the US, anyone can accuse anyone of anything, and it is the burden of the accused to prove the allegation false. This is interesting not only as an inversion of the rules of discourse, but is also at odds with the presumption of innocence as it exists in the US justice system.
It's true, the costs there can be much higher, so the risk is higher as well.
This is a good example of what happens when a legitimate movement goes over the top. It is a consequence of separating people into binary categories - victims and oppressors; all suffer needlessly.
This suggests one might need to revisit the term “legitimate” and/or one’s process for vetting movements. It isn’t as if MeToo has ever been concerned with proof, or evidence, due process, or liberalism. It seeks to normalize a lower standard of evidence, and extra-judicial consequences as outcomes within those deficits.
Oddly, it was just a couple of days ago that I was prompted by Lenore Skenazy's Persuasion essay about "free-range" children to make a comment similar to the following:
I agree with the author's suspicion that the flirting baby has been thrown out with the harassment bathwater, and that relations between the sexes would do well to return to something less fraught. It's important that people understand, though, that there's no perfect solution.
People will misbehave, and to the extent that men and women are encouraged to pursue one-another with their former abandon, there will be an increase in abuse, hard feelings and even crime. There's a lot that can be done to minimize them -- though many of the techniques that worked well (not perfectly, but well) for millennia in traditional societies have been rejected by today's prevailing culture -- but we'll never get to zero. Trying to get to zero, an impossibility in any case, is a major driver of the attitudes that the author bemoans.
So by all means let the cute guy in the elevator chat you up, and do with your worry that he's a creep whatever you normally do with your worries. Just keep your wits about you, call on the clearheaded strength that many in the MeToo moment exhibited, and don't count on social pressure to protect you unless you want that guy to refuse to make eye contact.
‘ Trying to get to zero’ is the fallacy causing so much discontent today
You would first have to contend with the issues that it isn't obvious at all that a state of abandon even existed, or that each of the claims about the ubiquity of abuse were valid, and then decide that it is more desirable to segregate on gender based on this narrative (which isn't possible), establish the norm of males as second class citizens, possessed of less legal rights than women, or - to hazard the risk that some assaults occur and even that most are not resolved.
This is of course true for men as well as women.
The degree to which it is true that critical gender theorists cannot find sexual partners does seem to suggest that if it is a wide-spread problem, rather than just a rabid vocal minority, it is a problem that will solve itself over-time. They will fail to reproduce and the pernicious mental model will die out.
One of the most important features of a virus is that it has to keep the host alive long enough to reproduce itself.
I'm not sure there's all that much evidence that critical gender theorists have greater than normal difficulty finding sexual partners (at least not so much so that there's a considerable difference in actual reproduction). I'm also not sure that adherence to critical gender theory is inherited.
That would be better posed for the author of the article.
I have to say, this is a subject that has always perplexed me. I know it's a cliché to say that men are simple and women are complicated, but everything I read about this seems to reinforce the idea that women are just all over the map when it comes to sexual desire and how they respond to male attention. Sophie Gilbert from the Atlantic wrote about this same controversy in British schools and had the exact opposite perspective.
When I first heard of the concept of "objectification", I was confused. Why wouldn't someone want attention from the opposite sex? I often hear women talk about getting breasts and curves as a traumatic experience due to all the sudden attention from boys that it brings. Some women, it seems, feel that this is a good thing, and others lament the lack of attention they receive because they're "flat" or remain with narrow hips.
Needless to say, this is a stark contrast to males. When (straight) men are going through puberty, there is no ambiguity - our minds become consumed with lust, and there is no such thing as bad attention from girls. Any obvious "adult" features we obtain (facial hair, deepening voice, etc.) that we think might make us more desirable to females are greeted as unqualified goods. Talk to virtually any man and they'll confirm this (I assume the same applies to gay men, though they usually have denial to work through which complicates things). We really are that uniformly simple on this issue.
Don't get me wrong - as we grow older it becomes harder to ignore that women are judged far more strictly on their physical appearance than men, so you can understand where they're coming from on the general issue of "objectification". But there is a difference between objectification creating unreasonable standards for female attractiveness and objectification making women feel "too attractive" to the opposite sex.
The article that Zoe links to here about the "omnivorous" female sex drive seems to unequivocally confirm the relative complexity of female desire compared to that of men. It talks of women's minds being separate from their genitalia in terms of what stimuli they respond to. About women being aroused by being desired rather than just from desiring their partner. About how women want a chivalrous man who will also throw them up against a wall and "take" them. Even the researchers seem to acknowledge the difficulty in drawing conclusions from the mass of confusing and sometimes contradictory seeming data on what turns women on.
Ultimately, it seems this is something that varies greatly from woman to woman, and depends a lot on self-image, strength of libido, previous experience with males, and personal values. I'm just glad to be reminded that women like Zoe exist, and that there are still those that don't consider my natural sexual desires to be a force of oppression.
I usually believe that the best path to tread is in the middle; that we can’t keep retreating into destructive polarisation. However, what this article doesn’t take into account is how much the internet and smart phones etc have changed the worlds of the young; in particular the rise of truly horrifying porn and the birth of incel culture etc. Women are objectified and abused all over the web and that pervades and pollutes the area of sexual relationships, warping the minds of some young men. This stuff wasn’t around in the 90s unless you looked pretty hard, now it’s almost unavoidable. It does far more damage than #metoo to male/female relations. Young women need to protect themselves until society gets to grips with the misogyny that threatens them.
Maybe girls should be taught that if we want to be equal to men, that doesn't just mean equal rights, it also means *equal responsibility*.
Saying that women are equal is pretty hollow if you presume that we can be "abused" via internet (my router hasn't slapped me even once!), and that their safety depends on men rather than themselves. I've never, ever met an incel who could throw a punch to save his life. I've never, ever met pornography that jumped out of a screen and hurt someone. 90% of men I meet today couldn't win a physical altercation with 14yo me, let alone now after decades of martial arts and life experience (not to mention a bit taller and stronger).
Despite the rhetoric, we aren't generally talking about physical threats, but social ones, and women need to learn that these are not the same thing. Misogyny doesn't reach out and grab someone, and the chances of a human becoming violent on the basis of their feelings toward or about women is dwindling. Fewer men are even capable of violence today than when I was growing up in the 1990s. Our rates of violent crime throughout the US are a fraction now of what they were then.
If you are over 18 and not capable of basic self-defense, you are part of the problem. Sadly, this is most adults today in America.
If you are over 18 and you don't know that sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you...you are part of the problem.
If you are over 18 and so afraid of the world that you will fail to assume positive intent, instead reading threats into every social mistake and awkward situation...yep, part of the problem.
If you are over 18 and you think someone can be guilty of bad faith for violating a boundary you failed to clearly and unambiguously communicate...you are part of the problem.
Many women don't think these things are their responsibility. They want to be equal to men in privilege, but don't take responsibility for their own comfort and safety, instead demanding that men provide it to them.
Isn't it time to get off that Victorian-era fainting couch? We're grown-ups, we can not just take care of ourselves, but kick ass. Taking a position of weakness is not only pathetic, it's irresponsible and hypocritical.
I'm receptive to much of what you say here. I have a tremendous amount of respect for women who realize that commanding one's own sex life is something that women had to wrest away from a patriarchal cultural order which regarded women as delicate flowers in need of being "kept" in order to protect them from male predation. Indeed, part of the problem may be that there are still a non-trivial number of women of the "delicate flower" variety, and while this brave new world was once on an opt-in basis for the strong willed and adventurous woman, it is now overwhelmingly the norm, whether it suits you or not.
That being said, at least from a purely analytical standpoint, it's reasonable to consider the effect the internet and social media have had in this area. And some sympathy for the unique challenges it poses is probably in order.
This is perhaps harder to appreciate for older people like you or me (I graduated high school in '91, so I had a completely internet-free childhood). We now have a generation of newly minted adults who have never known a social life *without* the internet, so the boundary between "real life" and "online life" may not be as well defined as it is for us.
Social media poses a problem of scale - it's easy to reiterate the old sticks and stones canard when one's circle of human interaction is relatively limited, and mostly to people you physically encounter. The internet exposes one to innumerable interactions with people subject to the "automobile effect" - the tendency to engage in more hostile behavior given relative anonymity and physical separation. And while each individual interaction may be relatively easy to slough off, the cumulative effect can wear on someone, especially when it ventures into the realm of threatening language and possible stalking. (There is also the disturbing phenomenon of revenge porn to contend with.)
And then there is the all-encompassing problem that social media is a petri dish for that all-too-human tendency: victim culture. Whenever people gather online to share their grievances, biased perceptions are reinforced and the benign becomes malignant. This is responsible for everything from incel culture to #metoo overreach, from the paranoid delusions of Trump cultists to the belief that we are living in a racist dystopia. And we still don't have an answer for it, other than to curse the sky for the failings of human nature.
On the question of misogyny and threat: how have you reconciled the perceptual issues related to threat in order to draw the conclusion in the final sentence?
“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” – Marcus Aurelius
Porn existed before the internet. Would you halt all porn? The porn viewed by women, who are the fastest growing cohort viewing porn? How about the porn made by women?
I don’t know that sexist myopia would be the best tool to apprehend the issue. If porn is viewed and made by both men and women and viewed by both men and women, then what?
All over the web? How about on the web domains of women? How about Persuasion? Is all or nothing framing not a red-flag?
The damage of metoo to relationships is trivial compared to the damage to civil society.
One ought also be cautious not to confuse social media with reality. I am given to believe vast majority of the wold doesn’t use it, and of those who do, 92% of the content is created by less than 10% of the users.
One related final note is that if one’s epistemological model runs through SM as a primary source, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that person severely at odds with reality, and potentially mental health.
Critical gender theory is new as well.
Flirting is fine for adults who have equal status. Never for the relationships of those who are not equal such as employee and boss, student and professor etc. But, of course either party may still feel uncomfortable and thus the flirting should end. This applies to heterosexual as well as homosexual flirting; it is not just men in relationship to women.
Which is to say flirting is not ok for adults as there are no adults of equal status. This is of course impossible in the US, where “status” as a term is used to avoid specificity and clarity.
There is no standard of status upon which all rely.
I suspect by "status" Sally Bould meant "position of authority" and not simply something like social status. She's saying flirting is not okay when, say, the flirter controls the salary or employment of the flirtee, or controls their grade.
If we take status to mean only and specifically "position of direct authority", I agree with Sally...however, in my experience that is not the common understanding in the US.
I frequently observe the the false assumption of power differential based on age differences, when one member of a couple makes more money than the other, when one partner has more power in a general sense than the other, or when one is more well-known or has higher social status of another kind.
That's when things can become absurd.
"If we take status to mean only and specifically "position of direct authority", I agree with Sally..."
That's what I infer because 1) the examples Sally chose were those with specific positions of direct authoritative power, and 2) it doesn't make sense to me any other way, so in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it seemed a likely assumption.
Then she surrenders all ground outside of tha framing? How does it map against MeToo? Are all of those instantiations within those bounds?
Naturally I can't speak for Sally (contrary to my previous supposition). In terms of myself, I might be willing to surrender just about all ground outside that from an ethical perspective (save situations where "flirting" rose to the level of harassment).
As for mapping onto MeToo, I don't think my ethical objections to certain types of flirting have anything to do with MeToo. What I think is or is not ethical regarding flirting behavior is irrelevant to that behavior's presence or absence in MeToo.
It is relevant to the degree that ethics are not entirely subjective. Also, I don't know that MeToo particularly cares what your ethics are - it seeks to rewrite them. It is a prescriptive movement.
I suspect flirting might become more comfortable for women if society revised its norms of how quickly it was supposed to leas to sex.
Or if it was even possible or desirable for society to play that role.
Possible certainly. Social norms on that question vary wildly
By what evidence could you make that claim?
Behavior deriving from the biologic wiring to reproduce only has the momentum of 300,000 years of evolution behind it.
What do you imagine that "society" could bring to bear upon that? Particularly given that it isn't really society at all, but an insurgent cultural movement that is represented across only a very small (the degree to which it is possible to measure) minority of the populace?
Is the issue whether norms vary or the difficulty of controlling how they vary?
An issue would be the attempt to elevate social constructionism to the level of evolution.
The former is still being debated as even existing. The latter has won every contest ever put in front of it.
By the way, this isn't a contest that social constructionists should try to hard to win - the US is already facing a population replacement issue with fertility rates. No need to put one more bullet in the gun pointed at humanity's head.
I’m truly not following you. Starting with a simple claim: do we agree norms of sexual behavior vary among societies?
As lefties succeed in emasculating the more sensitive males, they leave the field wide open to the predatory ones. Females have always had a weakness for these guys, and a poor ability to distinguish between healthy assertion and malignant dominance . Now, that problem will get worse.
Thank you for this, Zoe. I'm 62, had three sisters and three daughters, was raised Catholic, and have spent an enormous amount of emotional energy feeling guilty for "thought sins", and trying to avoid being a "creeper". I lived in Italy for a few years and envied men who could show their attraction so joyfully, and the women who were delighted with the attention. I wish I had been able to enjoy the playful behavior that Adrienne describes below. Such a loss for both genders.
A much-needed corrective! Thank you.