RE: May I “Mansplain” Something for a Minute, Please?
@lukestokes asked me (in another forum) how I think women could respond to male sexual intimidation in ways that are more empowering. Here was my response (FWIW):
My purpose in raising this issue is to try to balance the “uneven power dynamic” that you mention, and the point of my post is to describe how traditional feminists responses to male sexual intimidation actually do the opposite—they exacerbate the uneven power dynamic.
As for how I think women “should” respond to sexual intimidation...well...I would simply suggest that women should exploit all the innate sexual power that they have, which is actually tremendous, to its fullest extent. An example: Men (and feminist) have convinced women that flirting with a co-worker to get ahead is demeaning and exploitative. Well, if it is demeaning and exploitative at all, it’s demeaning and exploitative of MEN, not women. When women use their sexuality to gain an advantage over men, it’s MEN who are being played, not women. That so many believe the opposite is evidence of just how successful men, religious institutions and traditional feminists have been at shaming women into abandoning this innate evolutionary advantage.
By embracing and owning their sexuality fully in this way and others, women can no longer be sex shamed. This makes sexual intimidation by men much more difficult, maybe even impossible. It’s only their shame over sexuality that makes them subject to sexual intimidation, and traditional feminist responses only exacerbate that shame (while pretending the opposite with an abundance of false bravado). When women become shameless, shaming is impossible.
Second, I think women shouldn’t hesitate to expose men who try to exploit them (as the #metoo movement has done). But rather than running to HR or accusing the men of misogynistic practices, discrimination, slut shaming, mainsplaining, etc. (which are all examples of playing the victim), women should just out these men in ways that are empowering to the women. For instance, a tweet saying something like “@harveyweinstein, thanks for the offer to screw last night, but I prefer my men to look more like Brad Pitt. PS—Your threat to black ball me won’t work.” Yes, such a tweet comes with significant risk, but it does keep the female in the psychological power position (and besides, nobody said that battles of psychological intimidation are easy or risk free).
And lastly, women should exploit their growing economic power as Gal Gadot recently did. When she agreed to play Wonder Women, the studio refused to offer her a multi-picture contract because she was relatively unknown and they feared the move would be a flop. Instead, it was a great hit, and now the studio’s back is against the wall. Basically, they must sign her to make more movies in the series or potentially lose hundreds of millions of future dollars. Not only can Gal demand a huge amount of money, but when she learned that one of the companies associated with the Wonder Women franchise was run by a guy accused by many women of sexual intimidation, she supposedly refused to sign for more movies unless and until the guy was removed from his position. She did this quietly and never personally went public with it (instead having others leak thew news). This was a brilliant move on her part. She kept total control and wielded her power wisely. She no doubt earned much respect in Hollywood. I doubt anyone will screw with her again, and I bet she’ll get multi-picture offers next go around.
How far ahead can I get by being flirtatious without putting out? It's a bad strategy except in the most special circumstance. I'm nice looking, for now, but no Gal Gadot. Mostly, it's going to be me putting myself in a situation where I'm actually expected to suck that dick. No thanks. I'll keep competing on merit in the workplace, do my part to not interfere with my boss's marriage, and bet your ass I'll slut-shame and tattle on both him and the colleague who sucked his dick to get a promotion over me. What you're proposing is silly if you think pure flirtatiousness will get far without actually putting out sex. It's also demeaning to men. My boss would be insulted if I thought he wanted a blowjob in exchange for a raise. He just wants me to do my frigging job well, keep improving, and he really does have a benign interest in my job satisfaction. The number of ethical managers and colleagues far outnumber those willing to deal in sex and attempting to fuck and suck my way up the ladder would likely put me out of employment. (Nor would it sharpen my performance, increase my productivity, or enhance my job satisfaction). Your solution, to a rare problem, is unethical and against my morals, and will result in more harm than good. It's no solution at all.
There are lots of ways to get ahead without putting out. Maybe the guy who has expressed an interest in you is a wicked computer programmer and could teach you a thing or two, thus helping advance your career. In that case, stringing him along and letting him pat you harmlessly on the ass on occasion as his reward for teaching programming skills could be a huge win/win for you both. Lots of nerds would be thrilled with a pat on the ass and nothing more.
Or, if the guy is your boss, then you could easily redirect his interest from your bodily assets to your intellectual and business assets. For instance, one of the most difficult things for an underling to get is the boss’s attention. How many underlings would give their right arm for an hour long lunch with the boss during which they could make their pitch for their latest great idea? Well, if you plays it right, the fact that the boss admires you physically means that your more likely to get that lunch, right? I respectfully suggest that you should exploit the hell out of that! No blowjob required.
Does doing that mean that meritocracy is being undermined? No. Your idea may be the most meritorious in history, but it will never see the light of day if you can’t get the boss’s attention. If your physical beauty and sex appeal help bring the necessary attention to your idea by getting you that lunch, then you, the business and all of society win as a result.
I find it very difficult to believe that you have written this many thousands of words on sexual human nature and do not see what will occur next. C'mon. Surely you know what a sexually interested man will do next if I signal that I'm open to his interest? I think you ought to consider this carefully and see how much of what you've written and replied is based on an unrealistic expectation of how a sexually interested man will react to the strategy your proposing.
Additionally, I'd like you to consider another set of natural traits/abilities that women have. Surely you have noticed that we appear child-like? Cry easily, high pitched voices? We're quite easy to pity, actually. It's a nice little defense mechanism granted by nature. Surely we should exploit our "cuteness" and vulnerability to get ahead? Surely it is only natural for us to play the victim? What is it you don't like about feminists playing victim? It's a tried and true strategy, surely with a basis in our genes, no?
I have thought much about thsoe scenarios, and as a man I’ve actually been in those scenarios, and while I’ve very much enjoyed the flirting and the banter, I’ve never even once sought or demanded more from a coworker. So, I respectfully suggest that your assumptions as to how things would play out are false, at least in many (probably most) circumstances. Most guys are sex-deprived nerds and would be thrilled to just lovingly touch a beautiful women and nothing more.
You raise a great point about playing the victim. You’re exactly right! It’s a very effective strategy in many instances, and one that should be exploited. Non-feminists will have no problem doing so. But, honestly, have you every seen a “loud and proud” feminist play the victim in a cute an endearing way? I’ve not. Instead, most react, as @techslut did, with viscious name calling and ad hominem attacks. The point of my original post was to explain to them how these particular attacks are actually counterproductive (when you call a sexist a sexist all you do is let him know that he’s winning) and that other types of attacks would work far better.
I absolutely disagree that most guys are sex starved nerds who will stop after being granted physical contact. That's preposterous and not reflected in our courtship rituals or anyone's experience. When you allow a man to sexually touch, he inevitably moves forward.
I tend to agree. To assume the majority of men will enjoy what women choose give them and then, on a dime, stop the moment the women withdraws her consent seems inconsistent with the many stories we here of women being taken advantage of by stronger, dominant men who have no problem violating her consent.
That said, I also just thought about strip clubs. For some reason, in that context, men get what they pay for and no more. I wonder if that would be a support for Sean's view or not.
Not sure, in a strip club there are bouncers, and clear pre-established rules. Men get what they pay for but they also go in knowing where the hard limits on behavior are (not that the rules aren't frequently violated)
Oh, another minor point I forgot to include relates to the importance of intent and materialistic hard determinism. I was looking for Sam Harris' commentary on this, but couldn't find it easily. It was a little tidbit he added at the beginning of one of his podcasts. The basic idea is that intent really matters, even if there is no such thing as free will. Intent gives us insight as to potential future behavior. If someone intends to treat a women against their preferences, then that's an indication of how they will act in the future. That's why someone passing by on a subway that accidentally touches someones butt and someone who does it intentionally without first obtaining consent are radically different in very important ways.
What if they have no intention of doing anything against the girl’s will. What if instead they simply intend nothing more than to caress something that they find indescribably lovely, perhaps like they would a puppy or a kitten, and it never occurs to them that the girl might object, or they honestly believe that she wouldn’t?
You might say: “How could anyone assume that she’d not object?” Well, in light of societal conditioning, nobody probably could. Everyone has been conditioned to believe that every woman automatically objects to being touched (even in nonharmful ways) without her permission every single time. Respectfully, this conditioning is silly. We don’t observe anything like it anywhere else in nature. In the absence of such conditioning, just as many (and very likely more) women wouldn’t be offended by a harmless touching than those who would. And the latter would simply make their preference known after the fact, in which case the touching would in the vast majority of cases cease. And when it didn’t, then it could be dealt with in other ways.
So, if intent matters, isn’t only HARMFUL intent that should matter? Like the intent to make the woman feel like she has no control over her body? I agree, that’s problematic and there are ways to deal with that. But if the intent is just to harmless caress something lovely, then no harm no foul, right? Even by Sam Harris’s logic (which I’m familiar with and agree with) and intent to harmlessly caress something lovely does no harm to either individuals or society.
You might say, “yah, but some women have so much trauma around sex that even a well-meaning love pat or caress can cause psychological harm.” Well, I get that. And some men suffer from PTSD such that slamming a car door or shooting fireworks traumatized them. Do we ban or shame car door slamming and fireworks in deference to these poor souls? Or do we instead seek to rehabilitate those pools souls so that they are no longer traumatized by harmless door slams or fireworks? We do that latter.
Thanks for the detailed responses, Sean. I'll reply here first and then to the others as well.
Here, I think, is the crux of the disagreement. Most human beings are locked in the concept of "self" and their consciousness means they have ego. By that, they are more than just a "something" but an enlightened, aware being with "free will" (something both you and I contend they don't really have). They see themselves as different than a rock or a tree. My hunch is you and others who have studied Buddhist-like philosophies from a non-theistic perspective (like Sam Harris and the people he interviews) would argue this is just a mental trick. Fundamentally we are no different than the rock or the tree.
This might be where you lose people in this line of thinking.
I don't think it's about social conditioning. I think it's about self-ownership. No one has the right to touch me or even invade my personal space. Doesn't matter if I'm a man or a women. If a man does something to me against my concept of self-ownership, I will naturally engage in conflict with them (this is a traditionally masculine response). If the same happens to a women they are just supposed to accept it or somehow use it to their advantage even they don't want it to happen? I can't agree with that because I think the concept of self-ownership is more important than primitive sexual preferences. I say primitive, because to me it's on the same spectrum as rape which you and I both agree is completely unjustified, regardless of the evolutionary urges involved. Men can resist their sexual urges. To argue they can not is demeaning, IMO.
I replied to these ideas in detail in another thread. My short response: Your problem isn’t really with non consensual touching (you’d have no problem with someone giving you or your spouse or daughter a love pat on the back), it’s with SEX. You automatically assume that any non consensual touch that’s remotely sexual in nature MUST somehow be an offensive violation of self sovereignty when other types of nonconsensual touches are not. I maintain that your thinking (and women’s thinking) on this point is purely a result of conditioning. For thousands of years we have literally terrorized our daughters to fear sex and the attention of men in order to maintain their chastity so as avoid being shamed by the moralizers and to preserve “family honor”. To this day women in certain Muslim countries who respond to men’s (not her husband’s) sexual interest in accordance with natural instincts rather than in ways prescribed bu the religion will be publicly stoned to death or subjected to disfiguring acid attacks (thus destroying her beauty and her sex appeal for life). At least here in American and Europe, all we do now is mental terrorize them by shaming and humiliating them mercilessly, I suppose.
And no, a woman is NOT just supposed to accept violations of self-sovereignty, Luke. If you hear me saying that, then I’ve not communicated well and I apologize. When self-sovereignty is actually really violated, the women should take action to protect themselves and men should assist in protecting them.
But what I’m suggesting is that both men and women reconsider what constitutes a violation of self-sovereignty. Is the touch inherently offensive (what makes a pat on the back different from a pat on the ass)? Do other creatures in nature react with similar offense and sense of violation to being so touched? If humans never had religion and parents had never been super paranoid (in an age without birth control or abortion) about their daughters getting knocked up by some schmuck, would human females always and in most every instance STILL be offended, violated and/or terrified by a little pat on the rear?
If not,then perhaps that automatic reaction of feeling like self sovereignty has been violated isn’t natural or normal. Perhaps its a result of years of being traumatically conditioned by a patriarchy that is more concerned about scaring its daughters away from the cabanna boy (so as to appease the moralizers and protect family honor) than it is about helping those daughters fully embrace their sexual interests and power. If that is true at all (and I don’t see how anyone can reasonably argue that it’s at least not partially true), then overthrowing the patriarchy absolutely requires overcoming (or at least re-examining) those feelings of being violated by every glance or touch, or at a minimum not terrorizing the next generation in the same way we have all past ones.
I have raised this issue (that the feeling of self-sovereignty being violated is conditioned through trauma rather than a natural aand healthy feeling) several times now and you’ve not responded. Do you agree that we have traumatized our daughers for generations in order to protect ourselves from the moralizers, preserve family honor and (pre birth control and abortion) to protect them from raising a schmuck’s child? I hope so, because I don’t see how this point can be seriously challenged.
If so, do you see how this systematic trauma (that denies women natural control over their own sexual decisions and if/how they use their sexuality) is itself the real source of the patriarchy?
If so, then do you see how overthrowing the patriarchy requires at a minimum that we STOP doing that to women and, ideally, that we work to rehabilitate those women (which is essentially all women) who have been so damaged?
And finally, if so, then do you see how rehabilitating them involves inviting and/or challenging them to seriously ponder and grapple with these issues (regarding the source of their feelings) rather just habitually reinforcing their conditioning (as you seem to be doing) that any unsolicited pat on the rear or kiss on the cheack is always necessarily an insult to their sovereignty?
If you answer that last question “no”, then please explain why. Again, why is an unsolicited pat on the back NOT an affront to their sovereignty but a pat on the ass IS? What’s the natural (non-conditioned) explanation for this feeling? Why is it not an affront to self sovereignty for a male to nonconsesually slap another male’s rear (as often happens in athletics or even business, for example, sometimes replacing the “high five” as an atta boy), but it is automatically an affront to self sovereignty (in your view) for a male to slap a women’s rear? Again, what’s the natural (unconditioned) explanation for this distinction?
Isn’t the real distinction just the fact that one is deemed potentially sexual while the other is not? If so, then why is that distinction relevant? Do you think that women NATURALLY fear men’s sexual interest and that this fear is not conditioned?
If so, then...why? Can you think of other instances in nature where that’s the case? Female bonobos are notoriously promiscuous. They have essentially zero fear over male sexual interest. Female chimps are less so, but they still seem to show little to no fear when a would-be usurper (to the alpha male) comes calling.
I contend that the human female’s great fear and sense of violation is a consequence only or primarily of traumatic moralizing by her parents and her religious authorities. If you have a better explanation, I’d love to hear it. And, if you don’t, then how can you not work along with me to challenge and overthrow that conditioned response so carefully enforced by the partriarchy for so long?