The diary at the top of the rec list right now is right about two things.
First: discomfort is a part of adult life.
Discomfort is expected to be a part of every female’s life, adult or child.
Men have always taken that for granted.
Men go through life with the expectation of being comfortable in various ways that can only be obtained at the price of women’s discomfort.
The elephant in the room is that equality between the sexes is about more than equal pay for equal work, whether women can serve in combat, whether a man stands when a woman enters a room, holds open a door or exits the elevator last.
It is about much more than that. It is about autonomy—the right to make your own decisions in life; and most of all to make your own decisions about your body. And have those decisions respected.
The second thing that other diary is right about is this (and I’m not sure the author even made this point intentionally): our culture socializes males to ignore women’s boundaries. They know they have the right to make women uncomfortable, or afraid, if they can get away with it.
Patriarchal culture tells males they can safely ignore women’s physical boundaries unless they are explicitly enforced by a male authority figure they respect.
Before everyone jumps in with #notallmen, i am aware that many men have enough self-respect, or respect for women, to police themselves. I have been fortunate enough to know and work with a lot of them.
The rest are always playing the “how much can I get away with” game, and think of the honorable men as weak Betas who don’t get any sex and don’t deserve to get any until they learn to be more aggressive. I have been unfortunate to know and work with a lot of them also.
This is the philosophy of the latter group:
- she looked at me and smiled so that means she finds me sexually attractive.
- she hugged me so that means I can grab her ass or grind my groin against her during the hug.
- she went out on a date with me so that means she wants sex with me.
- she kissed me so that means OK to any other kind of touching I want.
- she came to my room for a nightcap so that means she wants to spend the night.
- she let me make out with her while clothed so that means she wants me to take her clothes off.
- she married me so that means I can demand any kind of sex I want whenever I want.
There is a level on which they always know when they are pushing a woman past where she wants to go, but the point of the game is how much can you can get before you get stopped by someone who has the power to stop you. Sadly, they are usually good judges of which women have the power to stop them.
In spite of notions like using an aspirin for birth control and “keep both feet on the floor” ground rules that claim to hold females responsible for controlling males, society in general has accepted that men are the final arbiters of the sexual boundaries in any situation. “I thought she wanted it” is accepted as an excuse. Men are the ones who decided that a normal sex drive or indications of other sexual activity means a woman also must have agreed to have sex with the offender at the alleged date and time.
The idea that women can set their own sexual boundaries—could decide to this but not this, could agree to do this and not this, could state that saying yes to A does not give consent to everything through Z and farther into the alphabet beyond imagination—has never been a part of any culture in human history that I am aware of. Women’s sexual boundaries in a patriarchy are set by others. Men. Fathers. Brothers. Uncles. Sons. Male religious figures. Male politicians. Male judges.
I thought the Anita Hill testimony was going to open people’s eyes, and I was wrong. If anything it caused a little bit of a backlash, and these current events may turn out to be a similar blip on the screen—a time when we thought things were changing but the step forward was very small, and temporary, and nowhere near universal.
But it’s the holiday season. The time for engaging in flights of fancy and imagining things that are not as though they were.
Right now it is famous men in the media spotlight, losing jobs and facing recriminations. Other famous men (cough—DJT—cough) seem to be gleefully getting away with it, and one may be sent to the Senate on December 12.
Still it is a key topic of national conversation, to the point where even a lot of ordinary men are thinking about this in an unsettling way for the very first time.
They are thinking about women they have known, and their past actions, and wondering how many times they crossed the line. They are concerned about whether any allegations will be leveled against them, and whether there is any proof, and whether a “he said/she said” situation might favor the woman in the current climate. They never had to worry about this line in this way before, and if that is different now, they may be in real trouble.
Ordinary men, especially men of a certain age, are justifying themselves with the adage that times were different then. And yes, that is partly true, times were different then, in the sense that there were no consequences for trying to get as far as you could regardless of whether a woman was willing or reluctant. Times were different then, in the sense that unless the victim was “perfect” (and few women are), she would bear the brunt of the blame and the entire culture would back you up with “boys will be boys” and “candy is dandy but liquor is quicker” and “come on, everyone thought it was funny” and “only a wimp takes no for an answer” and “they all want it, the whole point of seduction is doing whatever you have to do to make them give in to what they already want” and similar tropes.
It is possible that those times they are a changin’.
If that aspect of the way women are treated *is* moving to a new place, then something VERY fundamental is crumbling. If this accountability moves past industry moguls and politicians and other celebrities to affect the behavior of Joe Blow and Sam Schmoe, this is a sea change I honestly never thought possible. Something I thought I would never live to see.
If #metoo / #himtoo is really taking us all into these heretofore uncharted waters, it will be as exciting and unbelievable as having lived long enough to see the first extraterrestrial contact, or humans walking on Mars, or scientific proof of life after death.
I’ve already seen a man on the moon and a Black president so i guess anything is possible...