Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Sexual Harrassment
I have not offered much opinion because I don't have much opinion. I can see why victims getting a chance at some justice, and providing warning to others is a very useful thing. I can see how this could get out of hand and become like (some?) college campuses, where the accusation is the conviction, no defense allowed. I remember, with some annoyance, how the sexual harassment training at work changed in 1998 and gradually returned to its previous track. I see politicians angling to protect themselves and find out how to inflict maximum damage, such as Democrats thinking maybe Franken shouldn't resign, now that the Alabama election is over and they can return to empty promises. My supposed usefulness is in pointing out the obvious. It's all obvious, and competing obviousnesses at this point. I don't see much value-added my analysis would give.
Rollo Tomassi (Rational Male) has an interesting take on this. #MeToo isn't really about sexual harassment. This is now about the final re-ordering of courtship (if that word is still a valid description of our mating rituals) to insure that no woman is approached by a man she considers unattractive.
ReplyDeleteThe previous two generations, and perhaps before that, had struck a balance where the man was expected to be the pursuer/seducer, but the woman was the Decider whether the couple was going to have sex or not. As a woman from my generation told me "very early in the evening, she knows whether they are going to have sex, and he doesn't know until the last minute." An oversimplification, and does not account for force, alcohol, etc. I don't know if that's the best way to run things, but it's the way we had.
ReplyDeleteWhether Tomassi's theory is true, or even half-true, I haven't a clue. I couldn't read a groupsense of my own generation of females all that well, and I am unlikely to perceive even dimly where twentysomething females as a group are heading now. Likely, they don't know that well either. None of us read our own groups that well, because we weight our own experience so hugely. We won't buy any theory that doesn't apply to us, even if it applies to 80% of our group. Worse, even if it does apply to us we won't see it.
But say it's true, just on spec, that women are pressing the culture to go in this direction for some combination of protection/efficiency/convenience. Such changes on one side of courtship will create changes from the men. I don't mean that there will be a rebellion or refusal, though some will talk that way. But there will be adjustments, counterbalances, experimental strategies. This will occur in conjunction with the adjustments to other cultural changes, such as technology.
None of it sounds very predictable. However, I believe the underlying biology is very predictable and will exert its influence as well. There may be some SNP frequency differences in the population inside the Hajnal Line, but...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e07Bpv7uOrM