Morning Ed: Vice {2018.01.17.W}

Megan J McArdle in reply to j r says:

So there are a lot of ways we can conceive the word “browbeating”. We can think of it as women saying “You slut, how nice people don’t have sex until the third date”. Or we can think of it as vigorously saying “You shouldn’t have sex until the third date because if we act collectively, we can create some space for women who are being made really uncomfortable by the current dating culture, space they’re having difficulty creating for themselves”, and reminding friends who stray that they have an obligation not just to the sisterhood, but to themselves–that stranger (or near-stranger) sex is much more likely to be bad sex, and that women have entirely too much bad sex as it is. I can easily imagine girlfriends saying to each other “You had terrible sex on the first date? You’re better than that! Make him get to know you, and demonstrate that he actually has some interest in you as a person rather than a vehicle for quick and charmless sex”. My husband browbeats me into taking care of myself in various ways; I don’t think this is sexist, wrong, or unloving.

I agree that the first is a bad approach; I agree (as I noted in the column) that the second would be incredible to pull off. I don’t have great solutions; what I have is the observation that the current system seems to be making a whole lot of women unhappy.

I would also observe that feminists, as a general rule, have no trouble at all with browbeating other women in the name of sisterhood. Whenever I write something feminists find uncomfortable, whether it’s about rape statistics or #BelieveAllWomen or the fact that my own experience of quite lurid sexual harassment did not particularly traumatize me (to be clear, I was not suggesting that therefore other women weren’t/shouldn’t be traumatized, merely reporting what happened to me), I am inundated with women saying “Even if what you wrote is true, you had no right to say it, because it’s bad for other women”. If it’s all right for women to suggest that I shouldn’t write things that are true–something that is normally regarded as a positive, valuable, moral act by our society–then perhaps sisterhood could also go so far as to tell other women that they should participate in a collective effort to demand better sexual behavior from men. Women are better than men at collective action and cooperation. We could use that to improve a bad situation that is clearly producing a lot of emotional damage for women.

Of course, we could also browbeat men. But I have some skepticism about whether this will work. #NotAllMen gets a bad rap, but we should think about the fact that a relatively small number of abusive men can make the abuse feel ubiquitous if they spend a lot of time on Tinder. “Teach men not to rape” seems to me to ignore the fact that there are always defectors from cultural norms–I think it would be fairly absurd to say that we have a “murder culture” outside of some criminal gangs, and yet every year, people commit murders. Selfishness is a human constant, not an aberration; if women reward men for behaving badly by allowing them to enjoy selfish sex, then at least some of them will continue to pursue selfish sex. And defection from social norms tends to go up in relatively anonymous environments–crime is higher in cities, for example, then in small towns–because social bonds are weaker and it gets harder to socially punish scofflaws.

I mean, yes, you can internet shame famous people. But most people are not famous, or dating famous people. Most men are immune from the kind of broad public shaming that was aimed at Ansari, because no one would write it, and if they did, no one else would read it. So some men will behave badly–and if they’re going on a lot of dates, a lot of women will be exposed to their bad behavior.

So since “punishing bad actors” is off the table as a practical solution for these sorts of bad actors, I think women are going to have to change something about their own behavior in order to change the incentive structure for men who currently find what Ansari did rewarding. A norm among of “We don’t allow ourselves to be treated like that” is somewhat more likely to work than explaining to men that they ought to be nicer to the women they sleep with. If enough men find that an attempt to pursue the kind of sex they’ve seen in porn videos results in no sex–or in the case of men who are vulnerable to social shame, in an awkward and embarrassing conversation about their shortcomings as a lover–then they will figure out that they need to be nicer to their partners in order to get what they want, and avoid the embarrassment.

Maybe this is not likely to work! Just more likely than “Guys, stop pursuing casual sex in such a vigorous, self centered way!” Because “stop doing something that is currently working for you” is a really, really hard sell to selfish humans. And there is no way that “society” is going to punish these men; the women who are there with them when the bad behavior occurs are going to have to take on the job, or it won’t get done.

The latter feels better, because it lays the responsibility on the perpetrators. But neither the universe nor human nature is set up to provide that sort of neat moral complementarity; the person causing the problem is not always the one in the best position to fix the problem. If you get hit by a drunk driver and break both legs, the drunk driver is responsible, and he should fix it. But he can’t do your physical therapy for you.Report