SEEING OFF TOXIC EUNUCHISM?

Megan McArdle suggests it's time to listen to the "bad feminists."

I have now had dozens of conversations about #MeToo with women my age or older, all of which are some variant on “What the hey?” It’s not that we’re opposed to #MeToo; we are overjoyed to see slime like Harvey Weinstein flushed out of the woodwork, and the studio system. But we see sharp distinctions between Weinstein and guys who press aggressively -- embarrassingly, adulterously -- for sex. To women in their 20s, it seems that distinction is invisible, and the social punishments demanded for the latter are scarcely less than those meted out for forcible rape.

There’s something else we notice, something that seems deeply connected to these demands for justice: These women express a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness, even though they are not being threatened, either physically or economically. How has the most empowered generation of women in all of human history come to feel less control over their bodies than their grandmothers did?

Let me propose a possible answer to this, suggested by a very smart social scientist of my acquaintance: They feel this way because we no longer have any moral language for talking about sex except consent. So when men do things that they feel are wrong -- such as aggressively pursuing casual sex without caring about the feelings of their female target -- we’re left flailing for some way to describe this as non-consensual, even when she agreed to the sex.

Under the old code, of course, we had ample condemnatory terms for men who slept with women carelessly, without much regard for their feelings: cads and rakes, bounders and boors. Those words have now decayed into archaism. Yet it seems to me that these are just the words that young women are reaching for, when instead they label things like mutually drunken encounters and horrible one-night stands as an abuse of power, a violation of consent--which is to say, as a crime, or something close to it. To which a lot of other people incredulously respond: now being a bad lover is a crime?

Yes, that's a bit of jiu-jitsu by Ms McArdle, using bad to refer to those feminists who aren't all over the latest effusion from the fever swamps of intersectionality, rather than to the Thought Leaders who have over the years made a virtue of being Bad (or Mad, Bad, Imbruited.)  Furthermore, that's something regular readers of Cold Spring Shops have understood, for years.

This isn’t working. And perhaps a little expansion of our moral language will illuminate not just our current dilemma, but the structural reasons behind it. I’m thinking of a fairly recent paper by political scientist Michael Munger, which introduced the concept of euvoluntary exchange. Put simply, though we talk a great deal about voluntary exchange, the fact is that we often think voluntary exchanges are morally wrong. After all, the quid pro quo offered by [Harvey] Weinstein was in some sense voluntary, and yet also, totally unacceptable. Likewise price gouging after natural disasters, blackmail and similar breaches.

We have an intuition, says Professor Munger, that in order for an exchange to be really valid, both parties need to have a minimally acceptable alternative to making the deal. And in the case of sex, I think that often women no longer feel they have those alternatives. So expanding Professor Munger’s analysis to consensual sex -- we might call it euconsensual sex -- may give us some insight into what’s gone wrong.

My generation of women was not exactly unfamiliar with casual sex, or aggressive come-ons. But we didn’t feel so traumatized by them or so outraged. If we went to a man’s apartment, we might be annoyed that he wouldn’t stop asking, but we weren’t offended, nor did we feel it was impossible for us to refuse, or leave.

But then, I came of age in the liminal moment after AIDS complicated the sexual revolution, and before the internet turbocharged it. In part because casual sex was so risky, there was still a robust dating culture, which gave women alternatives to the nightly chase. Most of us chose those alternatives, which in turn limited the ability of heterosexual men to choose the nightly chase over dating.

Yes, and the rabbit culture had not yet implanted itself fully in men's minds. There were observers who saw it coming.

One has to wonder how different things would have been if feminism had demanded economic freedom for women and denounced the sexual revolution in the interest of preserving womens' traditional roles as the guardians of chastity. This would have gained for women the equal pay and opportunity they deserved while at the same time ensuring that women who wanted to raise families would find willing husbands-to-be.

Such a situation would also have spread the gains from feminism. Today the only victors in the sexual revolution are those men and women who are good-looking and clever enough to enjoy multiple partners with a minimum of emotional and financial commitment. The dowdy and the not-so-clever (or not-so-unscrupulous) are used by the well-endowed and find loneliness and frustration where, in a previous generation, they would probably have been able to start families.

We add some new language to the vocabulary, "bad feminists," "euconsensual sex," and yet, aren't we exactly where the older heads suggested we would be?

If there are enough women willing to accommodate men who approach romance like a deranged mink, then other women will feel they have to go along. It is no more realistic to tell an individual woman to opt out of this dynamic than it would be to encourage her to bring down capitalism by quitting her job. Since our society does not consider sitting home alone in your apartment night after night to be a minimally acceptable alternative to casual sex, women may feel that the sex they agree to is consensual, but not euconsensual. And they end up feeling violated when it becomes clear that he is (yes, again) interested in only the one thing.

But if this is indeed the difference between my generation and theirs, then what do we do with our new moral language? How do we get to a place where today’s young women have adequate alternatives to dispiriting sex modeled on ubiquitous porn?

Rediscover the evolutionary stability of the traditional virtues?

If you cast an eye back over history you’ll see that what most societies have actually come up with is the social equivalent of a cartel: if you want the sex, you’re going to first have to invest in some sort of relationship, because it’s not (readily) available any other way. Those regimes, of course, were often quite punishing to women, but then, that’s how cartels often work; when a cartel member cheats by selling below the fixed price, it is the member, not their customer, who suffers retaliation from the rest of the cartel.

Which suggests an uncomfortable possibility. No, not a neo-Victorian morals police to force morally loose women out of town. But a decision by women to force better behavior from the men who offend them, and even to browbeat other women into going along.

Rediscover the tragic vision?

We did not expect men to perfect themselves. We believed that our own power, as individual women, was both necessary and adequate to create the world we wanted. We also understood that using those powers might sometimes be unpleasant. But how much better to be the one who chooses -- by telling a cad to go (expletive) himself -- than to wait, as patiently as some Victorian maiden, for the men to solve our problems for us.

Rediscover gentlemen?  Peggy Noonan suggested as much, in a Wall Street Journal column temporarily in paywall limbo (her stuff eventually makes its way to her site, albeit with a lag) that Rick Moran expanded upon.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I learned what a gentleman was by observing my father. He was strong without being a bully. He respected people -- especially women -- without being obsequious. He was solicitous of other people's feelings. He was empathetic toward those less fortunate. He was kind, loving, and attentive to his wife. He was somewhat reserved, but that was probably due to his upbringing in an immigrant Irish family.

I don't think he ever gave me instructions on how to treat a female except to say gentlemen don't hit women. When I began to date, I knew what the word "no" meant and always proceeded under the assumption that the woman would tell me if I was doing something that made her uncomfortable. As a good Catholic boy, I didn't try and stretch the boundaries anyway, even though I realize today that many women are incapable -- for one reason or another -- of saying "no" to a man.

You'd think that in two or three thousand years, we might have gotten a few things right. "I don't think there's any doubt that if there were more gentlemen in the world and more empathy, much social friction between the sexes and the races would disappear." So much more thrilling, though, to deconstruct everything, question everything, break many things and call it Progress.

Pajamas Media's D. C. McAllister continues the argument, only in her formulation, the "bad feminists" are Ladies.  "The sexual revolution brought us a second, third, and fourth wave of feminism that quickly devolved from the lofty goals of those who fought for equal rights to the gutter where women act just like men." Yes, regular readers know that, and yet it's more important that the idea catch on (after everything else has failed?) rather than that the early adopters claim credit.

How do we know that everything else has failed?  We see that mad, bad, and imbruited is futile.

We splash our bodies across the internet for the world to see. We act like either men or whores, but hardly ever as ladies. We reject feminine gentleness for bitchiness. We scoff at female discretion and chastity and applaud our nastiness. We objectify ourselves, as well as men; dominate in sex just like men; and have mechanical detached, dehumanized sex while complaining that we can’t find a strong, loving gentleman who treats us with dignity and respect.

Yes, and conducting yourselves in such a way that the pickup artists benefit from the misery by coaching men to offer anything but dignity and respect.

It's not turning the clock back, it's seeking a state of good repair in human interaction.