Suddenly we come across as shrinking violets
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in the Telegraph offers another Oh no sex will die piece. She’s one of the hundred women who signed the open letter in Le Monde.
She had found the exposure of Harvey Weinstein liberating at first.
I had applauded Ronan Farrow’s superb New Yorker magazine report on the 13 women whose lives and careers had been blighted by Weinstein. I was unsurprised when investigations revealed that other Hollywood moguls had updated the casting couch tradition. In his inimitable style, US President Donald “grab-them-by-the-p….” Trump had given voice to the crass fantasies of a thousand men in positions of power.
At the time of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in New York, I was among the first Frenchwomen to write denouncing French politicians’ usual assumptions that any comely female journalist was for personal consumption.
But then came the hashtags and campaigns. The #MeToos and the #BalanceTonPorcs (“Rat on your pig”). In between black-dress selfies at the Golden Globes, naming and shaming became a social media indulgence. Forget investigative reporting: the People’s Tribunal of Twitter equated wolfwhistles with rape, pestering lads on the pull with serial abusers.
Wait. Did they? Did they really, or did it just seem that way because of numbers? I have my doubts, myself, because I’ve seen so many people saying over and over “we know there’s a difference.”
Decades after Simone de Beauvoir and Christiane Rochefort, after the 60s’ sexual revolution, many Frenchwomen find the picture of us emerging from this whole debacle deeply depressing. Suddenly we come across as shrinking violets, unable to shake off a bloke trying it on in a bar, traumatised for life the minute someone attempts frottage in a crowded Metro car. (I find that saying in a calm but VERY LOUD voice “Will you stop touching my a..!” makes enough commuters laugh that the culprit slinks off at the next stop.)
Do we? Do we really?
I don’t believe it. I think she’s making it up. I don’t think anyone claims to be traumatised for life by one grope or attempted frottage. That’s a false choice: it’s not “either bad enough to traumatize for life OR not worth mentioning at all.” We get to object to groping even though a single grope is not likely to traumatize us for life.
Also, the thing about attempted frottage in Paris is that it’s not just one, is it. It’s nice for her that she doesn’t mind it because she gets to make other passengers laugh when she objects, but that’s not a reason to argue that all women should react the way she does.
Suddenly, centuries of the unique French charm of men-women camaraderie and badinage are in danger of being erased, and replaced by puritanism.
Oh fuck off, as we puritans like to say. Of course they’re not! Camaraderie and badinage can flourish, even if sexual “badinage” is unwelcome in the workplace.
Human relationships are a complicated skein of trial and error. In America, they tend to live in a black-and-white world, a binary universe of ones and zeroes.
Ah yes, so we do; we’re a collection of stupid little peasants who haven’t managed to wipe the mud off yet.
H/t Rob
“Those guys shouting at you on the street or grabbing your ass or rubbing their erect penises against you on the bus are making tentative advances they think you might enjoy. It’s an innocent error.”
Human relationships are so complicated. How’s a poor guy supposed to figure out which
pussy dispenserwoman to harass?Where is the nuance? Where is the exquisite interplay between doubt and flirtation? Where is the divine simplicity of having some dude you don’t know rubbing himself on your thigh in the Métro?
I am amused by the notion that men will lose interest in sex if they have to jump through a few more hoops.
In these discussions there are often snide comments made like, “What’s next, a manual of explicit rules? A script you have to follow?” The Le Monde article that started the current discussion sarcastically suggested a cellphone app.
But how bad would that be, really? I think it would be liberating for people to have an officially allowed way to express interest, and if the answer is that the other person isn’t interested then no harm done.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42679585
The twist in the tale – the victims of the alleged abuses are all men. Are they shrinking violets too, Ms. Moutet? Do votre hommes shrug off harassment as casually as votre femmes?
‘…your votre…’? I previewed, too!
Should be “vos” though! Plural!
Skeletor @ 3 – good point.
I think decades of Hollywood and other pop culture have entrenched weird ideas about photogenic types of sexual overture. If it wouldn’t fit in a meet cute movie then it must be dull.
Re Skeletor @3
I don’t know if the Le Monde article actually pointed to any apps, but they exist, although they are rather useless.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yp359j/the-problem-with-sexual-consent-apps
Looking at it from another side: So-called pickup artists offer extensive, pains-taking, extreme instructions for breaking down a woman’s will to resist sex. They do interest some men. Now – if any of those men really and truly just want to have sex, they’re plausibly willing to go through a similar number of hoops to find an appropriately open women and spark genuine, enthusiastic interest in a thoroughly consensual fashion, however formalized the process may be. So formality, step-by-step instructions, or bother will none of them pose a problem to this sort of pursuit, even among those with the shallowest interests in another human being.
And on top of that, there are the (hopefully vastly larger) number of men who do also want to have intimate relations with a woman but would recoil from the PUA schemes anyway, who’d regard the assurance of consent not simply as an acceptable price to pay but as the treasured guardrail preventing a slip into an abyss of vileness. They – we – aren’t less interested, and we’re completely willing to abide by whatever rules and steps it takes not to be rapists, or even cads.
And beyond that – wow, I can one-up the French on the subject of flirting!! – flirtation is better when you can be pretty confident you’re on similar pages, or at least when you can be confident that the flirtation can be used, without worry of offense, to figure out at least which chapter the other party is in. It’s not likely to work out well in the dark, or when the other party really is not interested. And if the other party isn’t free to tell you they are not interested, well, your gloriously libertine culture just leaves you too free to abuse one another, like it or not.
And in other news the relevant committee of the House of Commons has discovered that up-skirt photography is a thing, that it actually happens and they’ll include it in their inquiries. They are a reasonably bright group but some have led sheltered lives.
Do you remember the rows we had a few years ago based on the premise that it wasn’t actually illegal so it must be a good thing to do? Never mind that it was intrusive, annoying, disruptive and made actual sex even less likely.
I hate this implicit false dichotomy that says male behavior must either be illegal – or at least more than women can handle – or no problem at all. We already know that women can handle this shit. The fact that they have managed to survive in this world until now suffices to show that. That’s not the point. The point is that they shouldn’t have to.
Maureen #10
‘Never mind that it was intrusive, annoying, disruptive and made actual sex even less likely.’
This really needs amplifying. The non-grabbing men, and the less victimized women, seem to jump to worrying about sex, ‘flirtation,’ etc. While the actual PUAs, Trumps, and Weinsteins are acting out a desire to intimidate, threaten, and silence women on all fronts.
Flashers in raincoats aren’t just lads being horny…intrusion, annoyance, disruption are their actual goals.
^ That. Keep in mind the role that sexual harassment and bullying plays in theocratic societies and neighborhoods. Remember how it paused for a moment and then soared after Tahrir Square. It’s at least as much about hostility as it is about genuinely trying it on. (I know I puzzled about that endlessly that time in Paris. Do they seriously think that accosting me in the street is going to result in sex? Do they seriously think I’ll say oh goody, yes let’s? I’m pretty sure I didn’t know the word “misogyny” then.)
Maureen @ 10 – I do remember that. Boy do I remember that.
How very nice for you.
But perhaps the next person the slinky culprit goes after will not have quite so much self-assurance. Personally, I would prefer to live in a society where the qualifications for participation in public activities (such as being employed, going to school, riding public transit) do not require the ability to respond to inappropriate advances by calling out and/or enduring in silence. (I learned how to do both of these myself, ~45 years ago. At the time we were all so hopeful that we would live to see the day when such things would no longer be necessary.)
Not to mention that there have been cases of women being sexually assaulted in public places, even raped, who have called out and resisted AND where other members of the public have done nothing because they were either afraid of the violent nature of the offenders or simply didn’t want to get involved.
Rob – and there are cases of women who have been harassed in public, and the members of the public actually cheer him on. It’s entertainment for them.