This week, we’re going to try something a little different. I’m having a hard time… engaging the warp drive, as it were. Putting rubber to road; inserting the fuel rods; climbing into the ring; getting started. I know the destination, I know the goal, I know the pieces, but I also know the pitfalls and traps along the way. And while I don’t have a particular problem walking the plank, this week we’ll be doing it together.
Piece No. 1: Feminism. The notion that people should be considered equals regardless of gender. A philosophically decent proposition which I agree with, but have a hard time politically allying myself with due to the misandrist winds blowing from its political camp. As is made obvious by, for example, the pervasiveness of sexist terrorist notions such as the SCUM manifest still being debated. Yes; political feminism still can’t quite agree whether or not performing violent mutilation upon random men is a decent way to overthrow the patriarchy… Makes it kinda hard to sign your name on the dotted line, that sort of rhetoric does…
Piece No. 2: #metoo. The well justified watershed moment where centuries of practise and decades of examples of sexual abuse against (primarily) women was brought to light and illuminated the sexual predatory of (primarily) men in the upper echelons of society. While there were a few hit-n-misses when the going got hot, with some false accusations and flimsy hearings in the court of public opinion, the movement hacked and slashed its way through the ideals of masculine sexual aggression. Heads rolled. Most of them warranted. Some, perhaps, not so much.
Piece No. 3: Consent is key. As the #metoo movement reaped restitution through corporate corridors, penthouse paradises, college campuses, and the salons of suburbia, the West rallied around the gospel of Consent. In this freshly shaped reality where sexual assault/harassment was shaped more by experience and less by act, expressed and verbal Consent became key to safeguard every sexual and/or romantic interaction. Swedish political mavericks even managed to enshrined Consent into Law, implying that any sexually aligned act, from flirting to fucking, required a legal receipt of consent. Consent is key, as it should be, even if some judicial applications swiftly become dumb if looked at them for more than five minutes.
Piece No. 4: The aftermath. Men (as the main perpetrators prosecuted during #metoo) were shook. Look, nearly no one wants to commit sexual assault or harassment. There’re always exceptions, but men as a general rule do not want to. Those that were already mindful were validated in their debilitating caution. Those that had bought into the myths and ideals of male assertion and aggression got their world view rattled. Some re-evaluated their lives. Some rejected the change as a passing media frenzy. But to many, the #metoo movement made it apparent that sexual and romantic aspirations and interactions were a mine field that they had never really considered before. And when the legal prerogative landed solely on the reception and not the delivery, no amount of honest or good intentions matter. Only the perception with which the advance was received. And that makes any advance, essentially, a land mine.
Piece No. 5: Dating. Have you ever tried online dating? No? You’ve managed to avoid that hellscape? Well, good for you, la-di-da. If you’re one of the lukcy ones, in short; no one seems happy with it. Sadly though, it seems to be the only practisable way of engaging with new people in the hopes of successfully matching. Women complain that there’re only feckless trolls and one-night-standers cruising the dating pool depths. Men complain that it’s a sellers market, and they have to apply the same aggressive tactics that turned abhorrent post-#metoo to even stand a chance against the veritable torrent of men seeking companionship. In the Tinder Swindler we met women, caught in the Disney-esque malware dream of being swept off their tiny little feet by millionaires, who encountered the exact market researched dating-success that online dating promotes: Glamorous predators and charlatans. Regardless of who’s at fault, it is safe to say that there’s a wide discrepancy between what’s on the menu and what’s looked for. Between what’s wanted and what’s promoted. With what people say they want and what people encourage.
Do you see the red line running through these five pieces? Ideals of equality, exposed maltreatment, attempted re-education, insecurity as result, and lingering expectations that punish progression. Threaded through by the apparent mal-alignment between traditional expectations and revolutionary emancipation. Men are expected to take charge and aggressively pursue, but with a double edged sword of sexual harassment to impale themselves with. Women still expect to be courted and fought for, but also to be safely warded against unwanted and overly intent attention. And these two models don’t produce healthy results on their own, much less in concert with one another. Something has to change.
The Assembly: Love, romance, lasting intimate relationships, looks like many different things to many different people. Even more so if one is to open the can of sexual and gender non-conformity. But the prevailing liberal wind spells equality above all else. And if people (men and women and everyone else) are to be considered equals, then we need realign not just the legal system but also the dating dynamics.
If men (as the main offenders exposed by the #metoo-movement) are to come away from the old dominant fairy tales that they’ve been fed with (thanks Disney…), and construct new, healthier behavioural patterns, they(we) need to step back a little. Halt, catch fire, write ourselves a new program, new role models, new fairy tales, that better reflect an equal society. Less aggression, less tenacity, and less toxic notions of “scoring” or “winning hearts”.
If women are to earn the equal treatment they desire (and deserve), then it rests upon them to also take some equal responsibility. Not least of which with how men and women (et.al.) interact. Because right now, the men that dread the notion of unintentionally becoming sexual offenders have been disincentivized to take initiative, while those that don’t give a rats ass if they make women feel uncomfortable or violated are left alone active on the field. And if women don’t meet the prior half-way, they will be left exclusively with the latter.
No woman is a princess (statistically) to joust for.
No woman is a prize to be hard fought over and conquered.
No woman is a goddess to be worshipped.
These toxic ideas must be purged. Not just from the men that believe in them, but also from the women who live by them. And just as men have to stop treating the dating scene like a field of commercialist conquest where they’re supposed to razzle and dazzle and compete for the attention of women, so too do women have to start shedding the dream that they’re just there to look pretty and be swept off their feet, and instead act on their own volition. Otherwise, we will never ever be able to meet somewhere in the middle. As equals.
/Sebastian Lindberg 3/5-2022
WastedWords 