Go Ahead, Make a Scene

You would think, from reading Emily Buder’s analysis in The Atlantic, that sexual harassment would magically stop if only women learned how to make a scene. Men harass women and women accept it because they feel embarrassed, because they are too prim and proper and prissy, because they do not protest enough.

One might retort that women have been actively and openly protesting for decades now. How did it happen that five decades of feminist scene-making has produced a situation where women are afraid to come forth and make a scene?

Buder believes that it’s all because of endemic systemic sexism. Centuries of it. Millennia of it. Even after liberation women are still encumbered with a sense of modesty, a sense of shame, a wish to fit in. If only they would overcome their sense of shame and step forth to denounce predatory males… there would be no more predatory males.

As often happens with similarly tiresome rants, Buder has constructed a fiction where men are entirely to blame and that women are merely enablers. Even after all that feminism, women are still dopes and dupes, abused and manipulated by men, unable to say No because they are afraid to make a scene.

As it happens, women have long since escaped the feminine mystique. They are unlikely to be modest and prim and proper. They are more likely to be sexually liberated, to the point where they are, as denizens of the dating scene tell me, more than happy to give it away for free.

Among the wise comments on the current #MeToo debacle we count Heather Mac Donald’s observation that, whereas in the bad old days the default for women was No, nowadays, thanks to feminism and the sexual revolution, the default is Yes.

Buder opens with an analysis of a story called “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupanian, published in The New Yorker. I will not belabor the details, but offer Buder’s account of Ella Dawson’s article:

Margot, a 20-year-old college student, goes on a date with Robert, a man several years her senior; alternately enchanted by him and repulsed by him, hopeful about him and disappointed, she ultimately sleeps with him. Not because she fully wants to, in the end, but because, in the dull heat of the moment, acquiescing is easier—less dramatic, less disruptive, less awkward—than saying no.

“After all,” as Dawson notes of the real-world implications of Margot’s decision, “you’ve already made it back to his place, or you’re already on the bed, or you’ve already taken off your clothes, or you’ve already said yes. Do you really want to have an awkward conversation about why you want to stop? What if it hurts his feelings? What if it ruins the relationship? What if you seem like a bitch?”

If you ask what’s wrong with this picture, you will surely conclude that everything’s wrong with this picture. Margot and Robert are not going on a date. They are hooking up. Before their hook up they saw each other in person twice, for very short periods of time. Their relationship has taken place via text messaging.

Feminism went to war against dating and courtship rituals. It went to war against all social customs that protected and respected women. It made No the default, not Yes. In the absence of such ritualized courtship, we get a hookup culture. True enough, feminists do not promote hookups-- mostly-- but they broke the dating culture and they should take responsibility for what followed.

And now, look a little more closely. Margot goes back to Robert’s place. She goes to the bedroom, takes off her clothes and says yes to sex-- to a thoroughly unsatisfying casual encounter. Of course, she should be able to say No any time she wants. And her word should be respected. But, shouldn’t she respect herself not to put herself in that position. No one forced her to go back to the house of a man she barely knows. No one forced her to undress and say Yes to sex. Doesn’t she have some responsibility for creating the situation.

According to Dawson and Buder, the problem is Margot's unwillingness to make a scene. We might note that if she had any self-respect, any sense of shame, she would not have been there at all. If Margot is a free and independent and autonomous human person, shouldn’t she be responsible for getting herself in a difficult situation? Besides she was there precisely to make a scene, to act a role in a porno movie-- which is, if you have read the story-- what happens.

So you are obliged to ask: what cultural forces are telling women to hook up with men they do not know? What cultural forces are telling them to use dating apps that are hook up apps? What force in the culture has told them not to be ashamed of their bodies, to the point of stripping before strangers or sending naked pictures? What force has told them that they must want sex as much as any man does? What force has told them to have sex like men… that is, without commitment, without courtesy, without any show of respect?

One think I will tell you: it was not the patriarchy. Men are instinctually inclined to protect women, especially their daughters. They are instinctually disinclined to pimp them out.

Besides, the big bad patriarchy did not really invent courtship. Women did. The big bad patriarchy has been dismayed to see women failing to respect themselves. Sad to have to say it, but feminists produced the situation where women feel obligated to have sex even when they do not want it… because they must do so to show that they are liberated.

Of course, this is not the way Dawson and Buder see it. Allow them their say:

Dawson’s essay, titled “Bad Sex, or the Sex We Don’t Want but Have Anyway,” went viral along with Roupenian’s story—because they highlight, together, something that is widely recognized but rarely talked about: the version of sex that is bad not in a criminal sense, but in an emotional one. The kind that can happen, as Dawson suggested, partly as a result of cultural forces that exert themselves on women in particular: the demand that they be accommodating. That they be pleasing. That they capitulate to the feelings of others, and maintain a kind of sunny status quo—both in the immediate moment of a given social situation, and more broadly: Wait for the raise to be offered. Put in that extra minute of effort with the eye makeup. Nod. Smile. Once you’ve consented, don’t make things weird by saying, out loud, that you’ve changed your mind. “Cat Person,” on top of everything else, is an exploration of awkwardness as a form of social coercion; the conversation it sparked, accordingly, in “Bad Sex” and Facebook posts and essays and tweet threads, has been a consideration of that kind of awkwardness as a condition—and a chronic one.

Today’s liberated women are meek and accommodating. Who knew? They only care to please. The obvious comment is simply: what happened feminism? How did feminism, a full frontal assault on the feminine mystique, allow this to happen?

True enough, to repeat myself, a woman has the right to say No at any point in the sexual process. And yet, the authors do not consider that a woman who says Yes and who jumps into bed naked, might simply go through with it because… stopping something that she consented to might provoke violence or aggression.

In fact, when Robert and Margot do the dirty deed, it reads as an aggression. Women go along in certain situations because they are constitutionally weaker and they do not want to take the risk. Are they right or wrong? I leave it for you to decide. I think it best that we respect whatever decisions the women make. And to recommend that they show sufficient foresight to avoid such situations.

Confronting a man is not just difficult. It is dangerous. Would it not be better if these circumstances did not arise? Did they arise in pre-liberation times? Surely they did. Were they are ubiquitous? I assume that they were not. In the bad old days of parietal rules in colleges, before the madness of coed dorms, only very rarely did women find themselves in such situations.

And then there is the fitting in problem. When women join a male ethos, they do not feel like one of the guys. The guys do not treat them as one of the guys. Their place in the culture is always under question… more so when it is assumed that they were hired to fulfill diversity quotas. Thus, they feel like they do not really belong. And they react by trying not to roil the waters. If you give them the choice between making a scene and doing nothing, they are more likely to choose the latter.

Buder and Dawson do not mention  fact that most women in the workplace understand perfectly well. If you report a senior male executive for sexual harassment, you are probably going to lose your job… and even your career. There is risk associated with coming forth. The authors ignore it or do not care to deal with it.

And, don’t the authors understand that the #MeToo movement has weaponized women in the workplace. They might not admit it, but more and more men are now unwilling to work closely with younger women, to have private conversations with them, to have lunch or dinner with them, to travel with them.

Worse yet, if you give women only two choices, to denounce the male predators in their midst and to say nothing, they are more likely to choose the path of least risk. Since #MeToo does not distinguish between rape, harassment, and unwanted kissing women are being taught that all men are predators and that all women are potential prey. This does not make on-the-job relations between men and women congenial, cordial or collegial.

Making a scene is dramatic. It is shameless. It risks embarrassment for both parties. It might well punish the male malefactor, but others will suffer too. To help women, feminists like Dawson and Buder ought to be proposing a middle ground, a way for women to deal with workplace harassment without making a scene, without sacrificing their career prospects and without becoming weapons of corporate destruction.