To Sue Or Not To Sue... for Sexual Harassment

Most of us have heard similar stories.

A male manager says something grossly offensive to a female employee at a meeting. The humiliated woman files suit. She wins her lawsuit and receives a generous payout.

But then, she can no longer get a job in her business. No one wants to hire her; she has become radioactive. She has joined the ranks of the unemployable.

The moral of the story: litigation should not be used as an instrument for social engineering.

Today’s working women have had their consciousness raised. They are intensely aware of a large variety of actions that constitute harassment. They are not only more conscious; they are more sensitive to even minor abuse. Having been empowered by the legal profession they believe that their grievances should be heard in court.

At times they win their lawsuits. At times, they lose. On other occasions they submit their complaints to arbitration.

In all cases they insist that male sexual harassment creates a hostile workplace environment. Unfortunately, the men who are targeted by their grievances believe that their behavior—which may or may not be innocent--has been criminalized, thus creating a hostile workplace environment.

Why have more women around if their presence makes men more wary of lawsuits?

For lawyers, lawsuits are business. Lawyers make a living from them. The more lawsuits, the higher their fees. It is in their interest to define harassment as broadly as possible, the better to gin up their own fees.

At times, harassment verges on criminal assault. At times, what is perceived as harassment was intended as a jest.

Telling a woman that she must offer sexual favors or miss out on a promotion feels like extortion. Harassing a woman with repeated phone calls and text messages requesting sexual favors or even a date verges on stalking.

And yet, commenting on a woman’s appearance does not feel to most men like a criminal act or a civil tort. If a woman puts a great deal of time and effort into looking her best, a man knows that he should offer her a compliment or two. If a woman wears a low-cut top or unbuttons one extra button on her blouse, most men are going to notice, even to ogle. Is it harassment or instinct?

Ideally, interactions between men and women—inside and outside the workplace-- should be regulated by codes of gentlemanly and ladylike behavior. Today, they are being policed by lawyers.

In the end, no one seems to win.

Ellen Chang writes for Main Street:

Even though the law protects victims of sexual harassment, the threat of facing a reprisal remains at the forefront for many employees, said Sam Cleaver, an attorney who represents victims of sexual harassment in Los Angeles. Many women are concerned that filing a lawsuit hinders their ability to get another job, especially if they work in an insular industry.

“If you complain, you can be retaliated against – do you want to have a great lawsuit or a great job?” he said.

Moreover, the processes of discovery and cross examination at trial can be demeaning and embarrassing:

Women who are executives or in an upper management position are less likely to bring a sexual harassment lawsuit, because these cases are personal and having your life critiqued by juries and lawyers is tough, she said.

There’s more to it than passing new laws and regulations. For laws to be effective, they must make intuitive sense. Isn’t that the guiding principle of the common law?

People have to understand intuitively what constitutes sexual harassment and what does not. If new definitions expand the scope to the point where it comprises actions that do not feel like harassment, the tactic will not diminish the incidence of sexual harassment. Men will be reduced to testing boundaries to see what they can get away with.

The Post explains:

Sexual harassment cases in the workplace range from minor jokes and a slightly hostile workplace to overt touching, “which is nothing less than a sexual battery,” said Peter Ticktin, a senior partner at Ticktin Law Group in Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Minor jokes?  The broader the definition the less sense it makes. The less sense it makes the more men will feel that they are being harassed by lawyers and HR.

But, some women like bawdy humor, because it makes them feel like one of the guys. And yet, how’s a man to know whether one woman or another likes or does not like such humor. What happens if there are several women in a group and some like certain jokes and others do not?

Overly familiar touching can certainly be an assault, but it must depend on who is touching whom where, and on whether the touch is intentional or not.

If you turn too many different male behaviors into criminal actions, you will cause people to disrespect the law.

The situation is confusing. Women want to be treated as equals. Presumably, this implies that they want to be treated as men are treated. And yet, they require special treatment because certain gestures and even jokes, when addressed to a woman become aggressive.

In truth, one does well not to tell vulgar and obscene jokes to women. In the distant past gentlemen never used foul language around women. And ladies prided themselves on their modesty.

Surely, this was a good idea. Unfortunately, feminists have rejected the code of gentlemanly and ladylike behavior as sexist oppression.

The have created a strange dissonance. On the one hand women want to be treated as professionals. They insist that their sexuality be kept out of any professional equation. On the other hand, second-wave feminism has insisted on the open and honest discussion of female sexuality. The culture of female modesty lost out to a culture defined by The Hite Report, Fear of Flying and The Vagina Monologues.

If feminists fill the media with frank discussions of female anatomy they are not very well placed to condemn men who use vulgar language.

At the least, men will find the culture confusing and threatening.

Are You Afraid to Die?

Beware one-size-fits-all solutions. Be especially wary of people who pretend to know the meaning of life. Worst of all are those who believe that the meaning of life is death.

Those who do have chosen to believe that life’s pleasures and pains, life’s achievements and failures can all be explained by the fact that the human species, en masse, is terrified of death.

Some people believe that consciousness and the attendant knowledge is a boon. To those who believe that we are all terrified of death, consciousness contains a very dark side.

When social psychologist Sheldon Solomon first suggested that the fear of death could explain human cultures and motivations, his colleagues were skeptical, to say the least. They dismissed his theories as so much philosophical claptrap.

Solomon’s was not an original idea. It dated to the Greeks and the Romans. Freud had used it to attack those who practiced religion. And, many of today’s atheists proclaim their atheism as a sign that they are unafraid of death. They tout their non-belief as a sign of superior moral courage… the courage to face death without running screaming to the nearest pew.

If that’s all it takes to make you a moral being, we have a problem.

The argument about the fear of death offers a new definition of courage, one that trivializes most of your duties toward other human beings and allows you to live your life as an amoral narcissist.

It should go without saying but those who believe that the fear-of-death explains everything take it for granted that there is no afterlife, no Heaven, not even a Hell. Obviously, there is no way to prove or disprove the existence of an afterlife.

At least Pascal was willing to consider two distinct possibilities, that there might and might not be a Heaven. For a fuller discussion of Pascal’s wager, see my book, The Last Psychoanalyst.

Since Pascal took account of both possibilities, his was a more rational argument than the one offered by Solomon and his colleagues Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski.

The Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes their conclusions:

Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski have now spent a quarter-century studying how the fear of death shapes human affairs. The result is an empirical behemoth built on the foundation of a few simple propositions. One, that our awareness of death creates tremendous potential for anxiety or terror. Two, that we learn to manage that terror by embedding ourselves in a cultural worldview that imbues reality with order, meaning, and stability. Three, that we gain and maintain psychological security by sustaining faith in that worldview and living up to the values it conveys.

And also,

"The terror of death has guided the development of art, religion, language, economics, and science," they write. "It raised the pyramids in Egypt and razed the Twin Towers in Manhattan. It contributes to conflicts around the globe. At a more personal level, recognition of our mortality leads us to love fancy cars, tan ourselves to an unhealthy crisp, max out our credit cards, drive like lunatics, itch for a fight with a perceived enemy, and crave fame, however ephemeral, even if we have to drink yak urine on Survivor to get it."

Of course, there is no reason to believe that the fear of death built the pyramids, any churches or synagogues. I do not want to be too cute, but these edifices were built by builders. Were I to be less cute, I would point out that the usual reactions to danger are flight or fight or freeze. It’s not the same thing as building a great building or even a high tech firm.

People might build great buildings because it is satisfying to accomplish something at such a high level. Fear is not a great motivator.

The fear-of-death theorists are not doing science; they are slandering those who believe in an afterlife. The social psychologists have found a way to defame the achievements of others. And also to persuade people to join their leftist crusade against civilization.

When the psychologists discuss the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, they describe it in highly politicized terms, but also in terms that are conventionally leftist.

By their lights the terrorists who committed the attacks were true believers who thought that they could transcend death.  They add that the outpouring of “patriotic zeal,” after 9/11, along with an “appetite to attack Muslims,” were signs of a fear of death.

Worse yet, for the authors was the fact that after 9/11 our nation supported a charismatic leader like George Bush.

In their words:

In a series of experiments, the psychologists found that death reminders increased support for charismatic leaders in general and for Bush and his policies in Iraq in particular. 

Unfortunately, most of this is inaccurate.

After 9/11 Americans did not develop an appetite for attacking Muslims indiscriminately. As everyone knows, no such backlash occurred in America.

Also, the authors might not have noticed, George W. Bush was anything but a charismatic leader.

If we imagine that this fear-of-death argument serves a purpose, how should someone who has overcome his fear of death respond to a terrorist attack on his major city?

Again, if we were not afraid to die, how would we behave? If we would have behaved in the same way, what's the point of it all?

The psychologists have their evidence, so let’s propose some alternatives.

Imagine a culture that was constructed on good atheistic principles. Presumably, the people who inhabit it are not afraid of death.

We know that such cultures have existed. Most recently they have been Communist cultures.

In point of fact, these cultures were so unafraid of death and so unafraid of any divine judgment of their actions that they were responsible for nearly one hundred million deaths. Whether Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot or Castro, the founders of atheist cultures acted with perfectly amoral impunity.

Does this mean that they were not afraid of death?

Or does it mean that they were so afraid of death that they preferred to feed the beast with the lives of others, lest Death lust after their lives?

Perhaps those who tout the concept of the fear of death are really those who most fear death.

Consider the case of Dr. Freud.

Freud believed that human beings had concocted the afterlife because they feared death. But he also believed that human existence was a Greek tragedy, one in which you were doomed from the outset, regardless of what you did or did not do.

This made Freud something of a stoic, but his thought can also lead to a conclusion that is perfectly amoral. If the human condition is a Greek tragedy, it does not really matter what you do. Your fate will play itself out inexorably. Thus, what really matters is what you can get away with.

For all we know people like their lives because they like their lives. They might even enjoy their lives… not because they are afraid of death but because they are unafraid of it.

One must add that some people would willingly trade their lives for the lives of their children. Whether someone fears or embraces death must be a function of age and experience.

Besides, if you think about it more clearly, you would be well within your rights to see the worst torment as: living forever.

Is Meditation Risky?

Were you to ask me—I know you haven’t—about the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation I would say that it appears to have helped large numbers of people.

I have no experience with it. I do not practice it. I have known a very small number of people who do, and they have attested that it has benefited them.

Without further evidence I am inclined to believe that mindfulness meditation, at the least, can do no harm. I have no reason to dissuade someone from trying an exercise that might bring inner peace.

Mystical journeys into the depths of one’s soul have been around for a long time. Many religions allow, if not promote them. Even a noted atheist like Sam Harris touts spiritual self-actualization.

Dr. Miguel Farias, of Coventry University in England, saw the issue in roughly the same way. And then something happened that caused him to begin to question the value of meditation.

He recounts it in The Independent:

Aaron Alexis was looking for something. He started attending a Buddhist temple in Washington and learned to meditate; he hoped it would bring him wisdom and peace. "I want to be a Buddhist monk," he once told a friend from the temple. His friend advised him to keep studying, and Alexis did. He learned Thai and kept going to the temple – chanting, meditating. But other things got in the way.

On 16 September 2013, Alexis drove into Washington's Navy Yard. It was 8am. He'd been working there not long before, and security let him in. Minutes later, the security cameras caught him holding a shotgun, and by 9am, 12 people were dead. Alexis killed randomly, first using his shotgun and, after running out of ammunition, the handgun belonging to a guard he'd just killed. He died after an exchange of gunfire with the police.

It took only 24 hours for a journalist to notice Alexis had been a Buddhist, prompting her to ask: "Can there be a less positive side to meditation?" Western Buddhists immediately reacted: "This man represented the Dharma teachings no more than 9/11 terrorists represented the teachings of Islam," wrote one. Others explained that Alexis had a history of mental illness. However, some noted that meditation, for all its de-stressing and self-development potential, can take you deeper into the recesses of your mind than you may have wished for.

One notes with Farias that mindfulness meditation did not offer anything resembling a treatment for Alexis’s troubled mind.

Nevertheless, this all feels a bit anecdotal. Is there any real evidence that would cause us to question the therapeutic value of mindfulness meditation?

Farias went looking for research in the question. Among other things, he found this:

In 1992, David Shapiro, a professor at UCLA Irvine, published an article about the effects of meditation retreats. After examining 27 people with different levels of meditation experience, he found 63 per cent of them had suffered at least one negative effect and seven per cent profoundly adverse effects.

The negative effects included anxiety, panic, depression, pain, confusion and disorientation. But perhaps only the least experienced felt them – and might several days of meditation not overwhelm those who were relatively new to the practice? The answer was no. When Shapiro divided the larger group into those with lesser and greater experience, there were no differences: all had an equal number of adverse experiences. And an earlier study had arrived at a similar, but even more surprising conclusion: those with more experience also had considerably more adverse effects than the beginners.

He also found some older observations by Arnold Lazarus and Albert Ellis, two of the founders of cognitive-behavioral treatment noted this:

Amid the small pile of articles on the topic, I found two by Arnold Lazarus and Albert Ellis, co-founders of CBT. In 1976, Lazarus reported that a few of his own patients had had serious disturbances after meditating, and strongly criticised the idea that "meditation is for everyone". And Ellis shared his misgivings. He believed it could be used as a therapeutic tool, but not with everyone – and overall, that it could be used only in moderation as a "thought-distracting" or "relaxing" technique. "Like tranquilisers," he wrote, "it may have both good and bad effects – especially, the harmful result of encouraging people to look away from some of their central problems, and to refrain from actually disputing and surrendering their disturbance-creating beliefs."

And he came upon the work of neuroscientist Willoughby Britton:

Willoughby Britton, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Brown University, is now trying to map what she calls "the dark side of Dharma", an interest that arose from witnessing two people being hospitalised after intense meditation practice, together with her own experience after a retreat in which she felt an unimaginable terror. And reading through the classical Buddhist literature, she realised that such experiences are often mentioned as common stages of meditation.

"I was woefully uninformed," she now admits. Meditation retreats easily lead people to sense the world differently: the hearing gets sharper; time moves more slowly. But the most radical change that can occur is in what Britton calls "the narrative of the self". Try this out: focus on the present moment, nothing else than the present moment. You may be able to do it easily for a very short time. However, if you try extending this "presentness" for one or two hours, and keep trying for some days, your usual sense of self – that which has one foot in the past and the other in the future – collapses. The practice may feel great for some, but for others it is like being tossed around a roller coaster.

Other unpleasant things can happen, too, as Britton discovered through interviews with numerous individuals: arms flap, people twitch and have convulsions; others go through euphoria or depression, or report not feeling anything at all as their physical senses go numb. Still, unpleasant though they are, if these symptoms were confined to a retreat, there wouldn't be much to worry about – but they're not. Sometimes they linger, affecting work, child care and relationships. They can become a clinical health problem, which, on average, lasts for more than three years. What's more, meditation teachers know about it – Britton says – but researchers are usually sceptical; they ask about the psychiatric history of meditators who develop mental illness, as if meditation itself had little or nothing to do with it.

Is mindfulness meditation risky or dangerous? If its adepts rationalize it by saying that it merely brings out underlying problems, at the least they are saying that it does not treat or cure.

It's important to make the distinction that Britton makes. It’s one thing to take a break from the day in order to relax, clear your mind and focus on your breathing. But, once you make such meditation a way of life you might end up not knowing who you are. Your sense of self, she says, collapses.

Most of those who try to explain why mindfulness meditation might produce negative psychological effects focus on the mind. They suggest that when people get too deeply into their minds and that they discover things that they would rather not have seen or known. The truth does not set you free; it risks destroying you.

But, there might be other ways to see the risks and dangers of mindfulness meditation.

Following Britton’s idea, when meditation disconnects you from your world, from your reality and from your network of social contacts, it is not merely giving you access to your mind.

It causes you, as I would put it, to lose face. As I have often opined, the reason you know who you are and continue to have a coherent sense of self is that other people are constantly affirming it. It might even be the case that surrounding yourself with familiar objects, feeling like you are at home, also affirms your identity and your sense of self.

You do not, in other words, descend into your mind to find your Self. In that David Hume was certainly correct. 

You find your Self, you know who you are, when other people recognize you and interact with you. If meditation causes you to disconnect so completely from the world, it risks crushing you… unless, of course, the practice provides you with a new identity as a member of a new community of believers, a new religion.

"Hill, Can I Ride in your Lap...?"

Perhaps it’s not the most pertinent piece of information gleaned from the Hillary Clinton emails released yesterday, but the account of Wall Street Journal reporter Monica Langley’s interview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must count as the strangest.

Kerry Picket reports at The Daily Caller:

Langley is invited to sit on the couch with Clinton at “an appropriate distance.” However, Clinton offers her a chair to bring her “within inches of the Secretary — leaning in even further.”

The reporter agrees and midway through the interview, she “grabs HRC’s knee” and Clinton began laughing “awkwardly” as she looked over at State Department Clinton senior advisor Philippe Reines.

Langley leaned in further and asked “Oh Hillary…what do you eat? Drink? Dream about when you sleep?”

At that point she began touching Clinton’s leg again and all those present in the room, including Reines, laughed “awkwardly.”

Finally, Langley tells Clinton, “They think I’m so funny [looking at Phillipe and Adler]. Hill, can I ride in your lap to the White House?”

To be interpreted ….

Are Women and Corporate Cultures a Bad Fit?

Why don’t we respect women?

Apparently, when women enter the corporate world they discover that they do not like it. They discover that they do not want to have the lives they would have if they want to make it to the top.

They want more time with their children and they discover that the higher they rise on the corporate hierarchy the more they are owned by their jobs.

Should we not respect their wishes and their choices? If they do not wish to make it into the executive suite, that is, after all, their prerogative.

It has nothing to do with their inability to lean in.

Women are simply not comfortable doing what needs to be done to be promoted in a male-dominant status hierarchy.

I am sure that you are not surprised.

And I am sure that you accept that women should be respected for wishing to have the kinds of lives that they want to have and for being the kinds of people they want to be.

New York Magazine reports the story:

[A] Bain & Company survey of men and women in the workplace… found that women and men were equally ambitious when they had fewer than two years on the job. But those ambitions changed dramatically among mid-career employees. Women's aspiration to make it to the C-suite dropped 60 percent. Their confidence in their ability to reach top management drops in half. And their ambition never recovers as they become senior leaders within their firms. Men, on the other hand, see a much smaller dip in their confidence, and none in their ambition.

Why is this so?

New York answers:

The question is why, and the survey has some disquieting answers. Here is part of one woman's response to the survey questions:

Watching middle-aged white male after middle-age white male tell their war stories of sacrificing everything to close the sale was demoralizing, I just kept sinking lower in my chair and thinking that I would never be able to make it to the senior ranks if this was what it took.

Another woman responded that “top-level execs are ‘on’ 24/7 and that is not appealing at all.” Another said she did not want “to trade my personal life” for professional success. Many women also reported that their managers were not supportive of their careers. 

The idea is that many women simply do not see themselves as fitting the model of success at their respective firms: They get the message that there's a type of person who's successful, and they aren't it. That's borne out with tons of data. About 40 percent of new women on the job say "I see myself fitting into the typical stereotypes of success within my company." Only 25 percent of experienced women say the same.

You might say that this merely shows that men and women are different and that efforts to make women into ersatz men have failed. It does not mean that women should not work or have careers. It does suggest that they would rather not follow a career path that is more congenial to estrogen-deficient beings.

It will not come as news, but businesses compete against other businesses. If the male model does not work as well as another model, it is in the best interest of all involved to change the way their model.

One suspects that, in the crucible of competition, businesses evolved in the direction of the greatest efficiency and effectiveness.

Heck, even the young tech firms in Silicon Valley are as male dominant as any other businesses. In fact, they are more male dominant than many other businesses.

This is not the way New York Magazine sees things. It suggested, in the article's title, that corporations are in the business of crushing women's ambitions.

The magazine does not consider that women might have a change of heart or a change of mind once they enter the corporate world. They might discover that their ambitions are more varied and less single-minded than are those of men.

This is not the way that Bain sees things. It concludes that if women do not like corporate cultures, the solution is to change corporate cultures.

The article explains:

The [Bain] study concludes that the workplaces in question are failing to provide women with role models and failing to encourage them, and it has a number of suggestions for improving corporate culture to retain female talent. Providing women with role models and mentors, and rewarding employees with nontraditional work schedules and career trajectories might be a good place to start, they argue.

A lot of companies could go much further than that, though: allowing for more flexible work schedules, encouraging people to actually use those flexible work schedules, and celebrating people who succeed using those flexible work schedules. That would especially help women aiming for the C-suite while dealing with a family at home. This Bain study did not find meaningful differences in the responses of women with kids and without. But many other studies have.

Need we say, any company that wishes to implement such policies should do so. It will find out whether they improve the company environment and the bottom line. If it produces more profit and happier employees, this would demonstrate Bain’s point.

If, however, the new woman-friendly policies turn out to be man-unfriendly, corporate harmony and cooperation might suffer. Again, companies are at liberty to take such risks.

After all, it is difficult to have two different genders working according to different rules and still respecting each other.

Finally, we must wonder why Bain, a consulting firm, has produced a report that seems more clearly geared to actualizing a feminist dream than improving company performance.

What Would We Do Without Science?

What would we do without science?

A new study has discovered that women have a maternal instinct.

Astonishing.

Better yet, this instinct manifests itself in the way that new mothers talk to their babies.

The best, fathers do not talk to the same infants in the same way. Even more maternal fathers do not engage in very  much baby talk.

Apparently, fatherly speech points a child out of the home into the world.

Amazing.

Time Magazine reports:

Most mothers [talk baby talk] without thinking: cooing to their young children in a sing-songy, high pitched way that seems to help them connect better with their youngsters.

Mark VanDam, a professor in speech and hearing sciences at Washington State University, wanted to find out in his new study presented at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. While previous studies have looked at how moms and dads interact with their preschoolers, most of these have been in the rather artificial setting of a lab. So researchers led by VanDam strapped recording devices on both parents and their toddlers for an entire day in order to hear what parents were really saying to their children—and how they were saying it—in a more natural setting.

They found that mothers do indeed adopt “motherese” when addressing their preschoolers, but fathers did not—even those who spent more time with their children. In fact, the fathers talked to their young children in the same way they conversed with adults.

Why is this so?

Apparently, there is good reason for both tactics. Thus, there is good reason why a child has both a mother and a father and why these two individuals perform different functions.

Time explains:

That may be because mothers vary their intonation more and tend to speak in a more infantile way in order to bond better with their toddlers, according to a theory proposed in the 1970s. Mothers are supposed to teach their children how to connect on a more intimate level, and speaking in a more melodic way introduces children to this way of communicating, the theory goes. Fathers, on the other hand, are the bridge for preschoolers to the outside world, and fathers’ more varied vocabulary and adult intonations help to familiarize them with this way of connecting with others. “The basic idea is that moms provide the link to the domestic, more intimate type of talk, while dads provide the link to the outside world,” says VanDam. “In that sense, moms and dads provide different kinds of experiences that give kids more comprehensive exposure to what kinds of language they need in the real world.”

These results were drawn from two-parent families.

Science has not yet discovered what happens in families where fathers are absent and where both parents are of the same gender.

We await the results.

Is Frexting the Next Craze?

What’s with the exhibitionism? How has it happened that after four decades of intense feminism, young women can’t manage to keep their clothes on? It makes it much more difficult to respect women for their minds.

Having discovered that sexting exposes them to serious risks, women have set out to find a solution.

They did not call for a return to modesty. They did not think that perhaps it was not such a good idea to share pictures of their private parts. They did not wonder whether it was a good thing to act like a wanna-be porn star. They did not question whether they had a moral obligation to provide their boyfriends with masturbation material.

They decided that since they must exercise their constitutional right to expose themselves, they should continue to do so. Only now, they would share the pictures with their girlfriends,, not boys and men.

Naturally, they needed a new name for the practice. They called it frexting— short for, friends sexting.

The pictures are more suggestive than pornographic. More often they are semi-pornographic images of girls in their underwear or lingerie.

Apparently, a girl feels a measure of safety in knowing that her BFF is not going to pass around the frext of her in her bra and panties to some random boy. And, it is less likely that a female friend will use the image as a sexual stimulant.

Undoubtedly, it is more unlikely that a girl will share a frext than that a boy will share a sext… but still… let’s not be too naïve.

Girls compete for the attention of boys. They have been known to go to great lengths to attract and hold the interest of males. Do you want to bet your self-respect on the chance that no girl will share a picture of your butt with a boy?

Today’s BFF is tomorrow’s mortal enemy.

Unfortunately, frexting has been foisted on women by other women… on feminist grounds.

When we ask why women sext?-- and now why women frext?—we answer that they are being encouraged to do so by feminists.

You see, it’s all about escaping the dread male gaze? Or else, it’s about overcoming your homophobia?

Get it?

Beca Grimm explains it at Bustle:

So instead of lobbing that cleavage shot perhaps previously meant to entice your romantic partner or a new sexy conquest, you shoot the same image to a totally platonic pal. This is typically associated as behavior between lady friends (because, of all the damaging messages we’re made to internalize from a young age, self-homophobia and fear of displays of intimacy with our friends are mostly reserved for dudes. We DO have to deal with the Male Gaze sexualizing our friendships with other women, but hey, you can’t win ‘em all. At least we aren’t so paranoid about looking “gay” that we can’t have fun with a little harmless frexting….

Anyway, the whole frexting phenomenon—unlike sexting—is wholly very positive, way safer, and actually bond-strengthening. It presents you, whether you’re the frexter or frext receiver, with a really non-dangerous platform to intercept or allocate affirmation and love. It could be gauging an outside opinion about some lingerie you ordered online (guilty) or a jokey butt shot (also…guilty) or showing off a hot new yoga pose you nailed (I wish)—but one thing with frexting always applies: it isn’t meant as a segway to get laid by either party. It circles back to the true adage that women don’t dress up for dudes—it’s more for other women, and for ourselves. 

In truth, shamelessness is never harmless.

Even if the images are not intended to excite, that is, are not pornographic, they are still erotic and might still be seen as a dress (or undress) rehearsal.

At best, girls send out these images in order to receive a confidence boost. They like being told by their girlfriends that they are hotter than hot.

  

If the images are not pornographic, that does not mean that they are not erotic. Samantha Allen believes that frexting is a form of seduction.

In Allen’s words:

In fact, it’s a near certainty that some recipients of “frexts”—one of the more grotesque plural nouns the Internet has given us—are harboring secret crushes on the very friends who are ironically sending them bathtub pics.

I don’t want to encourage the assumption that bi and lesbian women are all in love with their straight friends, but I also hate the de facto assumption of heterosexuality that is frexting.

But even if everyone participating in “frexting” is a certified Kinsey Zero, the denial of any erotic subtext to the practice feels too easy in a culture as Freudian as our own.

Numerous studies have shown that heterosexual women respond sexually to images of other women. In one 2007 experiment, Dr. Meredith Chivers and her colleagues found that heterosexual women in a small sample experienced genital arousal when watching sexual scenes no matter the gender of the actors.

Of course women have always solicited the advice of their girlfriends when it comes to their appearance. And yet, in the past the question was how they would look in public, not how they would look when they undressed in front of a man.

If frexting is supposed to be a solution to a problem, what is it supposed to solve?

Are women insecure about their ability to attract men or to sustain male interest?

Since women have been taught to abandon the trappings of femininity, are they reduced to asserting their gender in the most obvious and vulgar way?

If femininity attracts men and if women have increasingly been pushed toward a life plan that mimics a man’s, then how can they obviate the risk that their womanhood will go unnoticed.

One notes that any reference to a woman’s womanhood in the workplace is now considered to be harassment. And anyone who uses terms that are gender specific are considered to be sexist.

One feels that, what with all the sexting and frexting, women are insisting too much.

And then there’s porn. Through no fault of feminism, young women have increasingly found themselves competing for the male gaze with porn stars.

Some people have insisted that pornography is perfectly harmless and that its easy availability is a step toward sexual liberation.

Some feminists, however, have declared that it disrespects women and promotes sexual violence.

Regardless of where you stand on these issues, when men who grow up on a diet of pornography undoubtedly see women differently.

Many of them are jaded to the point where, when they look at women, they believe that they can look right through their clothing. If women want to be modest, the male gaze, warped by porn, makes it increasingly difficult.

One suspects that women who feel that men have X-ray vision feel a sense of discomfort. Given how ubiquitous porn is how many women still feel that they still possess the keys to a mystery.

Even if we understand that women want to be noticed and admired and adored by men, if we understand that most women would welcome the male gaze from the right man, we must still recognize that the male gaze can no longer be trusted.

How do women learn how to attract or not attract certain male gazes when the corrupted male gaze cannot be taken as an accurate indicator?

A woman can be perfectly attractive, even sexy and not really be noticed. She can dress herself in a way that signals a disinterest in attracting attention and receive the wrong kind of attention.

The male gaze is not infallible. Perhaps that is why women seek out the opinions of other women. Not just to puff up their self-esteem but to navigate the treacherous shoals created by a pornified culture and the ravages it has inflicted on male taste and judgment.