After the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court in a highly politicized vote, the #MeToo Movement crystallized into a perfect storm of mutual suspicion between the genders.
Boy Meets Girl, Girl Meets Boy, Both Are Terrified
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Spot on.
It’s strange to consider how much our society pushes all of us into isolation. We have smartphones and social media so that we don’t have to actually speak to each other in person, we work in cubicle farms where we look like nothing quite so much as animals in a battery farm, and we are induced to admire and worship business types whose models for success require, absolutely, that huge numbers of us be miserably poor and underserved. And now we’re becoming more and more fearful of actual intimacy.
Not much longer, I suspect. And it’ll all come apart.
“The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster, orig pub November 1909
In the story, a mother doesn’t understand why her son wants to see her in person. “I can see you just fine over the machine”
Forster saw it coming in nineteen oh nine and we haven’t learned to cope with it over a century later.
We had a sexual revolution, and we threw out the old rules – but we neglected to make new rules.
We obviously need to teach boys that ‘no means no’ – but we also have to teach girls to say no. We have to prepare both sexes for the eventuality that they will find themselves about to sex – and what to do about it, *realistically*
Forget ‘abstinence only.’ We understand how pregnancy and diseases work, there is no reason for young people *not* to have sex. But teaching them that sex is something bad boys take from good girls leads to problems. Rather teach them that it’s a great way to relate to someone you care about, and there is nothing whatsoever shameful about it.
There’s nothing special about virginity – a girl isn’t ruined because she “lost” it. Teaching her so leads to huge conflicts (body says ‘go’ the bebbe jesus says ‘no’) There are an amazing number of virgin births in this country. Good girl goes into labor insisting she never had sex, and yes, one reaction is to cry ‘rape’ to avoid the shame of being a bad girl.
I remember reading about one very active evangelical couple who went around (Florida?) preaching ‘abstinence only’ … and when their daughter got pregnant she committed suicide rather than face her parents. They’re now singing a different tune, but their daughter paid the price.
I’m pretty sure that if we normalized sex, quit making it shameful, and above all, quit stigmatizing the victims we’d have fewer rapes, more women coming forward, and more successful prosecutions.
The fact that many women will be forced to choose between being dominated by men in their relationships with them, or will have to live a more economically precarious existence, distorts relationships from the beginning.
It’s difficult to choose a “life-master” based on first impressions, and many deceptions are involved in trying to maintain a degree of independence while acting in opposition to efforts by the other to minimize that independence.
“A comparative sociological study of East and West Germans conducted after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women had twice as many orgasms as Western women.”
Women’s lives were less economically precarious, and so they were less susceptible to pickup artists because their own, and their children’s, basic needs were met independently of men.
“Although gender wage disparities and labor segregation persisted, and although the Communists never fully reformed domestic patriarchy, Communist women enjoyed a degree of self-sufficiency that few Western women could have imagined. Eastern bloc women did not need to marry, or have sex, for money. The socialist state met their basic needs and countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany committed extra resources to support single mothers, divorcées and widows.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/why-women-had-better-sex-under-socialism.html?_r=0
I think that is related to my post below – the Eastern Europeans I know are much less hung up about sex. Getting Christianity out of the way certainly helps, no superstitious guilt about normal bodily functions.
PMS is mostly an American thing as well. I recently read about a study that tracked colic worldwide, turns out it’s also a mostly American thing.
I think you are correct about these being related.
Imagine a society where men and women did not have to be wary of falling into each others’ captivating webs.
It would certainly have to be structured economically different than the one that is considered inevitable and natural here in the US.
Given the fact, Ted, that the current world population of H sapiens sapiens is approaching 7.7 thousand millions, perhaps a little restraint in circumstances like those shown above would not be entirely misplaced ? Besides, new dolls, presumably of both sexes, with so-called «artificial intelligence» (but hopefully not too much of the latter) built in will resolve the problem of hormone excesses in a manner profitable to the 0.0001 per cent….
Henri
Thank goodness I escaped the cubicle farm. So glad I found teaching. I have so many positive social interactions at work. I love my students, and my coworkers, and my student’s parents, and they love me right back. I’ll never be rich, but I truly enjoy my labor; and I know, I’ve actually done something good here.
Teach in China. It’s cool.
*If you’re smart, white, good-looking, work hard and well, do your research, network, and get lucky.
Results may vary.
Whoops. Was meant to be a sub-comment under Alex’s.