We don’t need to move into a paradigm where we all keep pretending to prop up a lie that’s used to gently avoid telling someone we don’t think they’re attractive. We need to move into a paradigm where we’re taught, explicitly, how to deal with the fact that someone we’re attracted to doesn’t think we’re attractive, and we need to stop acting like the very suggestion that such things need to be explicitly taught reflects weakness and particular lack of masculinity. (Caught you.)
We need to move into a paradigm where women are able to openly discuss the honest reality that they like sex, and some of them like sex a lot, and some of them like kinky sex, and some of them even like being dominated or controlled or even spanked and more in the bedroom, without attracting the unwanted aggressive attention of every 45 year old virgin within a 500 mile radius.
We need to move into a paradigm where women can admit that some of them are just as perverted as any man and maybe then some, but they’re afraid to talk about that openly because when they do, every man in hearing range thinks she’s giving them permission to sexually assault her.
We need to move into a paradigm where it’s perfectly unremarkable for some variant of the following conversation to occur:
Person 1: Say, Person 2, even though we’re in entirely the wrong social context to get into it deeply right now, I think you’re really attractive and I’d love to maybe get some food and get to know each other better sometime if you’re interested! I apologize for the improper context, but one must take one’s opportunities where one finds them, no?
Person 2: I understand completely. I’m not interested, but I appreciate the offer!
Person 1: Okay, back to this thing we were working on just as if the last conversation was no more strange or remarkable than asking about the weather.
We need to move into a paradigm where we stop assuming all men want sex and all women don’t. We need to move into a paradigm where someone besides the knuckle-dragging men’s rights activists is pointing out that men are very much subject to sexual aggression, harassment, and assault every day too, and that there’s a definite connection between our refusal to deal with that reality, and the ongoing persistence of all this ugliness and interpersonal disrespect.
We need to move into a paradigm where that conversation above doesn’t “make things weird,” because there’s not a single reason that it should except that women are rightfully afraid of men they’ve said no to, because men tend to not take no for an answer. One of the reasons men tend not to take no for an answer is that the social norm is and has been for centuries that “no” means “you’re doing something wrong, try harder.” There are entire mythologies that rely on this dynamic. Even in the midst of being programmed with ‘no means no’ we are told every day in a thousand ways that no definitely does not mean no, that’s just a story we tell for gatekeeping purposes to keep us safe on the rare occasion when it really does.
What I’m saying is that this is an old, destructive, hurtful lie, and this is a great time, right now while we’re in the middle of taking this huge evolutionary step, to face that and admit it and let’s start constructing new linguistics and new paradigms that accurately reflect reality instead of perpetuating these old, stupid games.
Not because “what about me,” but because the social mechanisms which keep that reality under cover are the exact same social mechanisms that perpetuate the things that people broken and evil enough to deliberately engage in sexual assault use to rationalize and excuse their behavior or act as though it’s something other than what it is.
