Seeing and hearing each other

I want to go back to that Cracked article I posted earlier:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/how-men-are-trained-to-think-sexual-assault-no-big-deal/

David Wong makes a lot of good points, and there is room to expand on the reasons, but what is missing is the female perspective.

This makes sense based on the article, its purpose, and conception. When he acknowledges what he once thought women thought, it is clear he is not saying that we think like that. It would probably be overly presumptuous for him to speculate now, but I am still struck by the difference between the perception and the reality.

This is what the author wrote that he would have said at 20, which should have been around the mid-90s if I am understanding correctly:

"In this modern world, the quality of a woman's life is overwhelmingly dependent on what kind of man she can attract -- a woman married to a capable man is simply going to have a higher standard of living, period. Her self-worth is thus based largely on how desirable she is to men, and on how many men are pursuing her at any given moment. The need for more suitors is due to the law of supply and demand. It is to her advantage to create competition by tempting as many men as possible, then making it difficult for any single one to gain her attention.

Thus, women gain power through rejecting men, and those rejections have nothing to do with how they truly feel."

The first sentence has more truth than it should. Woman do not receive the same level of compensation as men, regardless of their skills, abilities, and labor.

That should be an indictment of society, but it ends up being something that makes a woman more likely to be a trophy. Just that her financial worth is seen as less supports the belief system that women don't deserve as much. Prejudices are good at self-enforcing cycles.

" Her self-worth is thus based largely on how desirable she is to men..."

Yeah, that has been pretty true, though not necessarily the way he thought. I grew up feeling like it was practically a duty for a women to be attractive. I'm not sure that it even occurred to me that it was for the purpose of attracting men - it was just something you needed to do, and I couldn't do it.

It took a while to begin to see it, but over time I found it really hard to find any women who felt like they were pretty enough. Some of the most beautiful women I have seen have never felt it. Okay, tastes vary, and maybe there would be others that would be more generally regarded as beautiful, but it is amazing how aware of their flaws they are. Girls who seemed so popular and confident worried about things that never would have occurred to me about them. Advertising certainly knows that there is always something else that you need.

Many women do work very hard at being attractive, but it is not so much scheming to attract more men as it is giving in to pressures to look a certain way and be a certain way just to be good enough to avoid mockery. Present the right style to be worth something!

There may be a potential power rush in rejecting men, but a lot of women find it terrifying. They have good reason for that. Women get verbally abused and beaten and killed for that. There are always moments when you realize how vulnerable you are, and how little your desires matter to the other person.

I did not get asked out a lot, so there weren't a lot of opportunities to reject, but I can look back now and see times when what I thought of as teasing could have been flirting. For example, one guy once made a polygamy joke: I could be his third wife but he would have to be my first husband - stupid joke, or also an expression of interest?

If someone was interested and I stayed closed off, I suppose that could have felt like rejection. If so, I guarantee it was never about power. I never saw myself as desirable and it was too humiliating to risk any openness or vulnerability.

So when the author says that he never forced himself on a girl because he would have to lose weight or make the football team to do that, well, you can and should note the problems with that mindset, but I can also take a moment to appreciate that in this toxic culture it is not just the girls and women who are made to feel like they are less. It's not good for anyone.

I do have one story about being hit on. I met Chris through a good friend, from whom he got my number. He called and was asking me questions that were leading to sex, which I explained was something that I felt belonged inside of marriage, thus killing all of his interest in me. The next day I asked my friend about this creep, and what I had not realized the day before was that they were going steady, but now they weren't. She had similar views on chastity, so he clearly started off in the wrong area, but he just kept asking girl after girl until he found a girlfriend, and they stayed together at least through the year.

I don't necessarily think of this as a happy story, because I have to wonder about the self-esteem of the girl who chose that pimple-faced horn dog and the presumed teen sex that resulted. Despite that, when you told Chris "no" he backed off. He didn't stalk you, he didn't try and wear you down or make you feel guilty, and he didn't try and use physical force - he just moved on to the next girl.

His hitting on me while dating my friend does not seem like the act of a respectful person, and his preoccupation with sex certainly seems like he might be the objectifying type, but at least he was capable of hearing and believing "No". 

Bless him for that.