#MeToo or #MeTooFar ?
It’s more complicated than it seems.
The movement that MeToo has started begun with a good and strong purpose, but its lack of clarity and ambiguity in its end goal, coupled with a lack of understanding of the “rules of life”, have become problematic not just for men, but for women as well.
In this post, I will talk about…
Just before we begin, I want to address a couple of beliefs I have. I’m a huge believer in the subconscious, and that many of our subconscious behaviours drive us to do mainly 3 things — to survive, to replicate or reproduce, and to socialise. I look at each of our lives similar to chess, where there are rules when playing the chess game, such as the defined movements of each chess piece, but the game itself can create infinite amount of possibilities. Humans are like this too, where we have our own “rules”, programmed by our DNA and genes, and to change the rules of the game will require a reprogramming of our genes and DNA, something we aren’t capable of doing yet.
My understanding of the MeToo movement is a movement to create an empowerment campaign against sexual harassment or sexual assault. It is a good goal to achieve, but one with many ambiguous and grey areas. Where do we draw the line between what constitutes as sexual harassment or sexual assault? It is something that’s extremely difficult to define, and it really depends on each context and each situation. The simple answer of “No means no” is simplistic at best, but not realistic as I will explain later.
Now, if a man does treat a woman with extreme force and aggression, in a scenario where there’s violence or the potential of and any sort of threats, this would definitely be crossing the line. But what about something much more innocuous like simply touching, or simply asking if you have a boyfriend? There’s a difference between empowerment, where you’re standing up for what’s right, and entitlement, where you’re blaming everything on somebody else because you can.
There’s a lot of men these days speaking up and saying that they are afraid of approaching or conversing with women anymore, a little bit extreme but something that’s worth bringing up. But why?
Look, as I mentioned, we have “rules in life.” In many animal species, there is always one sex that courts the other sex. Usually it’s the males courting the females, sometimes and rarely is it the other way around. Humans have evolved similar to other animal species as well, in that in general males are the ones who initiate the courtship with women. Not only do males have a stronger attraction to women just by seeing how visually appealing a woman is, not displaying confidence to court makes the men look weak and unmasculine. And yes, men are attracted initially by the female appearance, and this isn’t something we can control.
The idea that men are taught to “chase” and women are taught to “pick” isn’t something that’s just been taught by culture, but it’s also ingrained in our subconscious. I think the fact that it is biologically wired to us makes us have a culture that perpetuates this belief, because it’s part of the “rules of life”, our programming language.
With that understanding that men have to make the moves, a woman is attracted to a man by his masculine features — confidence, dominance, persistence, stoicism, power etc. Men have to make steps escalating towards sex, which means men in general have to do most of the touching and progressively work towards having reproduction with the female he’s attracted to. This means a man is always at risk of being rejected at any move, whether it’s the approach, the kiss, or the seduction. So it’s pretty tough already for men to handle this, because rejection sucks. But men in general have to make the move, because not doing so is feminine, creating a drop in attraction. With me so far?
Now when men try to attract women, most of us are not socially savvy or smooth to begin with. We make lots of mistakes, and still continue to do so. You have to understand that none of us, including women, were not educated socially; we were educated academically. This means that how we interact with women all comes from trial and error, observations, listening to other men, from past experiences, internet etc. It’s very difficult to grasp the perfect timing and the perfect situation to land for a kiss for example, or to “make our move”. But we have to try, because we have to escalate, because if not then sex won’t happen because like I mentioned, men are the ones who usually initiate sex. In fact if a man doesn’t, he becomes friendzoned sooner or later. Now as I mentioned before, extreme behaviours like straight grabbing the female parts right away or not being able to leave from a situation isn’t acceptable, but it’s not right to claim it being sexually harassment or sexually assault for other more innocuous behaviours. If I’m a man and I try to kiss you, it would be unfair to call that sexual harassment even though you may not be ready, because it’s our job to “test the waters” and see where our attraction level is.
What makes this more confusing for men is that whereas what some women find insulting might be humorous or confidence in other women. For example, if a man happened to get a girlfriend using one method, and tries to replicate the same method to approach other women after he’s single again, those other women may not appreciate the same sense of humor or whatever. In his mind, he might think OK so she’s just not into me, but this method was successful before, so I’ll try again. Obviously some methods have much lower chances like showing dick pics or hollering at a girl, but rather than immediately dismissing these men’s behaviour as insulting, we should understand why they do such things. Is it because it worked for them before? Is it because they are insecure about their egos? Is it because their friend told them it worked before? Is it because they read it somewhere or seen other grown men do it? Is it because it elicited responses from women before? Maybe he showed his dick pic to his girlfriend before and his girlfriend was turned on, without realising that sending a dick pic from the initial approach to other women isn’t as appropriate. The timing isn’t right, but he never knew about it.
Also, men can get extremely confused when how one woman’s behaviour can mean something completely different with another woman. Remember at the beginning I said that “No means no” is too simplistic? Well that’s because a woman’s no carries a lot of meaning, depending on how it’s said. Yes, when women say no means no, they are talking about a firm no. But men have heard no’s throughout their courtship from the get go, and yet sometimes they pull it off. A woman might say no at the beginning for giving out her number, but after some persistence decides to and they end up in a relationship. A woman might say no to sex, only to play hard to get and to be challenging, but actually she wanted sex, and the man persisted and they both got what they wanted. So to a man, the confusion of “no” is that is it a firm no or is it one of those pretend no’s or what is it? Their experience of mixed “no’s” makes them to better give it a shot than never. The grey area is what is persistence, and what is overly aggressive?
So it seems like the problem here is that men lack social awareness and social skills. Well, first of all, we aren’t educated socially as mentioned, we are educated academically (which, by the way, I argue it’s much more important for schools to educate students on social skills rather than academic skills… I don’t remember much about science anyway or mathematic integration anymore anyway…). Secondly it’s more of a trial and error for us when it comes to courtship. With the problem that innocuous behaviours make men fear approaching women, the number of men approaching women will drop , because they have to make the moves, and their risk for doing so becomes not just rejection, but possibly legal action which is substantially more serious. What’s left is the smoothest guys with the best social skills in the world.
This is problematic for men and women. I’ve already explained for men, which is they become too afraid to court with women, because there carries way too much risk with any sort of sexual escalating, which is difficult to grasp in the first place already, so they drop out. For women, this becomes a problem too. With less men available, the backlash from this movement is that these men don’t need to settle down anymore. These men become a rarity that they have a lot of women to choose from, that they have many options, and they don’t have to marry anyone if they choose not to. This will result in less marriages and less committed relationships. Even if all of them commit, the pool of men have become much smaller that it still leaves a lot of women single, because a lot of men are too afraid to make a move to escalate towards sex.
I know my post has a huge assumption that men are the ones who have to make the moves and have to escalate. And while some of you may like to believe it’s trained and it’s from our experience and culture, I truly believe that it’s wired in our brains that females preferred being courted, and males have to be the one that’s showcasing their masculine traits; so I believe it’s more biological and that it’s part of our instincts, and without males courting, females aren’t going to do it, so there’s going to be less sex and relationships.
Just before we finish…
There’s a couple of things I also want to address while we’re on this topic. One is that a friend of mine once said that she doesn’t like men looking at her, and I asked her okay so what do you want them to do, and she said just don’t do it. It’s a simple answer, but I think it doesn’t go deep enough. Why do men do it? Is it because they are just creepy? Some men do give off the impression that they’re creepy, even if they aren’t trying to be. So why do men stare at women? It’s because men are attracted to women by their visuals. Men’s brains are wired in a way that they find women who have the best visuals to be the most compatible for reproduction. These are instincts that we can’t control, these are our programming language, how we are built. Nature wants humans to survive and reproduce, and they ensure reproduction by having men be attracted to women visually so that they can make the approach. Women is also attracted towards men’s appearance as we are visual creatures, but not to the same extent as men. Their attraction is slower and requires a lot of checkboxes on masculine traits, so nature created women to be more picky since they are the ones who have to carry the baby for 9 months.
With that said, I empathise with my friend. I would absolutely hate it if people kept staring at me, like what the fuck? For those that would feel insecure, it may make you wonder why are people staring at me, is there something wrong with me? Do they want to attack me or want something from me? I feel uneasy.
So is there anything we could do about it? Yes, by reprogramming the DNA and genes of males so that their attraction system works differently. We don’t have that technology yet, so I think reminding and educating men on social skills is a good place to start as well, like it’s OK to look but don’t look for more than 3 seconds for example, otherwise it gives off that creepy vibe even though men don’t intend to. I think women have to be more forgiving because people in general are not amazing with social skills, and that we do things without realising what it’s causing sometimes. And perhaps just adopt a different frame, like if men are looking at you, instead of feeling insecure, think that you’re the shit and sexy and you turn them on and make their days a little brighter.
And we’re going to go off on a tangent a little bit further
I also want to talk about the gender diversity in job roles. The excuse that top executives or other industries should be 50/50 is, in my opinion, bullshit. It’s so much more complicated than that.
Let’s start with the most usual and obvious excuse, which is most top managers in this world are male. Why is that? Is it because of discrimination, or is it because of something more? I believe it can be a combination of discrimination, but also other opportunities.
What if women aren’t as ambitious and wanting to take on a leadership role? It could be a biological reason, or cultural reason, or whatever, but if the opportunity is equal for both men and women, it shouldn’t matter whether the results is equal. It’s about the opportunity, and not the outcome.
For example, I am hiring a senior manager for finance. If I choose someone or prefer someone because he’s male for being a male, that’s wrong. And yes, biases do come in, which we should be aware of. But if let’s say there are 8 male candidates and 2 female candidates applying for the job, the opportunity is equal, statistically speaking I’m more likely to hire a male candidate than a female candidate. Am I just going to hire the female candidate for the sake of diversity? No. I’m hiring whoever I think can best perform for the job, regardless whether the person is a male or female, and that they had equal opportunities to showcase what they can do. The question is not, why did you not choose a female, it should be why did only 2 female candidates apply?
But biases do come in time to time, and it’s a perpetuating circle, which I’ll address in a different post.
And let’s talk about technology, where there are more men than women in the industry. Is it because of sex discrimination? Not necessarily. More likely is because women’s brains are wired to like certain things more than men, just as men’s brains are wired to like certain things more than women. Why do more men buy computer games? Because we are trained to? I don’t think so.
BUT. Let’s say I have a daughter, and my daughter loves technology. Am I going to stop her because it’s a male dominated industry? Absolutely not. In fact, I will encourage her and do my best to ensure she can achieve her dreams and her talent and her passion. But biologically speaking, her female brain is wired to likely desire other industries more than technology, it’s just the “rules of life” and how nature designed us. That’s why industries and different job hierarchies have an unequal balance of genders, not because the opportunities aren’t there, but because of other subconscious reasons (and yes, sometimes by sex discrimination or biases, but not as extreme as we may believe)
OK so what’s the point of this whole post? It’s that males and females behave differently, because our brains are wired differently. Our primal instincts, which we developed through evolution, wants us to behave in different ways, and drives us to do different things. A male is a rook, and he can go horizontal and vertical, but not diagonal. A female is a bishop, and she can go diagonal but not straight. Nowadays, society is challenging that a bishop should be able to go horizontal and vertical, but that is not how chess is played.
