We live in strange times. After Harvey Weinstein and #metoo comes the hoo-ha over waitresses groped at a charity dinner ("the President's Club"), and over the glamorous walk-on girls who titillate the crowd at televised darts matches (I have always wondered whether the darts girls were employed ironically, since the suggestion that anyone could find darts or the meaty blokes who participate sexy is, clearly, ludicrous; Formula 1 racing, just possibly but still no; darts, definitely not).
If I sat down and thought about it I could have rustled up for this opening paragraph a dozen more examples of things that have recently been the subject of shrill condemnation.
To be clear, groping of the Weinstein / President's Club variety is unpleasant and probably criminal. On the other hand initiating modest physical contact when you have some hope of getting lucky is just a dating risk. There are other physical gestures - a hand on the knee for example - which have graver implications when the person making advances is your boss. Male/female relations are complex, and there will be many circumstances where it's hard to know where lies the line you mustn't cross.
What's new, and seems to have burst like lava upon the world, is the slightly hysterical edge and the desire to condemn; and the lack, particularly amongst younger women, of appreciation that wrong turns are an inevitable by-product of engagement with the opposite sex. The comedian Aziz Ansari was named and shamed by a young woman who, in retrospect, wished she hadn't done all the things Ansari had asked her to do on their first date. He should, she said, have read the non-verbal cues a bit better. Poor Mr Ansari. I hope he got some satisfaction out of his evening.
By all means be quick to criticise, but take some responsibility yourself, and sometimes be forgiving too.
By all means be quick to criticise, but take some responsibility yourself, and sometimes be forgiving too.
I have long thought that all societies get sex wrong. The Victorians, so mightily prudish that they concealed the legs of their pianos, were enthusiastic users of prostitutes. Islamic societies veil their women upon (and sometimes before) puberty. The Romantics fetishised the beauty ideal and romantic love; women were virgins or whores. Our own time is just as confused.
A recent university study concluded that more and more pop songs are about sex, not love. That sounds about right for the new times. A focus on sex forgets that intimacy is much more than Sid Vicious's two and a half minutes of squelching noises. In the age of Tinder, sex has become more transactional and, I suspect, dehumanised. In reality it always takes place between individuals, richly textured and complex.
It strikes me that this transactional stuff is pretty much what a lot of men have always wanted, and it's striking how the idea of sexual freedom seems to have been designed to suit men. When I was young women generally wanted a relationship; sometimes I did too, although there times when I was appalled afterwards to find out that in fact I didn't. Now I gather that many women don't either. I wonder whether the notion of falling in love is now dead, or at least dying.
The notion of Finding the One and living happy ever after is of course a fraud, and whilst I wanted to believe it I never did - the complications and perils were too apparent too early on (Proust's lovely phrase "the intermittencies of the heart"). I wonder whether Tinder has made concrete what in the 70s and 80s we knew to be true in theory - there are always others out there. Faced with the contingency of your relationship now, who would dare to commit?
Our society is just as messed up as its predecessors. Young women might shag you on the first date, but woe betide you if you misread the signals and your hand strays a little below the small of her back when she doesn't fancy you. You can't pay a woman to wear a tight dress and heels and walk to the oche in front of Phil "The Power" Taylor, but porn at the touch of a button is absolutely OK. People spend thousands and thousands on "themed" weddings (complaining that they can't afford to buy a flat), but break up at the first sign of trouble .
Men will always objectify women, and be willing to delude themselves and others in order to have them. No amount of burkafication prevents the average young Iranian frotting himself silly at the thought of Islamic totty. If you think Toby Young is unfit to do a job because of his Twitter comments about women, you must explain why someone who has merely said or thought such things (and we all have) is so much better. Otherwise just don't employ any men.
I remember with affection the scene in Friends (itself now the subject of much Millenial agonising) where Monica asks Chandler, "D'you know nothing about women?" "Er, no", he replies. It's the answer I'd have given myself, but I contend that most women, particularly young women, don't know much about men either.
I remember with affection the scene in Friends (itself now the subject of much Millenial agonising) where Monica asks Chandler, "D'you know nothing about women?" "Er, no", he replies. It's the answer I'd have given myself, but I contend that most women, particularly young women, don't know much about men either.
Men desperately want a shag. They will use power to get it, and if society allows they'll bend the rules to do so; some of them will break the law and hurt others. Yet despite their sexual unscrupulousness, Shakespeare, Mozart, Ibsen, Lorca, Dickens and Hemingway were all men. The true mystery is how such contradictions could nestle within the individual; women might do well to consider that.
We evidently live in times when one step out of line is enough to ruin your career, and I'm glad that I'm not a prominent figure and that my pursuit of sex has been (if not always kindly then at least) pretty ineffectual. But the political correctness police, intent as they are on rooting out lust and exploitation, will never stop men ogling attractive women and thinking beastly thoughts about them, no matter how hard they try. Attempting to do so makes men into silent hypocrites and blinds women to the miraculous conundrum which is the opposite sex.
