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  phillip 1:42 pm on August 6, 2010 | # | Reply

  The research here seems to be well-done, but the authors repeat well-known and predictable clichés about the “sexual double standard.”

  Instead of saying what everyone already knows — that it is problematic that men can have all the sex they want and increase their reputations while at it and that women are labelled as “hos” if they do the same — why not explore other sexual double standards and other gender inequalities?

  One of the biggest of these is one that no one, including these researchers, is talking about — that society still expects men to initiate contact when seeking dates, romantic relationships, or the like.

  Why is it that I as a man am still expected to ask women on dates rather than vice versa? If women want to complain about male partners being abusive and controlling, many of them not going to find much sympathy from me. It’s apparently okay for women to use the excuse that they’re too shy to ask a guy out on a date, but if I am to use the same excuse, I’m labelled a coward or a loser by both men and women alike. I’ve graduated from college already, but unlike all the people in this study, I haven’t ever had sex before, have only been in one relationship (a long-distance one that I found online), have never hooked up before, and have only gone on a few dates. Is it my fault that I’m shy? Is it my fault that I’m a man, so I can’t just wait for a woman to initiate? Why isn’t anyone talking about the millions of men who can’t find love because society forces them to have “the balls” (a sexist term and notion in itself) to go up to a woman and ask for a date? And when they’re turned down repeatedly, why isn’t anyone making sure that their self-confidence and self-esteem isn’t so ruined that they end up in a vicious cycle of loneliness?

  If women asked men on dates, they would empower themselves with being able to find the best man of their choosing, for sex, dating, a relationship, or whatever. No longer would they have to be taken advantage of by men at fraternity parties. No longer would they have to put up with abuse. Many men, who are too shy to talk to women, would now be able to find love, and women could have more power in deciding who they wanted to date. Today, many women refuse to date men who are younger than them or shorter than them. That’s inequality and injustice right there. But at the same time, there are probably many women who are just as willing to date these men but who are too shy to ask. Instead of just saying that men cannot be that shy, we should be encouraging both sexes to initiate. Maybe in a certain situation, one of them would eventually open up. It could be the man, or it could be the woman. But in today’s society, it always has to be the man. And since he might not find the courage to open up, the situation ends up in a dead end, with the man remaining lonely and the woman getting asked out by a more confident man who might not be as good of a fit for her. The woman who go to the fraternity party might not give such a shy man a look, but he may be a better sexual or romantic partner than the more confident man who will just simply talk to her, lure her in, and then take advantage of her. Heck, the shy man might even make sure that the woman is sexually satisfied rather than just trying to satisfy himself. But if the woman doesn’t ask but only waits and if she’s unwilling to give a shy man a chance, she will never know.

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  Polemos 2:11 pm on August 7, 2010 | # | Reply

  phillip, are you being serious or trolling? You seriously state that you are not going to sympathize with a woman who is being abused because you find it difficult to approach another person and start a conversation leading towards a romantic encounter?

  Whether or not you are “at fault” or lonely should have no bearing on appreciating the dignity of another human being and respecting that person enough to be concerned about their suffering. The inconsistency of your position is this: you demand —perhaps on the basis of some assumed universal responsibility we all have towards one another to be considerate of the suffering of those whose self-confidence and self-esteem are ruined— to be respected and supported in your hesitations and understandable fragility towards people while at the same time openly refuse to lend support to *the many* who are being physically and emotionally abused, *because* such women are part of a larger social arrangement constraining both men and women. *By your own criticism* of this as a social problem, you make them out to be doubly victims: victim of the constraints to remain shy themselves, and then for the women victim of the abusers in their own lives. And yet, for whatever unstated reason, you deny them your sympathy as double-victims, put forward your own idiosyncratic life as victimized by that same society, and it’s not too difficult to read you as eventually blaming the women for their predicament, rather than initiate and pursue the shy men such as yourself.

  And then there is the audacious claim that an aesthetic preference, itself probably constructed and mediated through the same social values you want to claim as victimizing the shy, amounts to an inequality and an injustice. That’s absurd: you might as well say some people’s preference for pizza over falafel is an injustice committed against Mediterranean delis, when in a more just and equitable society people will all equally prefer any food at any moment.

  Have you considered the possibility that one of the main reasons why you are not pursued is due to your bald-faced, but apparently also not transparent to you, lack of self-transparency, your inability to empathize with others? Perhaps it’s not that you’re shy, but that people intuitively discern your anxious self-absorption and find that’s not what would interest them at the moment.

  This article doesn’t so much retread common clichés as situate them in a growing tendency to cast the hookup culture as morally ambivalent at best, morally detrimental at worst, but overall anti-feminist —at least “feminist” insofar as some mainstream moderates and conservatives delimit the term. And the situation of this cliché needs to occur because it’s *still* a systemic and defining problem, and particularly when it relates to college campuses and the social forms in the panhellenic groups. I take the authors to be alluding to resolving some of the social problems you’d like to see addressed, particularly the initiation of romantic encounters by either sex, precisely by undoing the inequality you’re claiming is cliché. The determination “Men initiate the encounter” is a significant part of this social valuation of assigning activity/dominance to (true) men and passivity/submission to (true) women, such that men who find it difficult or nerve-racking to initiate dialogue are somehow inferior men (“coward or a loser”). That women *repeat* these social values does not mean it’s an entirely separate part of the tired cliché; that is, it’s *not* a separate double-standard or gender inequality, *but the exact same one repeated in its pervasiveness*! So, when such a cliché constrains women to the role of being passive/submissive and thus incapable of initiating or unwilling to own their own agency (and own it in the specific way you’d find beneficial for your specific situation), this is not a different problem left unaddressed or unanalyzed.

  It seems to me that in the closing paragraph, the authors have such a notion in mind when they note that women “would be less likely to tolerate “greedy” or abusive relationships if they were treated better in hookups.” I take this to mean that women and men will find more opportunities for egalitarian or equitable or consensual relationship precisely by being open to pursuing them on their own initiative. The double-standard you call a cliché constrains the choices by assigning those roles (men pursue/initiate, women are pursued/passive), and so women who would prefer their own choices are forced to pick from a narrower selection of partners. On the assumption that greedy or controlling partners are more likely to pursue actively partners (I suspect there’s statistical evidence for this, but I’m not a sociologist and so unaware of what studies support or undercut this), then they will be a larger portion of the dating pool under cliché constrains than under non-cliché ones —thus, the critical role in attacking the “tenacious sexual double standard” opens up more possibilities and more partnerings.

  As well, the larger goal of increasing the mutual respect within hookups and pairing it to increasing the mutual respect in relationships permits greater opportunities for relational experimentation. In this more liberated situation, for the shy there is less risk or less consequence for mistakes, and thus they can attempt entry on their own initiative into romantic partnerings at levels of commitment they can feel comfortable with. It could also remove failure or incompatibility as a personally deficient event, since much of that cliché valorizes quantity and quality —getting many numbers, getting laid multiple times, getting quantifiably hotter partners (“nines and dimes”)— as signs of superiority, rather than consider all of one’s experiences as learning or educational moments or encounters with a wholly other person nevertheless traversed through shared intimacy. Meaning, rather than embarrassment or shame at rejection or at premature ejaculation, either indifference to the fact or supportive integration into one’s self-understanding (“Interesting. So next time I can try x and see what happens then…”).

  This is why that double standard is so much a worn cliché: it *really does* affect and constrain all manner of ways in which people, all people, develop their relationships. Including stigmatizing awkwardness or social anxiety!

  If my initial tone rubs you wrong, I can only say that your post had me flabbergasted and I chose to express that. It is difficult for me to understand how someone who identifies as a victim of something can nevertheless withhold sympathy from somebody else who is as much a victim of it as the one, unless that one does not see how both are sharing their misfortunes. It’s possible you don’t see this, and given your argument very likely. But the case I dread is that you do see that, but still choose your misfortune as its own more urgent double-victimization (victimized by the social values, and then ignored in your plight by the people opposed to those social values) than physical and emotional abuse. If you truly are ruined and left in a vicious cycle of loneliness, then all the more do you have reasons to empathize and sympathize with the partner trapped in a controlling relationship who is no less alone in spite of that controlling partner —or at least, *everyone* so ruined is, were you not describing yourself but simply using yourself as an example…

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  aleknovy 1:30 pm on November 17, 2010 | # | Reply

  Polemos, its interesting that out of a well put out point that Phillip made, you took one little point, distorted what he meant and then turned it into an attack on him.

  I will re-iterate the same point in a shorter, more succint way. Why is that in 2010, among all these discussions of gender, hooking up, dating, gender-expectations, everything else has been covered except the “who initiates”?

  Its like the big pink elephant in the middle of the room that everyone ignores. To say the avoidance of this subject is highly suspect would be an understatement.

  To discuss all of these topics and never ever (or so incredibly) rarely tackle this sexist role that’s out-dated, is weird. Its like writing a 500 page book about a coin, and never studying one side of the coin.

  All of these things and dynamics are deeply tied into the initiating. There’s plenty of study in social psychology to show that the type of men most likely to initiate hookups are narcissistic, abusive. sociopathic men.

  At the same time, society has this nasty expectation that women not initiate. That’s basically setting women up for really nasty men. Instead of discussing initiation itself, we’re all focusing on how we can make the psychopaths less psychopathic, ignoring all the other things that can be done, such as empowering good, caring men, and *more importantly* empowering women to take their dating and sex life into their own hands… Its mind-boggling to ignore that whole area of “initiating”. Its just mind-boggling.

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  aleknovy 1:34 pm on November 17, 2010 | # | Reply

  “Have you considered the possibility that one of the main reasons why you are not pursued is due to your bald-faced, but apparently also not transparent to you, lack of self-transparency, your inability to empathize with others?”

  A great attempt at shaming, but I’m sure phillip lives on planet earth, and is smarter than to fall for it. The reason he isn’t pursued is because he is an average heterosexual male. And heterosexual males do not get pursued unless they stand out in some way (superior looks, fame or status).

  Again, why tiptoe around the big elephant in the room? Our society has this nasty restriction it puts on women. It tells women to never pursue or initiate anything with men (unless he fills society’s criteria of fame or status).

  Instead of tackling that sexist role, you’re shaming Phillip for daring to be average. Its like “phillip how dare you not be perfect! If you were perfect, women would pursue you!”.

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  aleknovy 1:51 pm on November 17, 2010 | # | Reply

  I apologize for making 3 comments in a row, but its on 3 different points…

  Basically… I have compassion for both the women abused by greedy womanizers and for guys like phillip. The attempt to shame phillip for not sympathizing with those women however strikes me as odd and selfish.

  Its basic human psychology that when you’re a victim you mostly focus on your own issues, and don’t have much compassion for other victims. Those women are too busy feeling sorry for their own state (getting used by womanizer) to care about phillip. And he does the same to them.

  “”"It seems to me that in the closing paragraph, the authors have such a notion in mind when they note that women “would be less likely to tolerate “greedy” or abusive relationships if they were treated better in hookups.””"

  So the entire focus is on reforming jerks, womanizers and playas… and trying to shame them into being non-sociopaths… But I ask this. Why is there no focus on empowering women?

  Why no direct empowerment of women? Why is this whole focus on empowerment through shaming? We’ll empower women by shaming womanizers into being less abusive?

  That might be a valid strategy, but why is it the only strategy? Why is there absolutely no direct energy invested into encouraging women to initiate on their own? Why is there no effort in giving women choice? That logic of “first we’ll make jerks less jerk-like, and then women will get courage to have choice” I mean, its just a very indirect, inefficient way to go about it.

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  aleknovy 9:05 pm on November 29, 2010 | # | Reply

  “Basically… I have compassion for both the women abused by greedy womanizers and for guys like phillip. The attempt to shame phillip for not sympathizing with those women however strikes me as odd and selfish.”

  To clarify this one:

  - The women who are getting abused and hooking up with greedy womanizers aren’t exactly sitting around and feeling sorry about socially ackward guys who get socially rejected left and right. Its not like they’re sitting around and empathizing with phillip. In fact, its usually those same women who most often end up in abusive hookups that are the first to mock, make fun of and reject guys like phillip for being shy or awkward.

  - At the same time, you tried to shame philip for daring to not have compassion for those women Double-standard much? What’s this frame of “make everything perfect for every woman, before we let any man have a single improvement”. So every man should make every single woman’s life on planet earth perfect, before a single man experiences a single improvement in his gender role.

  The real reason you will never achieve your goals is precisely because you’re selfishly trying to solve the gender-role problem one-sided. Its a feedback loop. As long as there are gender roles that hurt men, you will not be able to remove gender roles that hurt women. They’re tied to one another. As long as society mocks and shames philip (which you hypocritically just did, despite being an expert on gender, you acted as a societal agent of gender-role enforcing through shaming a guy into a male role). As long as society mocks philip, it will not care about women hooking up with sociopaths. You can either solve both, or none.