{"id":3462,"date":"2007-06-14T12:42:34","date_gmt":"2007-06-14T20:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/06\/14\/dr-who-and-feminisms-failure-to-get-shy-men-laid\/"},"modified":"2007-06-14T12:42:34","modified_gmt":"2007-06-14T20:02:22","slug":"dr-who-and-feminisms-failure-to-get-shy-men-laid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3462","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Who and Feminism's Failure To Get Shy Men Laid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since I don’t have time to write a post today — or, rather, I don’t have time to write a post NOW, because I’ve just spent a bunch of time leaving comments on a thread at “Feminist Critics”<\/a> — I thought I’d just reproduce a comment I left over there. (By the way, Renegade Evolution is now posting at “Feminist Critics,” which improves the blog substantially, in my opinion.)<\/p>\n

The context is a discussion of a scene in the most recent episode of Dr. Who, “Blink<\/a>,” so consider this a spoiler<\/strong> alert.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In “Blink,” the protagonist, Sally, has some creepy experiences (including being assaulted by aliens), which she decides to report to the cops. The cops, surprisingly, take her seriously — it turns out there’s been a string of disappearances at the same location. The cop in charge of the case, who is quite dishy, takes Sally to a lonely police garage where the evidence in the case (a lot of abandoned cars, mostly) is being held.<\/p>\n

Billy: Drink?<\/p>\n

Sally: No.<\/p>\n

Billy: Never?<\/p>\n

Sally: \u2026Maybe.<\/p>\n

Billy: Phone number?<\/p>\n

Sally: Moving kind of fast, D.I. Shipton?<\/p>\n

Billy: Billy, I\u2019m off duty.<\/p>\n

Sally: Aren\u2019t you just? (Takes out pad, writes number.)<\/p>\n

Billy: Is that your phone number?<\/p>\n

Sally: Just my phone number. Not a promise, not a guarantee. Not an IOU. Just a phone number.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is a depiction of conventionally-gendered sexuality that many feminists decry; women as coquettish pursued, men as aggressive pursuer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also fictional<\/em>. That\u2019s important, because in fiction (and as this scene was written and played) we can be certain that Billy\u2019s advances were welcome, that Sally didn\u2019t feel intimidated by her surroundings or the lack of other people around, and so on.<\/p>\n

In real life, Billy would in my view be taking an awful chance of being an asshole by acting that way. Maybe Sally is really into him, even in those circumstances, in which case it\u2019s no harm, no foul. But maybe she\u2019s not, in which case by hitting on her in a situation like this (where she can reasonably expect not to be hit on, where she can’t just blow him off because she has to deal with him in a professional capacity, and where she\u2019s in a situation a reasonable woman could find intimidating) he is sexually harassing her.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, because this discussion was on Feminist Critics, the discussion was mostly about how feminists have failed to improve life for painfully shy men by sufficiently encouraging women to make the first move (romantically and sexually). This led to the following post, in which I’m responding to (and quoting) Tom Nolan. (The comment of Tom’s I’m responding to can be read in full here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Maybe the feminist women you know are ready to make the first move (by a verbal expression of sexual interest) ((The first time through, I missed Tom’s phrase “by a verbal expression of sexual interest.” In real life, I think think the legitimate ways of expressing romantic interest are more varied than what Tom’s phrase suggests to me.)) when they meet a man they find attractive, but the vast majority of women, whether or not they identify as feminists, do not do so.<\/em><\/p>\n

This simply isn\u2019t true of feminist women of my generation and younger, Tom. Admittedly, this is an anecdotal judgment \u2014 but it\u2019s one based on actually knowing and being friends with countless feminist women and men. I\u2019m sure your judgment is anecdotal as well, and<\/strike> but I frankly doubt your social life involves as many feminists as mine does. (Apart from online, my friends are exclusively feminists and\/or queer and\/or transgendered.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big world out there. In the US alone, there are 110 million women over the age of 20. If only one percent of women are willing to make the first move \u2014 and I suspect the reality is much higher than that \u2014 that\u2019s still hundreds of thousands. But of course, that 1 percent (5%? 20%?) isn\u2019t distributed randomly throughout the population; they, and the men and women they care to be romantically involved with, self-select into more egalitarian social circles. If the social and sexual norms of your friend group aren\u2019t working for you, find a new friend group.<\/p>\n

Which leaves the man with all the risk. Not just the risk of being rejected, which anybody, male or female, has to accept when they make the first move. But also the risk of being branded an asshole by right-thinking feminists.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, Tom, women take no risks in the conventional dating script. Women are never called names or branded stuck-up or cock-teases or bitch because they say \u201cno\u201d when men ask them. Women in the conventional dating script don\u2019t take the risk of never being asked at all (an outcome that many men here apparently find pretty onerous when it happens to them). Women in the conventional dating script are never put in horrible situations by their dates, and are never date-raped. And if they do have sex voluntarily, there\u2019s never a risk of pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Seriously, how blinkered and male-centric could your view possibly be? I agree with you that the conventional dating script carries risks for men, but to say risk belongs exclusively to men is lunacy.<\/p>\n

\u2026the men who care about the way feminists perceive their sexual behaviour will shy away from taking the initiative (\u201dHey, I don\u2019t want to look like an asshole!\u201d)\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking about a cop using his job to manipulate a crime victim into a lonely garage so he can hit on her. I think that\u2019s inappropriate, but that doesn\u2019t mean that I think it\u2019s always inappropriate for men to take the initiative in every<\/i> situation. That you conflate these two entirely separate things (\u201dcop hitting on crime victim in lonely garage\u201d and \u201call instances of men taking the initiative\u201d), as if because I think the former is assholish I must also mean the latter is assholish, is frankly ridiculous. Real life has nuances your argument fails to acknowledge.<\/p>\n

In other words: male feminists have, all else being equal, poorer sexual and romantic chances than male non-feminists.<\/em><\/p>\n

This opinion seems based on the experiences of men who are at least as anti-feminist as they are feminist.<\/p>\n

The feminist men I know have had romantic and sexual lives as full as those of other men \u2014 although of course, what that means varies a lot. Some of the feminist men I knew in college frankly slept around \u2014 and \u201cfell in love around\u201d \u2014 a ton, as did their partners. (That sort of behavior faded in the post-college years; nowadays almost everyone is married, it seems.) Others did not, either because they didn\u2019t want to or because they lacked the opportunity.<\/p>\n

The big distinctions I see is not between feminist\/non-feminist, but between shy\/outgoing and (less importantly) between conventionally unattractive\/attractive. Trust me, outgoing, attractive feminist men (and women) don\u2019t spend their lives bereft of romantic partners. On the other hand, shy and unattractive men (and women) are going to have a hard time finding both romance and fuckbuddies, regardless of if they\u2019re feminists. Other than the \u201cfeminism is to blame for everything\u201d attitude that permeates discussion on this blog, I don\u2019t see any reason to say that the problems shy men experience is due to them being too feminist.<\/p>\n

Frankly, given my own extreme shyness and fear of rejection, I doubt I would have had as many romances as I\u2019ve had if I wasn\u2019t a feminist. That doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m a feminist because it gets me laid, as some people have implied over the years. But it does mean that extremely shy men are probably better off if their social groups have more egalitarian romantic norms than conventional society\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But which feminists, in your experience, put as much emphasis on encouraging women to be sexually proactive as they do on discouraging men from being sexually proactive?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, because getting shy men laid should be just as high a priority for feminists as stopping sexual harassment and rape. How silly of feminists to think that the latter requires more emphasis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thoughts? Comments?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I don’t have time to write a post today — or, rather, I don’t have time to write a post NOW, because I’ve just spent a bunch of time leaving comments on a thread at “Feminist Critics” — I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}