SEX AND THE false
SIGNAL
by
ROBERT J. LEWIS
___________________________________
It’s
high noon.
I’m
out for a walk albeit preoccupied with a work related matter,
and walking faster than I ought. But it feels good to get out
in the fresh air. It’s summer in the city and everything
looks prettier.
My
road-runner pace whisks me up to a pair of long, shapely legs
and undulating backside. I slow down to admire the view: the tight
shorts cutting into my favourite parts, the bared midriff, elegant
shoulders. Whether intentional or not, a signal has been sent
and I’ve picked up on it. Like the peacock flashing its
dazzle of feathers during the mating season, this woman is advertising
her desirability and availability, or so it seems. What I can’t
see is the wedding ring on her finger, and that she is a mother
of two small children.
So why
is she flaunting everything except the one thing we should want
to know which is not worn on her walk but her fourth finger? Since
she is de facto unavailable, why is she purposely sending
out a false signal? And when we discover the ruse, how upset should
we be? Enough to start up the male equivalent of #MeToo? Once
again hopes (and favourite body part) raised and dashed.
In the
animal world, once a mate has been procured all the flashing and
rump swelling that announce the mating season ends. With the hierarchy
of rights and privileges over feeding and females established,
and the next generation already on its way, life returns to normal
until the next mating season. In the animal world a mated and
mothering female ‘does not’ send out signals indicating
she is neither: that contradiction, that mispresentation is strictly
a human prerogative (aberration) – that nonetheless enjoys
broad acceptance in the West. 
Surely
the legions of the tricked and sold again male contingent should
want to know how other cultures and religions deal with that distinctly
female propensity to send out false sexual signals. And in respect
to unintended consequences, both bewitching signaler and the designated-aroused
will want to better understand the delicate balance between custom
and the law.
Towards
the end of the Victorian age, flirting was a behaviour that was
restricted to unmarried females and reserved for specific occasions.
Since then it has become more inclusive and overtly sexual, and
without any restrictions regarding occasion and time of day. And
while flirting, as a prelude to courtship, is expected of unattached
females, in the modern era mated females are not singled out or
stigmatized for the exact same behaviour even though they are
not available. The reasons speak directly to the gradual empowerment
of women during the past half millennium.
Unofficially
women’s liberation began in the 15th century with the invention
of moveable type and the launching of the world’s first
information age. Since then, a slow century at a time, women have
been on the march, shattering one glass ceiling after another,
eventually earning the right to own property and money, to vote,
and more recently to participate as equals in every aspect of
public life.
During
the past fifty years women have fought protracted battles for
control over their bodies and sexuality, and have discovered –
like men -- that exercising power is a pleasure that is difficult
to refuse once enjoyed. Beginning with the popularization and
proliferation of visual media -- television in the 1950s, the
Internet in the 1990s -- female sexuality has never been more
on display in the public arena. Riding the coattails of this new
wave of permissiveness (exhibitionism), unavailable mated women
discovered they too could join the parade. That they understood
they were sending out false signals was not a deterrent next to
the satisfaction and enjoyment to be had from being able to excite
men, now reduced to disposable objects in the servicing of female
vanity and self-esteem. Initially a guilty pleasure, high octane
flirting has evolved into a 4-season rite of spring that most
men – but not all – go along with. We note that similar
behaviour in a Muslim country might result in ostracism, confinement
and even a death sentence.
In Saudi
Arabia there are only .3 rapes per 100,000: in the US. 29.6. Allowing
that rape, worldwide, is a hugely under-reported crime, might
there be a relationship between the strict Islamic dress code
which desexualizes women and the relative infrequency of rape?
And if affirmative, do we conclude that Western women are willing
to live with the menace of sexual harassment and worse because
their love of exiting men overrides their concerns over the risks,
just as we as a culture are willing to live with thousands of
alcohol related deaths and injuries because we love our drink?
In the
West, a walk along any busy downtown thoroughfare puts the distracted
eye in contact with hundreds of mated women who have expressly
-- and often with the consent of their conquest-proud husbands
and boyfriends – made themselves sexually desirable despite
their manifest unavailability. It is not without irony that when
these sexy women return home at the end of the day it is the husbands’
distinct privilege to have to witness their calculated desexualization:
they kick off the heels, wash off the makeup, slip out of figure-complimenting
designer clothes into baggy sweatpants and complain about their
day. So much for priorities in the age of consent.
How should
men be expected to react to the dizzying, disorienting barrage
of sexual signals in whose midst they are caught like prey in
a spider’s web? In respect to the informal codes of flirting
and the laws of the land, the majority of men will play the game
according to the 
rules
established by women because they know in advance, through practice
and inculcation, that many of the women are not available. However,
a minority of males, due to either confusion, arousal, naiveté
or cultural dysphoria, will interpret the signal as an invitation
to initiate personal contact, which will be refused if the woman
is already in a relationship. As far as the attached woman is
concerned and with the hard-earned blessings of the feminist movement,
it is her prerogative to reassure herself that she can still excite
interest in the opposite sex, and men are expected to be informed
on where the new line has been drawn and not to cross it without
explicit consent. Or so it goes in theory.
But we
know from the 6 o’clock news that rules only apply to people
who heed them, especially informal ones. And while the injunction
#NoMeansNo has never been more forceful, there is overwhelming
statistical evidence that woman who send out false sexual signals
are more likely to be sexually harassed than women who do not.
And for those odd-men-out who are unable to disentangle their
physical need from the signal that is directly implicated in its
excitement, rape is the tragic end game for both parties: the
injured woman will never again be the same, and those men who
are found out and found guilty will suffer the full consequences
of the law. But despite the numbers and heartbreaking stories
of violated women who are damaged for life, women, including attached
women, continue to send out explicit sexual signals in the public
domain, which by default places the onus on men to exercise restraint.
And men are listening. With the launching of the #MeToo movement,
men have indeed begun to radically modify their behaviour in the
workplace. 
That
said, is it fair to ask – albeit we know it’s not
correct – if men are being asked to disproportionately assume
the burden of restraint?
In the
spirit of leveling the playing field, and given that men are more
easily aroused than women (#MeTooAgain), should men and sympathetic
women make the case that sending out false sexual signals in the
public domain not only violates fair practice codes, it is no
longer necessary now that there are safer venues where women can
cater to their vanity. Thanks to digital streaming, women can
now lay bare the full panoply of their sexuality without compromising
their unavailable status, and men will no longer have to deal
with consent ambiguities. In the digital universe -- a one-size-fits-all
heaven that dwarfs Islam’s highly touted Jannah (72-virgin
paradise) -- everyone meets in the winner’s circle which
in theory should significantly reduce the need for unavailable
women to advertise their sexual desirability in the public arena.
In flirting’s
defense, anthropology makes the case that the convention is an
adjunct, an elaboration of the grooming instinct, which is universal
in the animal world. For reasons of hygiene and mating, there
isn’t an animal species in the world that doesn’t
groom. Even birds of a feather can be seen pruning themselves
and their significant other for hours on end on telephone wires
and arboreal perches. The goal of grooming is to stay clean and
healthy and look good.
But where
grooming ends and flirting/teasing begins is a nebulous gray zone
that is becoming increasingly fraught with danger as the West
now plays host to immigrants coming from very different backgrounds
as it concerns sexual comportment in the public and private spheres.
In the
West, being sexually desirable 24/7 is inculcated in young women
from their earliest years via provocative music videos and glamorous
female role models in television, cinema and fashion. Women are
expected to be sexually primed at all times, just as confounded
men are expected to heed the consent injunction regardless of
the signals that have been issued.
We note
there is no such confusion in the Muslim world. Once girls reach
puberty, they are bundled up in mobile tents (burqas) with slits
for the eyes and horizontal strip-netting for breathing. And to
further discourage women from arousing men, after they are disappeared
into burqas for life (the verb “to burk” means to
suffocate) they must submit to a sunna, a religious ceremony
that culminates in the excision of the clitoris.
So we
shouldn’t be surprised that recently arrived immigrant Muslims,
who regard the West as depraved and heathen and its women as harlots,
are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of rapes.
Women
and only women are responsible for the manner in which they present
themselves in the public domain, just as men are not yet as programmable
as machines. Men arouse and frustrate easily, and there’s
an argument to be made that attached women have been as short
sighted as the skirts they wear in respect to their unwillingness
to empathize with men whom they have willfully excited. And with
people from unlike cultures sharing the same public spaces as
never before, more and more men are likely to be confused by the
false signals some women are sending out, and a certain percentage
of these women will live to regret the solipsistic world they
have ensconced themselves in. That immigration policy has catastrophically
failed to acculturate new immigrants to the customs and ethos
of their new country offers no consolation to victims of harassment
and rape.
As women
continue right the wrongs of the past and wrest a fairer share
of power unto themselves, and as the balance of power shifts in
their favour in their relationships with men, they would do well
to not only enshrine their gains but to include themselves in
the public debates and informal conversations that do daily battle
with the universal predisposition to abuse power.
COMMENTS
user-submission@feedback.com
I don't buy the writer's argument. Why are women responsible
for men who can't control themselves? A man who can't control
himself is an animal. Animals that attack human beings belong
in cages. At beach, women who are exposed to handsome, near
naked men do not accost them, attack, or anything them. Why
do men behave better at the beach, where women are sometimes
topless, than in city center? Double standard no longer acceptable.
user-submission@feedback.com
I read the article from beginning to end and it all comes
down to another male telling women how to dress. Enough is
enough.
janice fiamengo
You're brave to publish this frank argument, wittily and cogently
presented. Indeed, men are expected to bear the entirety of
the new ethos of sexual self-restraint, while women can dress
and behave in any manner they please. If one suggests to women
that they should take some responsibility for professional
dress and professional behavior in the workplace, we are told
we are 'victim blaming' and 'slut shaming.' Apparently, a
woman is to be applauded for acting like a slut, but any male
colleague who mistakenly thinks she is one and responds appropriately
(even mildly, with a request for a date or a sexy compliment)
is to be harshly punished.
The only point I would question is your comparison between
rates of rape in Saudi Arabia and America. I'm not an expert
here, but I suspect that rape is far less reported in Saudi
Arabia (where a woman can be punished for adultery if she
doesn't have witnessesto the rape) than in the United States,
where much of what we would once have considered simply bad
sex (i.e. non-consensual) is now reported as rape. False accusations
may also be quite high in the United States since there are
almost no consequences to thewoman for making a false report.
Moreover, feminists succeeded in changing the category from
'rape' to 'sexual assault' (which can include a lot that isn't
rape, such as grabbing a breast, or forced kissing).
The bottom line, as you make clear, is that if women are
as adamant as they claim about wanting to reduce sexual harassment,
they should think seriously about female modesty in dress
and behavior.
