Double Standards Dept.

Have a gander at this column by Paris Lees, which I found via our beloved Instapundit:

I'm sick of being told that being sexual is bad. That being sexualized is bad, gauche and unpalatable. "When was the last time you heard a man describe a woman with an adjective that wasn't dripping in sexual innuendos and defaming premises?" Author Lauren Martin asked in her op-ed for Daily Elite earlier this year, which has now had over 694,000 shares on social media, including the other day on my Facebook feed. "When was the last time you heard a man describe a woman as beautiful?"

Erm, I don't know. Yesterday?

I know plenty of guys who lovingly refer to their lovers as beautiful. And smart. And sexy. And every other complex thing that made them fall in love with them. Of course, some men do describe women in rude, reductive ways. But that doesn't mean that every time a man describes a woman as sexy that it's a bad thing, or, indeed, that men never appreciate women for their beauty. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

Yet another attempt, albeit a subtle one, to establish women’s feelings as the standard for whether men are misbehaving. Do please read the rest; as scattershot and replete with falsehoods as it is, it’s representative of a considerable community of sentiment, both here and across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, I’ll be revving up my spleen.

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The past sixty years have altered relations between the sexes in too many ways to list here, but the matter of sexual allure is, if not foremost among them, damned near the top of the stack. Like it or not, our media, both print and electronic, unabashedly promote sexualized images of both sexes. Such images intensify and popularize specific conceptions of what makes one “desirable” to a member of the opposite sex. Whole industries have risen to meet the demands for personal enhancement that those images have evoked. There’s one hell of a lot of money involved, as any man who’s ever accompanied his Significant Other into Nordstrom’s, Sephora, or Victoria’s Secret will readily attest.

(A brief, relevant tangent: According to an online retailer, boobularity correlates strongly with spendularity. Whether this was a carefully controlled study that takes into account such things as bust enhancement surgery, foam and gel bra inserts, and push-up bras, or the result of a survey whose respondents were trusted to report their own tittiliciousness and spending patterns honestly, is unclear from the article. As always, your mileage may vary.)

In all probability, the alterations will persist indefinitely. I have no serious problems with that. “Male and female created He them” (Genesis 5:2), and I’m sure He had His reasons. Sex isn’t something we can force into the shadows, nor would a sane person want to do so. It’s a reason for men and women to glory in themselves and one another, especially in this era, when there’s such a wide range of products and treatments available for enhancing one’s physical appeal. Such problems as are objectively identifiable arise from three sources:

1. Abusive sexual behavior (e.g., rape, molestation, sexual irresponsibility, sexual fraud);
2. Treatment of another person as solely a body to be exploited, nothing more;
3. Demands for special privileges on the basis of gender.

Likely we can all agree on the first category. Only the crudest rakes and sluts will disagree about category #2. Category #3 is where the action is today...and this commentator, at least, isn’t moaning “don’t stop.”

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Do you enjoy sex? I do. (At least, I think I did; the memories have grown a bit indistinct.) I also enjoy the sight of a woman who’s gone to the trouble and expense to make herself alluring. It’s a perker-upper, especially if the woman in question is honest with herself and others about her willingness to do so.

But my Rage-O-Meter pins and emits sparks when a woman who has obviously taken such trouble then demands that men behave as if they haven’t noticed. Form-fitting and skin-baring clothing, alluring perfumes, provocative makeup, and a saucy saunter are shouts of Notice Me! Notice My Body! Under such conditions, the only imaginable insult would consist of refusing to notice...yet a fair number of women react in the opposite fashion.

What could this be but a subtle display of sexual sadism? Calling it “feminism” is merely an attempt to evade the issue. Feminism is properly about equality of the sexes before the law, for the sexes are not equal in any other sense. Especially, they are unequal in their ability to stir one another’s libidos.

Most of the women who label themselves “feminists” today are uninterested in equality of the sexes before the law, the only morally acceptable goal of a women’s movement. They want special privileges and protections from the law – protections that reach all the way to a guarantee that they will never, ever be offended, no matter what reactions they provoke or how much offense they give. That they should be offended by the knowledge that the average woman is of mediocre appearance and allure – “average” and “mediocre” are synonyms, after all – is unsurprising, as the great majority of them are no better than average and resent the necessity to resort to artifice to make themselves attractive enough to “score.”

Remember always that “the squeal goes with the pig:” You cannot accept sexualized dress, conduct, or banter about the opposite sex without also accepting that each sex will view the other, at least some of the time, through a sexual lens. I find that acceptable; most self-styled “feminists,” who are in truth merely mouthpieces that demand special, highly unequal privileges for women, do not.

In short: Do you want to be an openly, uninhibitedly sexual creature? To emphasize your sexual attractions to the world with your clothing, makeup, and conduct? To indulge freely in the pleasures of the flesh? Fine; be and do as you like. But be prepared to accept the consequences. In particular, don’t thereafter take offense at being viewed, and judged by others, on that basis. Your pretense of high dudgeon will receive no shrift whatsoever from any self-respecting man...or woman.