I first brought up the idea here but a couple of people have linked to Statistics of the No Sex Class Paradigm lately (thanks Sinclair and Jess) and I’m using that as the opportunity to recap why I think the Beauty and Worthiness traps are so pernicious.
One of the pillars of my reinterpretation of the dominant paradigm (that men perceive women as the no-sex class rather than the sex class of classic feminist theory) is that women’s consent, while very necessary, is insufficient because it permits women to decline an invitation but does nothing about restrictions on issuing your own invitations. Anyway, I think one consequence of not being allowed to issue one’s own invitations is an obligation to try to attract wanted invitations, with, in turn, the complication of attracting all the unwanted invitations as well. Worse, the situation means invitation-silenced women are forced to compete with each other for attractiveness which, in turn further complicates the problem of unwanted invitations.
Without brooding overmuch, meanwhile over on the other side men are left trying to guess who, if anyone, might be interested enough in them to agree to an invitation for a date. With all manner of other complications, all of which boil out to an ugly stew that looks to men like women are gatekeepers because they can say no, to women that men have entitlements because they eyeball, assess, and ask a lot (but actually ask if and only if they’re interested) and so on and so on.
And all because men, evidently, freak out if women invite them out and/or because women stress out over inviting men, and instead of having a good laugh, telling each other “welcome to my world,” and tossing out the conventions we instead make up stories about amygdalas and testosterone and cavemen’s clubs and Prince Charming trying a stupid shoe on all the women because Cinderella is not permitted to speak. Oh yeah, all that and either God or evolution wouldn’t have it any other way. #@)*%
I happen to think the system was put in place to benefit men, but regardless of who’s supposed to benefit I really don’t see the benefit outweighing the considerable costs either to women or men. If it ever really did. I’m not sure, exactly, how to get our genders out of the respective trees we’ve constructed ourselves up in, but it would be great if we could get them a little more, um, grounded.
Submitted by 1990 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-03-05 23:11.
It's really not THAT hard to step outside the paradigm and make the first move.
I dunno, maybe my perception is warped by traveling mostly in geek circles.
But it's really just... not hard. I've done it dozens of times.
Not for a while now though. Being all monogamous. Still not so sure about the monogamous thing, but it does make some stuff simpler.
[That's really good to know. And yeah, some of the younger women in class sound like they're totally fine with asking men out. But a lot of people still aren't, even if it's not as bad as the old days when girls I knew had a lot of anxiety about waiting for someone to call. --fl]
Submitted by 1990 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-03-06 03:19.
Morning FL!
Before meeting my current partner (who, incidentally was the first man to ask me out) I asked many many men out on dates/for coffee/for their phone number...every one answered no. While I could take this to mean that I'm truly repulsive to every man in existence, instead I prefer to remember the fear that flashed across their faces. I was loud, flirtatious and direct, and it seemed that I terrified them. My quieter, shyer, 'ooh help me I can't understand how my new phone works' friend had men milling around her. She played the maiden in distress who laughed at their jokes (I made my own), glanced at them shyly (I made direct eye contact) and acted pathetic (I had too much self respect for that) and had a new man every week. The answer I got, every time, was "err..I..I'd rather we stayed friends..er..sorry" accompanied by a swift exit.
Maybe I was ahead of my time, maybe I wasn't their cup of tea, maybe I scared them, maybe a combination of all these things but all I know is being me didn't work until I met my current partner on the net. I dream of a future where it doesn't matter who asks who out, who makes the first move and it's all equal and beautiful but I fear I'm being idealistic.
[Nothing wrong with a little idealism, Virago. I think the only person worse off would be the men who are politely waiting for invitations! Because yeah, we don't have a lot of social scripts (behavioral equvalents of stereotypes according to interpersonal psychologists) for women asking men out, let alone men being asked out by women. I might add that your experience of asking dozens of prospective partners out before getting a yes is actually exactly what most men go through. So yeah, even when men and women are both doing the asking in equal measure we'll all still have to deal with rejection. The benefit, though, of pioneering the way you and other women are doing is that every guy you asked out now has at least a glimmer of insight into what the other person's feeling when he asks them out. And after asking other men you're probably going to have a little more sympathy when you decline an invitation. So anyway, I'm not proposing that women asking men would instantly solve anything, and men simply waiting to be asked, unfortunately, probably wouldn't do much to change the status quo at all. But I do think it would have a positive big, long-term impact by helping to normalize both hetero gender roles. --fl]
Submitted by 1990 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-03-06 10:11.
I just remembered... when I was in my early teens, we were always told that it was fine, and not just fine but *excellent*, for a girl to make the first move. Because, we were told, boys are just as shy about doing it as girls. They would be relieved if we did it for them! Because taking the initiative is not a right, it's a burden.
But then, I think the cultural attitudes towards shyness are completely different here. I wonder if an American teenage boy would say aloud "yes I'd love girls to ask me because I'm too shy to ask them"... and how that would be received.
(And did that really work? I can't tell you... I wasn't the one they wanted to ask out, or to ask them out. Either that or maybe I was lied to.)
[I think the issue is that, as Eurosabra says a little bit further down, on average only about one out of 50 people we imagine we might be enough interested in and available for to interested and available enough to say yes when we ask them out. That doesn't make us losers at all, by the way -- because even assuming we were so perfect people were just falling around us like autumn leaves we'd *still* have scheduling, availability, and prior-committments, or political party, or distance, or diet, or a million (ok, 49) other things falling between us. So the trick, I think, for women who dread trying it, and men who... resent having to, is to get over taking it *personally* when someone... ok 49 someones... says no to us. And I happen to think it would be *easier* to get over that notion if *everyone* had experience being on both sides of the invitations. (For the record nothing opened my eyes to what it's like to be asked, and to have to decide how to answer, like being chatted up by numerous women who heard my finance had come out and entered a relationship with another woman. And it *certainly* gave me a lot more perspective afterwards others when I started asking women out again. Thanks, Larus. --fl]
Submitted by 1990 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-03-06 12:38.
One of the points made by The Seduction Community is that "approach anxiety" is a reflection of the desire to do everything perfectly the first time, that is, a fantasy of what we THINK innately-attractive people experience when they pair up. Fact is, there is something cynically mind-blowing about the way men notice signals directed by women at other men, but draw a blank when the signals are directed at them. On the other hand, a 2% "success" rate is considered normal, meaning that the average recruit is told to expect 49 "No's" for every "Yes." And this from people who are considered expert life-coaches in the field.
I don't think the lesson to be drawn is that "men don't want to be asked", I think it's that they want to be asked, or drawn into rapport, in a way that meets their expectations and personal rhythms. "Hey, wanna go out?" out of nowhere is a man's fantasy of easy success, NOT necessarily the best way of gaining rapport. Or, you still gotta be attractive for easy success.
I think there is a bit of a double-bind in the fact that masculinity is WHOLLY performative, at least among heterosexuals, and men who can't initiate or who display low-status "tells" like nervousness about the outcome of their overtures have noticed something significant in the discovery and popularization of the SC, which is, after all, about putting your best self forward. The fact is that snap judgements made with incomplete information are likely to be harsh, or to be taken as such.
[I hope I don't surprise you when I say I agree that "masculinity is wholly performative." I just happen to think there's a huge difference between "man" and "masculine" that, while possibly useful, also prescriptively limits our potential for complete self expression. As I mentioned to Larus, the 49-1 ratio actually makes perfect sense regardless of the gender that's asking. Thanks, ES. --fl]
Submitted by 1990 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-03-06 22:29.
It's really not THAT hard to step outside the paradigm and make the first move.
It's extremely hard if you're introverted. Probably still extremely hard to make the first move if you're a sufficiently introverted guy, but in that case you're sort of stuck. So, I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I've made an overt first physical move, outright asked for a date, or stuff like that.
On the other hand, I could do stuff like: a) approaching and talking with a guy at a dance, but not actually asking him to dance myself (which often resulted in his requesting a dance in short order), b) getting up on the dance floor alone and dancing, without waiting to be asked (and someone else might or might not join me), c) anything along the lines of going over to someone just to talk, phoning just to talk, or whatever. (One thing that made the dancing stuff easier is that I wasn't that discriminating about whom I dance with, so if the person I'd prefer wasn't interested, I'd be OK moving on to someone else. I couldn't be nearly so sanguine about moving on if the person I wanted to kiss wasn't interested; often there wasn't a second person that I wanted to kiss, and if there were as many as two at a time, there surely wouldn't be as many as three.)
[I agree that there are subcultures where women making the first move isn't as rare... which, incidentally, strongly supports the contention that gender isn't innate. Other areas it's not so easy. Yet. Thanks, Lynn. --fl]
Submitted by 1990 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-03-09 09:23.
It's extremely hard if you're introverted. Probably still extremely hard to make the first move if you're a sufficiently introverted guy, but in that case you're sort of stuck.
Overcoming shyness and overcoming a gender paradigm are two very different things and I wasn't making any claims about the former. Overcoming shyness is a whole 'nother big topic that I think is outside the scope of this post so I'm not going to try to broach it other than to agree that, yes, overcoming two obstacles at once is indeed harder than overcoming only one in most cases but I don't think it actually contradicts what I said.