Years ago a friend of mine went to the local, rural-county courthouse to file some sort of licensing request. It was an uncommon request — something like wanting a temporary trailer license so he could tow an antique truck behind his car or something. Anyway, when he got to the county clerk’s office he was told “well, it’s legal if you do it this way, but it would be more legal if you did it another way.” Which left my friend to ponder how one thing could be more legal than another thing that’s also legal.

That’s what came up for me while reading a post by Irin of Jezebel points to a false dilemma in gender perceptions. Particularly male perceptions. (Emphasis mine.)

A 22-country survey found that while both men and women value gender equality, they differ widely on whether it’s been achieved. In the U.S., many more men believed sufficient progress had occurred, whereas women thought more action was required. [NYT]

She said it here.

WTF is “sufficient progress” when it comes to equality? You’re either equal or you’re not.

I happen to believe, correctly, that there’s been incredible progress, sure. But sufficient? WTF does that even mean? Just as something’s either legal or it’s not, you’re either equal or your not. And I think “sufficiently” in this case means “closer to my comfort level” rather than “closer to equal.”

Which is a shame. The social transformation that comes with equal would be pretty profound.

A little bit ago I posted about Scott Adam’s contention that we’ll be better off overall when technology advances to the point that there’s no cash and no privacy, and how our current situation where we’re 95% cashless and about 50% no-privacy is actually particularly bad. Well, I think men’s reservations about 100% equality derive from a similar fallacy to the one that no cash or no privacy would be worse than where we are now.

The reason, I think, is that when men say there’s “sufficient” equality they tend to mean “if there was any more equality I could never ‘get’ sex from women.” Because in a transactional model of heterosexuality men believe they have to get sex they have some sort of leverage, in the form of flowers, sincerity, offers of security, or more ominously, alcohol, drugs, or money, or even more ominously, blackmail, threats, or violence. And in each case the assumption being that women can always subordinate their libidos for material, social, or interpersonal gain.

In the transactional model of heterosexuality, sex is currency, a resource, of more interest and importance to men than to women and therefore subject to arbitrage. Inside that model women mustn’t just be junior parters in the equality patrol, they also literally embody the medium of exchange!

In that model full equality cuts off both opportunities for leverage but also eliminates the currency altogether.

Which is sort of similar to what Adams says would be a consequence of eliminating cash

In particular Adams posits that without cash and without privacy

Violent crime will greatly diminish too, because so much of society’s violence happens in the context of criminal enterprises that will no longer be profitable or practical.

He said that here.

The other big component of violence, of course, is sexual violence. And virtually all sexual violence is about a) equality and/or power imbalances in relationships or b) exploitive reduction of human beings to their sexual exchange value*. Which, again, goes part and parcel with the transactional model of heterosexuality**.

It’s a dumb model.

It’s not that in a truly equal society heterosexuals will have that much more sex, any more than we’re likely to have less. Instead, when it really isn’t a currency we’ll value it less. That we’ll also almost certainly enjoy it more, however much that turns out to be, will be just one of myriad beneficial side effects of actual rather than “sufficient” equality.

* Note: while I agree with Susan Brownmiller and Co. that rape and other forms of sexual assaults are abuses of power and not sex itself, I also believe that sex is the chosen vehicle for power abuse because of the object-value of women’s sexuality.

** The transactional model of heterosexuality obviously often extends into non-heterosexual interactions as well.