Twisty of I Blame The Patriarchy, in a post about opposition to a new English law against sex with incapacitately drunk people (read “women”) has a good point about the same old double standards.

Self-policing women, who know after a lifetime as sex objects that male arousal is always a woman’s responsibility, admonish “Women must start showing more respect for themselves by not becoming so drunk and disgusting that they are putting themselves at serious risk.” And my personal favorite, Mrs C of Surrey: “When, oh WHEN will women be MADE to start taking responsibility for their own actions?” Because right now they’re just runnin’ wild o’er the countryside, rapin’ n’ pillagin’ n’ slappin’ the missus around.

Get a little more background on opposition to the new law from Twisty here

See, there’s that stupid double-standard again: Women are expected to be self-policing because… men aren’t expected to be even remotely responsible.

Which is sort of a joke in historical terms. Throughout most of (recorded) history, and in much of the world today, it was men who were supposed to be the bastions of morality and the sexual gate-keepers in the face of amoral and perpetually horny women.

Don’t go blowing milk out your nose at that. Never assume your local cultural assumptions are the universal truths. And before you ask, yes, the older, more common assumption was obviously no less misogynistic than the current assumption that women, especially vulnerable and/or incapacitated and/or attractive women, are fair game.

And yes, assumption about “naturally” chaste men and ravening women is no less a double-standard than our contemporary one.

I just hate double standards no matter which way they tip or who they benefit. And I hate them for two big reasons, one general and one specific to gender. First, double-standards are, by definition, unfair as hell — giving one side a free pass on anything and dumping all the blame on the other just makes my asshole want to eat briars (as we used to say down South.) Second, because when it comes to sex both genders, on average and when left to their own devices, obviously have sexual appetites and self control in equal proportions. And plenty of both. It’s bad enough laying it all on one gender or the other because it’s stupid, sexist, and grossly unfair to both sides. The worst part, though, is how utterly inefficient and, ultimately, counterproductive arrangements like that are.

I mean, look, if one gender is supposed to be “self-policing” then what the hell is a member of the other gender supposed to do when they see something ugly going down? Intervene and you’re a traitor to your own gender and, worse within that system, you’re enabling “irresponsibility” in the gender that’s ostensibly supposed to be policing itself.

Even if we chose to pretend that people should engage in solidarity within their respective genders, social experiments going back at least to the Milgram “obedience” experiments suggests that even mild intervention from within a peer group is highly effective.

In the “obedience” research (unwitting) experimental subjects were easily persuaded to administer progressively stronger (simulated) electrical shocks to a (pretend) volunteer when the researcher prompted them — even after the (collaborating) volunteer began screaming in agony or even collapsed. But here’s the thing. While most people interpreted the experiment in terms of “man’s unblinking inhumanity to man” in one of Milgram’s variations on the basic theme, test subjects invariably refused to continue shocking their (simulated) victim if another (collaborating) witness even hinted that the experiment should be stopped.

In other words, whereas we may be extraordinarily capable of committing monstrous acts (say, taking sexual advantage of a date who’s passed out) we’re also very quick to do the right thing when reminded.

Sooooo…. Creating conditions where one gender is supposed to be self-policing and the other is expected to be utterly immoral cuts the number of people who might effectively intervene right about in half and therefore at least doubling the chances of bad outcomes. (I say “at least” because we’re rarely evenly matched by gender in social situations, let alone looming sexual ones. And if one whole gender is told to say, in effect, “not my table” in those situations then…)

And the outcome, by the way, in situations where one side or the other is supposed to be self policing instead of just… policing… then…

Let’s just say I think game theory would predict that in inherently mistrustful situations like that you’ll find neither side winds up having sex as often as either side might prefer.

So I’m just saying…

[Note that it doesn’t matter which side is supposed to be the “responsible” gender. Which is a good thing because different cultures in different times believe, with equal certainty, that different genders are the believed to be “responsible.” Whether it’s men or women is totally irrelevant since fucking everybody is perfectly capable of responsiblity and therefore ought to be. Plus, since I am, after all, a sex blogger, I’m going to reiterate that we’d all enjoy at least incrementally more sex! —fl]