Metoo follows the same pattern of
all left wing thinking. Having won acceptance on one point it always wants to
go further. No concession is ever enough. The concept of date rape would have
been considered absurd by our grandmothers. They just wouldn’t have got
themselves into the situation where any such behaviour could occur from either
side. But having won acceptance that there was such a thing as date rape,
having got the judiciary in many Western countries to prosecute men simply
because the person they thought wanted sex was too drunk or later changed her
mind, feminism banked its victory and looked for new targets to attack. As always,
the target was the other half of humanity.
Remember the scene where Atticus
Finch protects the jail against the mob who wants to lynch his client. The mob
now shouts Metoo and as one person shouts it others join in until the mob is
far larger than the one Mr Finch had to defend against. None of the mob except
perhaps one person who began the shout knows what happened, but even that
person can’t prove it. This is why she is resorting to the mob for justice. Shockingly
the tactics works. How many men have been lynched by the Metoo mob without any
trial, without any evidence and without any conviction? Yet their lives have
been ruined, their jobs lost, simply because someone cried Metoo and made
accusations that neither side could prove or disprove.
In any other crime except, rape,
sexual assault and child abuse the police require objective evidence before
they even begin an investigation. In no other crime can someone come forward
out of the blue and years later to accuse another person of a crime that may
lead to them spending years in jail and provide no evidence whatsoever beyond
their testimony. This method of determining whether crimes have taken place may
lead to some rapists, perpetrators of sexual assault and child abusers going to
jail. But it is bound to lead to lots of innocent people going to jail too. No
doubt lynching also executed some who were guilty, but it treated the innocent
and the guilty alike and the mob become judge, jury and executioner.
There has been a casting couch in
Hollywood since Hollywood began. But there has been a metaphorical casting
couch since men and women first began interacting. Most men are attracted to
young, fit, beautiful women. There are good evolutionary reasons for this. If
sex is unavailable to men, they are frequently willing to pay for it. There
were brothels in Flanders in 1914, but there weren’t brothels back in Blighty
for the women who had been left on their own. Men have usually in history been
keener to have sex than women. It is men who have been expected to initiate
courtship. Women have been expected to show reluctance.
These things are not accidental.
They are wired into our natures as men and women. For almost the whole of human
history sex has been risk free for men, but risky for women. In the past a
woman who found herself accidentally pregnant would find herself condemned by
society and left in an extremely difficult financial position. Women did their
best to avoid the situation where they had a child without a husband. But women
also knew that their best chance of having a happy successful life was if their
husband was successful. For much of human history women simply couldn’t have
careers of their own. They were too busy having children instead. What mattered
therefore was that a woman picked a husband who would provide her with
happiness and success.
It is for this reason also that
traditionally women have been willing to marry men who were older. A twenty-year-old
woman might choose a man who was thirty, forty or even fifty because he could
still provide her with children and he could provide her with the security,
safety and success that she simply could not obtain on her own. This is the
casting couch.
Women throughout human history
have been willing to trade sex, love and marriage for security and success.
There is a transaction going on. Just as men have been willing to pay for sex,
because it’s something they cannot obtain for free, so too women have been
willing to sell. Sometimes this transaction happens in a crude brief encounter.
But most often it occurs when a man demonstrates to a woman that he can afford
to buy her a house, two holidays a year and security for her children.
Of course, there is such a thing
as love. But let’s at least try to be honest about human nature. Rich
footballers find it easy to marry young beautiful women. Poor footballers find
it rather harder. Rich male actors in their forties and fifties in Hollywood
find it easy to go out with young beautiful models in their twenties. Ugly fifty-year-old
men struggling to make a living do not have this opportunity. Why? Is it
because they are not lovable?
Young beautiful women have a
commodity that men want, and they know it. They also know that it won’t last.
They can use their youth and beauty to gain a husband. A young woman can become
wealthy simply by saying Yes and young man can rarely do this. Instead he has
to earn his wealth by working. Of course, women can become wealthy by means of
a job too, but not all women have the ability to do so. It is for this reason
that it is rational for a beautiful young woman of average intelligence to want
to marry a rich footballer. The alternative is to remain poor and work in a
sausage factory.
Joan Crawford apparently used the
casting couch to get a start in Hollywood. Perhaps she did, perhaps she didn’t.
She could have used her youth and beauty instead to have caught a husband, but
in that case, she would have remained
relatively poor and obscure. Instead she became a major star, famous and very
wealthy indeed. Did she regret what had happened, if indeed it happened. Who
knows, but she didn’t cry Metoo. She made a bargain. Just as all of us have
made bargains throughout human history.
Metoo began when certain
Hollywood actresses began to complain about what had happened in private
between themselves and Harvey Weinstein. Did Harvey Weinstein have a casting
couch? It appears likely that he did. Did he use it to sleep with young
beautiful women who otherwise wouldn’t have given him the time of day? Yes.
Were these women consciously making a bargain? Almost certainly. They were
trading success for sex. This is sleazy, but the sleaze is on both sides of the
bargain. Did Weinstein use physical force to compel young women to visit him in
private? Each of Weinstein’s visitors could have turned down the invitation. It
might have cost them a role in a film, but so what? Most of us never get to act
in films. Did Weinstein use force with those women who willingly accepted his
invites? Who knows, but I am unaware of any Hollywood actress who went
immediately from a visit with Weinstein to the police in order to show the
signs of his violence.
What we have here is a simple
case of young women selling sex for success and then regretting it, or
sometimes not even regretting the success, nor indeed the sex, but just joining
the mob because the Meetoo mob itself brings with it success.
A once young and beautiful
actress who had an encounter with Weinstein may find twenty years later that
her career isn’t going anywhere. Roles for middle aged, ugly actresses dwindle.
What better than to reinvent oneself as a campaigner for social justice and
feminism. Suddenly there is a new role, even new roles.
Men and women have different
human natures especially with regard to sex. We cannot change this. We also
cannot change that sexual relations invariably happen in private between two
people. Throughout human history promiscuity has been frowned upon. But since the
1960s we have decided that we know better than the whole of human history. But
how are we to police what goes on in private in a world where strangers meet
and have sex and where no one frowns upon almost any consensual sexual
activity.
Sex above all else requires
trust. If trust breaks down between men and women there will be no humanity.
But how can men trust women if at any time and years later with no evidence
whatsoever they can be accused of assault or rape. How can there be trust if it’s
not merely one women who accuses them but hundreds, thousands and sometimes
millions who have no idea what took place but are willing to side with the
accuser simply because she is a woman and women never lie.
Sex, love and marriage involves a
transaction. It always has, it always will. Men get something they want, and
women get something they want. Neither can obtain it on their own. Women can
attract men into a situation where the man can be investigated for a serious
crime just because the woman says she didn’t consent. The man can’t do the
reverse.
Young women appear to think that
they can sleep with whomsoever they meet whether drunk or sober enjoy the
experience on nine occasions but on the tenth send the man to jail and ruin his
life. They expect to be able to do this without any evidence other than the
fact that they say it and they expect the whole of womankind to back them. This
is what Meetoo means. It’s a lynch mob. In a promiscuous world where anyone can
sleep with anyone on a whim, it will lead to injustice and it will eventually
divide humanity in half. Because this is not the end point. Where next for
feminism? How next will it try to police what happens in our bedrooms? Will
there be two classes of human beings. Those which always lie and those which
never lie? Will this be known as equality?
Continued
Continued
