Sexual ‘Harassment’ In Academia–PC Police At It Again

A pissing contest is going on in the halls of academia over ‘sexual harassment’; and the he-said, she-said invective-charged, ad hominem back-and-forth attacks are flying just like they did in the old days in the back pages of the New York Review of Books. If ever you wanted to see academics behaving badly, all you had to do was to turn to the long, defensive, self-serving screeds that passed as Letters to the Editor. 

Louise Antony, Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst takes on Steven Pinker of Harvard (not exactly a fair fight pitting a Division IV school against a Division I), and takes him to task for defending freedom of speech at the University of Miami and for calling out the invasive and pervasive PC sexual gulag culture prevalent there and at many other institutions.  The details of the case – allegedly improper discourse between a professor and graduate student – may never be known, tangled as they now are in the vicious all-or-nothing, tangled bulrushes of gender politics.  The women who cry ‘Harassment’ in defense of supposedly aggrieved women are far worse than even the Rev. Al Sharpton, the race-baiting ambulance chaser.  These latter-day feminists claim that they speak for the rights of women, but by cruising the halls, snooping through door cracks, and sniffing the air for offense, they admit that women need protection.  “We need protection from men”, they howl. “They are beastly predators who can never be trusted, practicing sexual villainy at every turn, leaving poor, trusting women on the curb, crying. Help us, please!”

Prof. Antony says that men must heal themselves, mend their ways, look at women asexually.  Ignore the tits and ass, forget the raging hormones, look at the ceiling in elevators, talk only about budgets and spreadsheets, and God forbid, avoid any kind of compliment.  Here is what feminists want men to see when they look at women:

Or this:

Oh, but I exaggerate, Ms. Antony will say.  Another man overreacting because he has been called out for his predatory, ignorant, and Neanderthal ways. 

There are only three things to consider when addressing this issue:

1. Men and women are different, sexually attracted to each other, hormonally driven, and in their early reproductive years, eagerly anxious to mate.

2. Women are quite capable of parrying unwanted attention.  Male egos can be as fragile as women’s, and a sharp barb or poisoned arrow aimed right (fat, ugly, hairy, gross, impotent, dumb) can usually send the culprit back into his cube.

3. The men who bed most women treat them with respect and most of all pay attention to them. Women want to be listened to, and most of us listen to the most inane, trifling stories about women’s feelings to get them to take their clothes off.  We are never aggressive, disrespectful, or crude.   We like women, understand them, and want them.  In turn, women want sexual confidence in a man, and one who listens respectfully, but who is patiently and confidently sexual, is a dreamboat.

I have worked in office environments where panicked male losers have worried about what to say and do:

“Does this mean I can’t even tell a woman that she looks nice?” I’ve heard it in coffee lounges: “Make sure you keep your door open when you’re talking to a woman student — you never know what she might say later.” And I’ve had it confided to me, with a sigh of regret, at conference happy hours: “I’m afraid now to form any relationships with female students — they might take it the wrong way.”

These men are dorks and dweebs, not to be taken seriously.  It is too bad that uppity women and their academic lackeys have bitched and moaned, distorted the workplace, and sucked every ounce of sexuality out of it. Most sexually successful men know that women are women and there is always a way to win their hearts.  Younger, confident women (unlike Prof. Antony) appreciate male attention, know when it is mature and serious, and have no difficulty forming the right kind of relationship. They don’t run to HR.

Given women’s power over men (yes, you heard right), all the PC gulag surveillance and exiles to Siberia are not necessary.  The sexual market works just as well as the economic one.  The rules against sexual harassment are to protect weak women from idiot bosses.  While I have known many a case where male supervisors have displayed an unwanted interest in their female minions, most are resolved easily and quickly. The savvy woman lets it be known clearly and unequivocally that she has no interest – a cool breeze, and arched eyebrow, a slight frown is usually all it takes – and the boss goes away.

I have also known many cases where women have cried foul to exact revenge on demanding bosses, or worse, to get paid off by frightened corporate management.  The abuse and fraud in the workplace regarding ‘gender’ and ‘race’ is not insignificant.

So the PC police continue to be on the prowl to protect those few women who don’t know how do deal with idiot bosses and jerky colleagues.  Is all this fol-de-rol necessary to protect the few women who don’t know up from down in sexual politics; and to chastise and threaten the equally few men who are clueless about sex, women, and life? No.  A resounding no.

It is time to Take Down This Wall, return the workplace and the halls of academe to nature.  Let the weak figure out how to survive.  Academicians should listen to one of their heroes, Shakespeare, who understood the relationships between men and women better than anyone.  His women – Margaret, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Beatrice, Constance, Gertrude, Calpurnia, not to mention Tamora and Volumnia – are his best characters and better men at every turn.  They operate in the male-dominated Elizabethan world, but do quite well, thank you.  They use every trick in the book, every tool available to them, to get what they want.  Their men look foolish. They needed no special favors to get what they wanted.  Margaret, the wife of the weak, pious Henry VI, went to war against the French not for him but for herself and her son. 

I will agree with Prof. Antony in one respect.  Men have to change; but not in the way she suggests – i.e. go back inside their shell and cower – but to learn how to be successful with women. Sensitivity training - an absurd, ‘progressive’, manipulative and ignorant attempt to change behavior by holding hands -  should be reconfigured.  It should be focused on how to get women into bed.  “Men”, the instructor would say,”it is time that you stopped being obtuse, untoward, and gross in your advances.  Women need and deserve respect, so give it to them.  Listen, admire, appreciate.  And don’t rub up against them in the elevator.”