In Maureen Dowd’s latest piece in the New York Times, about why women don’t leave when a date goes south and instead hookup with men to whom they’re not all that attracted, Dowd asks this of women: “You can Lean In but you can’t Walk Out?”
That’s an excellent question. And the answer, of course, is Yes.
Women today know exactly how to “lean in,” or to get ahead at the office. But when it comes to their relationships with men, the singular skill they possess is sex. And they’re not even getting what they want from that.
“Getting naked and having sex with strangers is hard,” Joanna Coles, author of the new book Love Rules, tells Dowd. “We portray it as fun and we pretend it’s fun. But people crave intimacy, which is not easy to create in a hookup.”
It is indeed the great irony of our post-feminist world. Women were promised empowerment—and in the marketplace, they got it. But when it comes to love, women are shooting blanks. In that domain, they’ve been rendered powerless.
That’s because equality doesn’t work in love. On the contrary, equality undermines both love and sex. In any marriage or romantic relationship, it’s our differences that matter.
Unfortunately, sex differences are frowned upon since they get in the way of creating an egalitarian future. Thus, sexual equality is billed as liberating. But if acting “like a man” keeps women from doing what they want to do—say No—it is anything but liberating.
And here’s the truly fascinating part. Fifty years ago, women knew exactly how to deal with the advances of men they didn’t welcome: they said “No.” End of conversation. Wouldn’t that suggest that women “back in the day” had more, not less, power than women have now?
The answer provided in Dowd’s article is that online dating and Internet porn have changed the rules. Maybe so. It is certainly true that technology has made a bad situation immeasurably worse.
But Tinder didn’t create hookups. We did.
Online dating and Internet porn came long after the sexual revolution, when the concept of free love was first introduced. Since then there’s been a sea change in sex, marriage, and relationships based on the faulty assumption that men and women are essentially the same. They are not. If they were, women would be shouting “Yes” from the rooftops and having a grand ‘ole time. But that is not happening.
All of that said, Dowd’s article is timely. Next week, on April 17, a new documentary about this very subject, “The Dating Project,” will be in theaters nationwide for one night only. I’ve seen it and would encourage everyone, parents in particular, to run out and see this important film on the hookup culture that encourages young people to learn how to date.
Only by ending the miserable practice of saying “Yes” when they really mean “No” can women be truly empowered.
Suzanne Venker (@SuzanneVenker) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is an author, Fox News contributor, and trustee of Leading Women for Shared Parenting. Her fifth book, The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men & Marriage: HOW LOVE WORKS, was published in February 2017.
