Good old common sense

Subject: Good old common sense.

It's International Woman's Day and importantly Mothers Day today. I would be failing in my task if I didn't have something to say about the objectification of woman and the rising voices against the killing of Sarah Everard the young woman brutally murdered by an off duty Met Police Officer. Sarah had been walking home alone at night and has prompted a debate over  the safety of women from attacks by men.

The media filled the airwaves with distraught women queuing up to describe their personal experience of lewd attacks made on them by men and the fear they have of men generally. It appears that some men have an uncontrollable urge to molest women, almost daily these women are inappropriately touched or have innuendos directed at them and the catalyst of this woman's murder has brought it all out in the open.

Perception is everything (especially from someone who could hardly keep up if I were to chase a woman) the world they describe is a far cry from mine. Never the less an unappreciated flirtatious comment in the office, a catcall from a building site or the chat up in a bar, are a far cry from being stalking  or heaven forbid having to fight someone off from using force in making a sexual advance. 

It's rapidly becoming  a gender collective thing, a perception of men versus women, a sort of urban war. Surely women also have a part to play in taking the heat out of the situation. I know that the feminists will say the dress code has nothing to do with how men see them, that image is in the man's mind and it's for him to take control of. Women should be able to wear what they like but then it also has to be accepted that these days many girls dress provocative to draw attention to themselves. Is this attention seeking innocent or manipulative, is it designed to send a message, or in the feminists world, do women live in a bubble of their own making. The activity to accentuate the figure and looks must surely be for someone or is it purely for themselves. I'm often confused when women line up at an athletic event in tight fitting, scanty costumes, whilst men are pretty much as they were in Roger Banisters day in baggy shorts and sleeve less tops. Do women make an internal statement when they pose on page three or sit topless on the beach, a signal saying I can and I will. It's certainly the antithesis of the Burka.

The first question to ask is it true, that men have lost the ability to control themselves.  Do occasions of close proximity overwhelm the senses. Do women in a closely packed tube train always suspect that when the train lurches and a man is thrust against them, that it has evil intent. Is it really a fact that the men around them have but one thought in their mind.  Dress of course can be a signal, even to the most benign individual,  the skirt which barely  covers the undergarment (which in itself has lost the purpose for which it was designed) and the all too visible tattooed breast , is a far cry from the Jane Austen epoch when women were put on a pedestal and wore their hemline as low as they presented their cleavage, even then  a sort of provocative parody of virtues which sent out all kinds of confusing signals.  

It's these confusing signals which are so dangerous. Our species didn't evolve with an off/on switch and only societally approved norms provide any kind of advice on how to behave. Much behaviour relies on parental teaching and the environment to grow a set of values. In the last 50 years, since Woodstock, many of these social constraints were burnt, like the bra and women were happy to throw off what they saw as antiquated values for something far riskier, especially given the protection of the pill but. Now it seems the risk is too much.

We are of course talking of an horrendous act with Sahara's murder and comparisons drawn of the number of women who have suffered the same fate are dreadful but one also has to accept the fact that men are four times more likely to murdered than women Sex was not the motivation for the bulk of the men murdered but rather is the result of growing up in a dreadfully violent neighbourhood.

Violence has many facets.  Many of the attacks on females in the home may be the result of months and months of bickering and taunting, until something in the mind snaps. This emotional violence describes a person temporally out of control and its a well worn cliche that whilst "the tongue is mightier than the sword",  the tongue can probe just as deep into many emotional failings and inflict just as deep a wound as the sword.

I'm always amazed how deeply hurtful words can be but are often uttered without any legal consequences.  Only if a person retaliates physically is there a serious repercussion. When I was a boy we would sort out a disagreement with our fists and once the fight was over we were the best of mates. Today in our non confrontational world, things often go unresolved and are allowed to fester for years.

The main thrust of these protests is the suggestion that the attitude men have towards women, specifically towards sex and women (it's is assumed that sex is the precursor to most attacks) is fundamentally wrong. That women, are not objects of sexual allure, (which in an evolutionary way they are), and that society has evolved methods to blank out from our hereditary wiring, this deep well of sexual passion.

Sex of course is the glue which binds and propagates the species. If the sexual urge wasn't present it's doubtful if we would survive but sex has also evolved into becoming a pastime, a game, a recreation. 

Homo sapiens have derived many rules to cope with sex and the protection of women  but since now it's seen as a consensual pastime rather than a right of passage, who wants to play by the rules. On the other end of the spectrum there are societies where marriage is arranged by the family and sexual allure is banished, and after the arrangement the female is in effect passed out of the public eye and made to dress in a way that reveals little of her beauty. In effect she becomes boxed into a patriarchally dominated religious arrangement never to be seen again other than by her husband. 

In the West the laws governing gender and sexual activity generally pertain to the protection of females since it's assumed they are weaker. Laws designed to keep men at bay are becoming more subjective, they support the conclusion that women want sex but on their own terms and that male/female relationships have become a minefield to negotiate. To acquiesce to sex is questioned, even when 'the morning after the night before' the consensual girl can have a brain freeze and say no I didn't consent, and  for the young man now in the dock, his life and reputation in tatters, it all seems a cruel joke.

Dressed, undressed, full nudity, play no part in the claim that he thought she was agreeable, no amount of innuendo can counter play what's was in her mind when she first said yes and then said no.

Perhaps the suggestion that men should be under curfew after 6pm, made by Baroness Jones, has some merit as does female only train carriages, buses, pubs and restaurants and clearly it would go a long way to solve the problem, and mating become the sole province of the dating app, it could even become part of  Covid prevention rules.

Of course so would  banning or restricting the confusing signals a women puts out but that's going too far for the 'sisterhood', who stress the importance of being allowed to do what they want with their bodies.

If a woman wants to walk alone late at night it's their choice, but like men who  take the precaution not to walk in certain neighbourhoods late at night because they are targets, not for sex but because they signal a contempt of good old common sense.