Are women actually people?
What do women want?
No doubt this famous Freud quote is apocryphal. But, as a society, it seems we have found the answer.
Women want to go to a fancy event and have their dress unzipped for a ‘joke,’ by a prince of the realm. They want to be called ‘nubiles’ and invited to audition for photographic work by a posh woman in a limousine. They want to be lured onto a Carribean island and abused, when they thought they had been flown there for a modelling shoot.
No?
Like millions of people around the world, I have been following the media reports on the Epstein files in mounting horror. I can’t bring myself to read the actual emails - I think I would be sick.
I send a message to the girls on our family WhatsApp - 'Noooo! Not Noam!!!'
Noam Chomsky, our former hero, advised Epstein to ignore, ‘the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public.’ Chomsky calls #MeToo, ’the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women.’ This is 11 years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. But it's OK, says Chomsky. This ‘current mood … will fade away, even if not in time to prevent much torture and distress.’
Oh dear. Poor diddums.
The moron formerly known as Prince Andrew, wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001, (who was serving a prison sentence for sex-trafficking at the time), ’Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?’
Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Bill Clinton.. So many rich and powerful men.
I walk into the kitchen to rant and rave to anyone who will listen. I think I say something deep and meaningful like, ‘What the actual f**k?! How can all these men behave this way?’
Eva is cooking dinner. She looks up and says,
‘They don’t see us as people.’
Ah. Of course.
In The Second Sex. (2015, Vintage Classics) Simone de Beauvoir writes, ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ She writes about how little boys ‘assume an attitude of subjectivity’. The penis symbolises, ‘autonomy.. transcendence… power.’ Meanwhile, little girls are given dolls to play with. De Beauvoir says a young girl is socialised to identify herself with an object, to, ‘think of herself as a marvellous doll.’
We learn to objectify ourselves, from the earliest age, and to seek the approval of men. We learn to internalise what Laura Mulvey termed 'the male gaze.' This socialising is so effective that, according to 2012 research, all of our brains learn to see men as whole and women as parts.
In 2018 the Brooklyn 99 actor Terry Crewes spoke about the cult of masculinity. Men are taught to see women as pretty things to look at, or as useful things - things designed to meet the needs of men. ‘There is a humanity issue here,’ Crewes said. ‘[Women are] like, ‘Why don’t you hear me? Why don’t you see my feelings?’ And [men are] like, ‘But you’re not all the way human. You’re here for me, you’re here for my deal.’ It’s real.’
‘Not all the way human.’
Ah. Of course.
I’ve seen this at school. When Andrew Tate was on the upswing, we had to speak to 12 year old boys who demanded of female teachers, ‘Make me a sandwich, woman.’
I’ll never forget the student in Year 10 who gave a presentation on male stereotypes in the media. It was an impassioned indictment of the images of masculinity he grew up with - powerful, successful, hyper-muscled. He spoke about being taught that boys are not allowed to express any emotions - oh, except anger. Of the negative effects on boys, of the culture and what we would now call ‘toxic masculinity’. And this was in a time before Andrew Tate.
But Eva just isn’t shocked by anything in the Epstein files.
She’s just finished her degree. She has a much more up-to-date understanding of how the world works. So the events unveiled in the Epstein files are not at all incongruent with her world view.
Of course people with money and power are corrupt and greedy, she says.
Eva reminds me that Donald Trump authorised the release of the Epstein files. She asks, ‘Why are they being released now?’
I realise I was brought up in simpler, more optimistic times.
When I was 23 I believed we could work together to make the world a better place. As a society we had faith in institutions. We believed the people in charge would make decisions that, although perhaps flawed, were motivated by the desire to do good.
Well maybe Trump thinks he is doing good by authorising the release of the Epstein files. The question is: Good for whom?
Eva says it’s a distraction. That the victim survivors have been speaking out for decades and nobody took them seriously. That Epstein died years ago. That, while everyone is fascinated by the prurient details, Trump has quietly repealed the laws that provided a legal mandate for the regulation of greenhouse emissions.
Ah. Of course.
Good for Trump’s mates in the fossil fuel industry.
And good for Trump, to stoke a climate of suspicion and distrust. It’s good for him - to further erode the faith of the people in the institutions of government, academia and civil society.
It reminds me of that brilliant poem, The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats:
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’
But I can’t quite get my head around that.
When I think of the Epstein files I remember the behaviour of a 10 year-old boy at Michael’s school. Michael was brought in to help counsel this child, to help him learn, to understand why his behaviour was wrong. The kid was in trouble for pulling girls’ hair, yanking so hard the girl's head was jerked right back. The reason? He’d seen it in online porn.
So what do women want?
We want a world where the rule of law prevails. Where truth matters, including the truth about climate change. Where little boys as well as little girls are taught to care for others, to express emotions, to see women as actually people.
Where little boys grow up into men who see us as ‘all the way human.’
