The Empress Has No Clothes

There has been a lot of coverage of this video of a woman walking the streets of New York City over the past few days.

However, while all the headlines I see are declaring it evidence of the terrible problem of harassment faced by women, virtually all of the comments by readers, male and female, are saying it shows no such thing. This amounts to a graphic example of how the “legacy media” have lost touch with, and lost the confidence of, their audience.

I have to agree with the commentators. With the exception of one guy who walks beside the woman for an alleged five minutes, nothing else here seems to come anywhere near harassment. It is mostly a matter of men saying “good morning” or “God bless you,” or at worst, something along the lines of “you're beautiful.” How can this woman possibly take offence? If this is harassment, wouldn't we all like to be a bit more harassed?

Okay, conceivably, for a beautiful woman, this might end up being too much of a good thing. Might it get draining after a while?

Perhaps; the video makers, a feminist advocacy group, do their best to make this look to be the case. But it is worth remembering that this is, by their own admission, a condensation of ten hours of walking. At one point, someone says "good morning," and in the very next shot, it is night. Although the makers claim the woman was harassed “108” times, the video actually shows only twenty incidents of any kind, benevolent or not. Given that they are an advocacy group and not a neutral party, one assumes that, had they anything else that looked even remotely like harassment, we would be looking at it.

So we are left with twenty unsolicited comments over ten hours. That's two random greetings per hous. I think most of us could live with that. If we have ever lived in a small town, we have lived with that, and more. In terms of time, she was obliged to recognize the existence of other people for two minutes (seven, perhaps, if you count the guy who allegedly walks with her for five minutes) out of ten hours. This does not seem like an unsupportable burden. If you think this is tough, try, as a European-looking person, walking the streets of China or Korea. Indeed, some commentators have wondered why all but one of the alleged "harassers" turn out to be non-white, and accuse the video, illogically, of "racism" as a result. Might it be that in Harlem or Spanish Harlem, a young European woman walking alone has a bit of novelty value?

Two unsolicited greetinga an hour certainly does not seem enough to excuse the rudeness of the woman's own behaviour in refusing to acknowledge or make eye contact with anyone. Indeed, I suspect this posture of being itself provocative. It is like a challenge to atttract her attention in some way. I imagine she would have gotten more peace and quiet without it.

But let's suppose this sort of thing really is a problem. How do we solve it? By trying to have the ppolice arrest any man who tries to talk to a stsange woman? Completely impractical, in the first place. In the second, it would mean the extinction of the species, which does seem a bit like overkill.

On the other hand, if any woman does find this kind of thing objectionable in any way, there is a simple and readily available solution: the abaya. This is no doubt why the abaya is growing in popularity among Muslim women everywhere. No fuss, no bother--just slip it on before you go out, and you become invisible. The moment you are in the mood for attention, slip it off and fold in into your purse. If you do not want to look specifically Muslim, a traditional Amish-style dress and a mantilla would probably work just as well. Do you imagine that nuns get harassed in this way? I doubt it.

There is a reason for such traditions as the abaya, or the old Korean one of women staying inside during the day, and men staying inside at night. It is feminism which has insisted and still insists on abolishing all of them. If feminist do not like the result, they have only themselves to blame. It is perverse to blame men.

The men would, of course, harass nuns as well, if they truly had any conceivable sort of ill intention. They do not. It is simply a matter of their being unable to read a woman's mind. Consider: you are a young woman walking alone down the street. Unless your dress says clearly something different, this implies that you are single and eligible. It is the obligation of the man to make the first approach . In those cases when they are not simply being friendly, and with the single exception of the creey stalker guy, that is all these men are doing.

Of course, the reason why most American women do not wear an abaya or its equivalent is that they do in fact want to be approached by men, and indeed at any time. The problem is that they want to be approached only by men whom they find attractive and desirable. 

Unfortunately, however, as noted, men cannot read minds, any more than women can. These guys do not know in advance whether this woman will find them attractive. 

Some--essentially, the people in the legacy media--seem to have become so blinded by ideology that they cannot see any innocent explanation for the events in the video. All men must be presumed to be monsters, and anything they do must be sinister. They are all rapists and pedophiles. No doubt some women who have survived the sexual revolution have been damaged by sexual traumas, and have extrapolated this into a hatred of all men. That may, it occurs to me, be a major element of the feminist world-view. Sure sounds like what happened to Andrea Dworkin. But if so, they are completely unjustified. Feminists were in the forefront of the sexual revolution as much as anyone, and they refuse as much as anyone to withdraw their endorsement of it now. They have kicked down all the old channels of communication and of goodwill between men and women, and need not now be surprised if confusion and mixed messages are the result. 

It may be, too, that the media folks are as aware as their readers and viewers that there is nothing to see here. But they dare not say it, for fear of being accused of being sexist, not to mention losing their job or worse.

 But the ordinary readers, who have the option generally of remaining anonymous in their comments, or at least have less invested in being part of the establishment, have no such qualms.

The whispering has begun in the back rows: the Empress actually has no clothes.






I am beginning to get the definite feeling that feminism is finally on the way out.