The female stalker: she’s become a joke in our current culture. And let me say in advance, I find the below video screamingly funny, in fact I nearly peed myself laughing watching this. I am a huge fan of this girl. You can subscribe to her channel right here. I’ve been a fan of hers since she first hit the scene. Anyway, the funny video:
Now, again, this is funny. I am not attacking it.
However, it’s fascinating, isn’t it, that it would not be funny at all if she were a dude. Now, why? I submit that it’s because culturally, we believe men are violent, predatory, and dangerous and need to be tamed, whereas, we believe women are frail and weak and pretty much by definition are not-dangerous. I think there may even be something biological about it, based on something called “neoteny.” I remember introducing Karen Straughan to the term and she did a long video on it which you may enjoy, but in short, neoteny is the retention of childlike physical traits into adulthood. Human females are more neotenous than human males on average, although it is not purely a sex thing; Asian men tend to be somewhat more neotenous than the average white man, just for example (although of course there’s huge variation, it’s not an ironclad rule by any means). But between humans around the world, females are more neotenous than males: they retain smaller stature, less pronounced brow ridges, higher pitched voices, less musculature, less body hair, softer skin, etc. and if you look hard you start to realize that a lot of women’s “beautification” techniques — not all, but a large portion of them — are methods to increase neotenous appearance: getting rid of body and facial hair, softening skin, softening hair, making their eyes look bigger, and so on.
What this appears to my eye to do is to heighten men’s protective instincts toward women, and it also seems to heighten women’s protective instincts toward women. Although there is arguably a biological component to this, I think we live in a time and culture where that nominally healthy instinct has been kicked into overdrive. Women appear to be encouraged to see themselves as potential victims waiting to happen (even though men are statistically more than twice as likely to be the victims of violent assault than women are, and are statistically far more likely to be the victims of sexual assault by females than most people realize) and men as beastly domineering predators and oppressors. I believe both liberals and conservatives are guilty of this impulse, and it’s not healthy for anyone: it infantalizes women and demonizes men, especially when we allow our subconscious impulses to override our rational thought processes. “Wait, she can’t really be dangerous, she’s just a cute girl!”
(And yes, cute girls get away with more than not-so-cute girls, by the way.)
All of it seems to me to be very well encapsulated in the (in my view sexist) phrase “men’s violence toward women,” which is apparently now an acceptable part of political and civil discourse, as the so-called “Violence Against Women Act” goes up for renewal. Factually speaking, women commit the vast majority of violent child abuse, neonaticides, and murder of small children, yet I am virtually certain there would be an avalanche of protest and rage if anyone started campaigns to “end women’s violence against children,” let alone any campaign to end women’s violence against men (which is, again, far more common than most people realize).
I post this in part as an observation in its own right, and also in continuation of a previous discuss on why male victims of sexual assault by females do not report and how I believe this also contributes to a cultural climate of infantalization of women and demonization of men. Feel free to continue to discuss any such related issues right here as well. I think these things do go together.
Dean Esmay is the author of Methuselah’s Daughter. He has contributed to Dean’s World, Huffington Post, A Voice for Men, Pajamas Media. Neither left nor right wing, neither libertarian nor socialist.