Warner Todd Huston
Doctor says - - don't leer at me
By Warner Todd Huston
Dr. Laura Berman, writer for the Chicago Sun Times and "sex therapist," is mad at construction workers. In a recent column she rails about how she was treated as "eye-candy" by some construction workers on their lunch break as she was on her way to a store in down town Chicago.
Her column, a rant that is a throw back to the worst of the shrill NOW days of a Gloria Stienam during the tortuous 1970's, is filled with so many poor me-isms that it shouldn't be a surprise that it misses the bigger point. And like a typically overwrought feminist activist the only ones blamed are those eeevil men.
Apparently, she has some vague idea that the aforementioned construction workers should treat her as the big important and highly trained doctor that she feels she is (she has a PHD after all) instead of the very pretty woman that she also happens to be. Yet, she starts her column off saying she is going shopping, calling it "retail therapy" the "ultimate pick-me-up," which would seem to be somewhat demeaning making her actions seem a little silly. Not a very auspicious start for considering her in a serious light, at least.
As she walked she noticed the men perched on a windowsill, eating their lunches and obviously "leering" at the women passing by, though she admits that they weren't catcalling or making undue comments. So, being the serious minded Doctor she is she engaged these men in a short conversation asking them what they were dong there?
The replies would seem to be obvious. Undaunted by her PHD they admitted that they were girl watching during their break. Imagine that? Men who make their living with their brute strength, often out of doors, engaging in a testosterone driven pastime!
The men told her they were working on a new women's hospital, prompting the good Doctor to lament in her Op Ed how she felt as the men looked at her. "Oh! So the men who are building the best in women's health care are making me — and every woman between the ages of 8 and 80 who walks by — sick," she decried.
Aside from that emotional overstatement — can anyone imagine that these fellows would be "leering" at 8 or 80 year old women? — Doctor Berman went on to admonish the men, the men's wives and even the store near which the men were working, saying that she was disappointed in their actions.
She reports that at least one of them said they girl watch, "... because we need to have an image in our heads for when we have sex with our wives."
OK. We can all agree that 'leering" is most ungentlemanly. And we should even agree that it could possibly make some women uncomfortable even if they secretly find the attention flattering. We can also agree that these men might be slighting their wives as they put that "image" in their heads while making love to them. These men aren't to be excused for their behavior, to be sure.
But our intrepid Doctor is missing a larger point. She spends her column berating these men yet says nothing whatsoever about the society that spawns such ill trained men. It is etiquette that we are missing, not just American construction worker's ethics and comportment.
Not once, for instance, does she bring to our attention the often appalling lack of business dress sense in so many women today, much less the all too common over exposure of skin that so many young women display in their everyday dress. What man, even one infused with a dutiful attention to good etiquette, could avoid an occasional leer at a woman who is so unmindful of the overt sexual signals she is virtually blaring at full volume to anyone who will just glance her way?
It seems to me that a word or two admonishing all the Britney Spears wannabes out there is called for if Doctor Berman is attempting to make a point about society's ills. After all, if women as a group in our society treated their role as women more seriously in the first place men might not feel it to so easy to reduce them to simple objects of sexual fantasies. When women dress like floozies they just aren't going to be taken seriously, after all.
As we abandon the importance of comportment, etiquette and business like attitudes and as we focus ever more on everyone's perceived "rights" and the desire to do what we want to do at all times, we are sure to see a rise in "leering" at the very least. But this is not just a man's problem. It is one for all of us, man and woman alike. And it isn't just men's fault, either. We all share in the blame by overly permissive attitudes.
Let us hope that Doctor Laura Berman, PHD, tries to be a little more serious next time she wants to try and make society better for the "victims" of construction workers. She certainly missed her opportunity this time.
© Warner Todd Huston
Dr. Laura Berman, writer for the Chicago Sun Times and "sex therapist," is mad at construction workers. In a recent column she rails about how she was treated as "eye-candy" by some construction workers on their lunch break as she was on her way to a store in down town Chicago.
Her column, a rant that is a throw back to the worst of the shrill NOW days of a Gloria Stienam during the tortuous 1970's, is filled with so many poor me-isms that it shouldn't be a surprise that it misses the bigger point. And like a typically overwrought feminist activist the only ones blamed are those eeevil men.
Apparently, she has some vague idea that the aforementioned construction workers should treat her as the big important and highly trained doctor that she feels she is (she has a PHD after all) instead of the very pretty woman that she also happens to be. Yet, she starts her column off saying she is going shopping, calling it "retail therapy" the "ultimate pick-me-up," which would seem to be somewhat demeaning making her actions seem a little silly. Not a very auspicious start for considering her in a serious light, at least.
As she walked she noticed the men perched on a windowsill, eating their lunches and obviously "leering" at the women passing by, though she admits that they weren't catcalling or making undue comments. So, being the serious minded Doctor she is she engaged these men in a short conversation asking them what they were dong there?
The replies would seem to be obvious. Undaunted by her PHD they admitted that they were girl watching during their break. Imagine that? Men who make their living with their brute strength, often out of doors, engaging in a testosterone driven pastime!
The men told her they were working on a new women's hospital, prompting the good Doctor to lament in her Op Ed how she felt as the men looked at her. "Oh! So the men who are building the best in women's health care are making me — and every woman between the ages of 8 and 80 who walks by — sick," she decried.
Aside from that emotional overstatement — can anyone imagine that these fellows would be "leering" at 8 or 80 year old women? — Doctor Berman went on to admonish the men, the men's wives and even the store near which the men were working, saying that she was disappointed in their actions.
She reports that at least one of them said they girl watch, "... because we need to have an image in our heads for when we have sex with our wives."
OK. We can all agree that 'leering" is most ungentlemanly. And we should even agree that it could possibly make some women uncomfortable even if they secretly find the attention flattering. We can also agree that these men might be slighting their wives as they put that "image" in their heads while making love to them. These men aren't to be excused for their behavior, to be sure.
But our intrepid Doctor is missing a larger point. She spends her column berating these men yet says nothing whatsoever about the society that spawns such ill trained men. It is etiquette that we are missing, not just American construction worker's ethics and comportment.
Not once, for instance, does she bring to our attention the often appalling lack of business dress sense in so many women today, much less the all too common over exposure of skin that so many young women display in their everyday dress. What man, even one infused with a dutiful attention to good etiquette, could avoid an occasional leer at a woman who is so unmindful of the overt sexual signals she is virtually blaring at full volume to anyone who will just glance her way?
It seems to me that a word or two admonishing all the Britney Spears wannabes out there is called for if Doctor Berman is attempting to make a point about society's ills. After all, if women as a group in our society treated their role as women more seriously in the first place men might not feel it to so easy to reduce them to simple objects of sexual fantasies. When women dress like floozies they just aren't going to be taken seriously, after all.
As we abandon the importance of comportment, etiquette and business like attitudes and as we focus ever more on everyone's perceived "rights" and the desire to do what we want to do at all times, we are sure to see a rise in "leering" at the very least. But this is not just a man's problem. It is one for all of us, man and woman alike. And it isn't just men's fault, either. We all share in the blame by overly permissive attitudes.
Let us hope that Doctor Laura Berman, PHD, tries to be a little more serious next time she wants to try and make society better for the "victims" of construction workers. She certainly missed her opportunity this time.
© Warner Todd Huston
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