Straight males are always going to look at women with desire. (I'm gay, but I read a lot, also gay men are still men. If anything, same-sex attraction has an exponential effect on male behaviors. ) Men LOOK. Men "objectify." (So do artists.) It's how we approach the world, and no amount of tut-tutting is ever going to change that. I presume that, in the appropriate circumstances, women might actually welcome the idea that men look at them with desire.
Appropriate circumstances do not include: the workplace, IKEA, the subway, the high-school classroom or any place that's not primarily engineered to facilitate the meeting of boys and girls.
The issue is not: How can we stop men looking with desire at women. C'mon, sisters: you want your men to be hot, don't you? The issue is men assuming that everything you wear, say, or do must be understood in terms of men.
If I see a smartly dressed, or even provocatively dressed woman, what's my first thought? Well, I'm gay, so obviously it's "fabulous belt!" but apart from that I think, "she's dressing to please herself, feel confident, enjoy the way she looks, to be comfortable in her own skin, to signal that she's the boss, for the sheer pleasure of dressing however she's dressed. Or, she's dressing as a second thought, because clothes are not the most interesting thing to her. Do I give a shit? The belt's still a knockout! "
I think it's none of my business how she dresses, just like it's none of my business why she wants an abortion. She doesn't have to have "a good reason" for either of those acts. In both those cases, any old reason she might have about what to do with her body is a valid, good reason. I don't have a uterus, and I look terrible in horizontal stripes, so I don't really get a say in either of those cases.
I'm fully confident that women can dress themselves, get an abortion, choose where to go and what to do, and even say to a leering male, "get lost, buddy, where were you brought up, in a barnyard?" without my, a man's, help.
Unfortunately, straight males do not always learn how to deal with their unruly sexual urges, because they are discouraged from examining anything that looks like a feeling. Male sexuality is unruly, potentially dangerous and it must be brought under control. This is the primary marker of a mature man: the understanding that the appearance of eye-candy in their vicinity does not equal de facto entitlement to said eye-candy.
Boys are not born with the ability to keep their sexual desires held in check. They have to be taught how to do this, and it's an urgent and essential duty of fathers and other mentors to teach boys about this and to model respectful behavior.
Men must learn early on to keep their egos and their sexual urges in check, their hands to themselves, and little buddy zipped up. They need above all to understand that women do not exist on terms that males set, or in order to be understood exclusively in terms of men's desires.
This training probably will also require the dismantling of oppressive religions, the absolute banning of religion from jurisprudence, training in emotional intelligence for men in schools, and a few boys' nights out at the opera followed by drinks with parasols wouldn't hurt, either.
Hetero sex makes the world go round, and we need it to be so. Why? Well, I ask you: How else will LGBTQ2+ babies be produced? We need you guys to produce the artists, communicators, choreographers, drag queens, nuclear physicists, non-binary luminaries and visionaries of tomorrow. Just play nice, OK?
DR
