David Le Page
Body Language
So Katie Roiphe (“Back to the chase”, March 30 to April 5) wants to be pursued, does she? Hold me down. Actually, I did try unsuccessfully to find an image of Roiphe or her body on the Internet, wondering if the image might strike feverish notions into whatever primeval parts of my brain may deal with pursuit.
It was left to me to contemplate Roiphe’s mind, and why I don’t consider the prospect of pursuing women very sexy. Is it pure laziness, have I somehow lost touch with my male nature, or are there in fact better metaphors for launching relationships between men and women in the 21st century than the hunt?
Roiphe, an American writer on sexual politics, suggested in her column last week that men should indeed “pursue women”, as suggested by the trivial dating manual, The Rules.
But if I should be sceptical about Victorian notions about conducting relationships, why should I adopt the pre-Victorian notion of man-pursues-woman for actually launching them?
Most of Roiphe’s column is reasonable enough. She calls The Rules sexist and condescending, but argues that despite this, even “liberal, educated” American women are tempted by its prescriptions.
What I find implausible, even sinister, is her conclusion. “The truth is,” she tells us, “that there is something infinitely reassuring to everyone about men pursuing and women being pursued.”
Or as Rules author Ellen Fein says: “You can’t change nature. Nature is that man pursues woman or it doesn’t work out very well.”
Pursuit in the context of “The Rules” seems to mean a man struggling with a woman manipulating him into having a hard time getting close to her. The Rules advises women to “play hard to get, be mysterious, call the end to dates, let him pay” basically, to ignore their own instincts and the social developments of the last half century in these matters.
Roiphe believes the appeal of The Rules is that it evokes an extinct variety of romance. “Buried in The Rules,” Roiphe says, “is the faintest hint of a Jane Austen plot.”
Perhaps, but it is very faint indeed. And to conclude from this that men should be pursuing women is outrageous. For Austen’s heroines were struggling to find romance when all kinds of odds were piled up against them: geographical isolation, social constipation, the painstaking rituals of communication between the sexes. When a man “pursued” in these circumstances, he was struggling against the restraints of the milieu, not grappling with the misguided manipulations of the pursued.
What does Roiphe mean by “pursuit”? Cloaked men on horses stealing women in the night? Or just taking your date to an isolated spot, and not immediately cooperating when she asks to go home? Through a Barbara Cartland-tinged blur, the first may appear romantic, but is no more desirable than any kidnapping.
The second is among many modern twists on the pursuit of women. Roiphe made her reputation criticising the ersatz puritanism of American college codes of conduct. Whatever one thinks of them, those codes of conduct have been written to deal with that particular mode of sexual pursuit more commonly called sexual harassment.
Here in South Africa, when a man pursues a women, it is far from unusual for it to end with him and his accomplices raping her. This is not a notion of pursuit Roiphe wishes to encourage, but some men are blind to such subtleties.
In Ethiopia, if you pursue, abduct and rape a woman with the intention of marrying her, you can rest assured that the penal code specifically exempts you from prosecution.
Sexism is more subtle in the fragile, comfortable world of the Western middle classes than in rural Ethiopia or Afghanistan, but it is still here. It is foolish to encourage pursuit of women by men, because our world has not yet discarded entirely the idea conscious or unconscious that pursuit ends in a victory, and in a victor enjoying the spoils.
I canvassed the opinions of a number of women friends on the subject of The Rules. Their opinion, for the most part, was that yes, following its guidance might well land you a man but probably not the kind of man you want to be landed with.
Roiphe might have been correct if she had simply argued that men and women are confused about how to relate to each other, and that the success of The Rules shows how desperate even sensible people can be for guidance in these matters. But its success does not mean the abominable tract actually contains good advice, much less that men should be pursuing women.
There remains, of course, pursuit of a less contrived and more eternal variety, where one merely stumbles up against one’s own insecurities, and the vagaries of fate and the human heart.
Pursuit of that rather less contrived variety works for me, no matter what sex undertakes it. And I’m willing to prove it.
Come get me, Katie.