I have to give Trump credit for the singular time I think he was truthful. For once, he actually spoke the truth when he said, “Women let you do it when you’re a star,” or something like that. He could have just as well have said, “….when you have star power,” because I think that is what is happening. Shared sex and shared power have gotten so mixed together that our culture is a real mess in gender relations.
Sadly, bartering for sex has become a coin of the realm in our culture. Sex, and most forms of touch, are exchanged for shared power, resources, stability, safety, etc. People, mostly men, who think they have power and resources to offer make a mistake. They often think they can easily make a deal for sex and touch. And they have reasons for thinking so.
I think that both men and women have had a role in this unfortunate, painful confusion. Men who assault women are blatantly wrong, but they have their reasons too. Women who use sexual energy to get what they want may act unskillfully.
It has gotten very confusing when sex and touch are given similar currency as power and resources. In our tradition, women have been schooled in the role of providers of progeny, sex and touch. Men have been schooled in the role of resource providers and power. Since WWII those roles have become fluid, and it should not be a complete surprise that men misinterpret social signals, that they step over the line, that they misuse their learned roles of bringers of resources or power.
We humans got ourselves in this situation beginning about 10,000 years ago. With the introduction of agriculture, men and women began to say to one another, “Let’s make a deal.” It was a one-to-one deal that we now call marriage. In one dramatic move, men and women abandoned over 200,000 years of evolved stability and a communal hunter-gatherer society. Power had been shared between the sexes as well as the role of provider of resources. Exclusive coupling was an oddity.
At the introduction of agricultural settlements, goods and power became almost synonymous . More significantly, men took that role to themselves. Men agreed to provide resources and stability. They would be the bringers of goods and power. Women agreed to provide a hearth and yield to the power bringers. Men would be assured of known progeny to whom they could pass their goods and power. Women promised exclusive access to the wombs where those progeny would be produced.
This bartered arrangement was not in the genes that had guided human relationships for over 200,000 years. It was a new deal, invented by humans attracted to power and stability. It is the deal many people still make today. Human contact, physical contact is something often bartered for. The bringers of resources and power mostly have the upper hand in the deal.
As women share more power, the bartering gets confusing. The football star may not now be as attractive because his star power now has a little less currency. But he doesn’t always know that.
The stability of a hearth based on a resource-provider contracting for exclusive access to sex is a shaky model to younger people. Men who attempt to use personal power in exchange for sex from less-powerful women are being correctly challenged.
I think it is a hopeful time, because the bartering model is losing its momentum. The marriage model is fading, slipping, evolving. I doubt our society will go back to a pre-agricultural model, but it is a good time to allow for new models of how to relate to one another to develop.
I hope we can throw power out of the deal and, if bartering is to occur, I’d like it to be on equal-footing of power. Whether the arrangement is exclusive or not will be up to the deal-makers.