SEXUAL JOUSTING UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS

Here go my feminist credentials up in smoke! Maureen Dowd, very feminine and very feminist Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times has declared that the Strauss-Kahn headlines have caused a sea change in European attitudes toward women. If the former head of the IMF did in fact sexually assault a chambermaid, he should be appropriately prosecuted. But Dowd goes a lot further.

“In the wake of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, as more Frenchwomen venture sexual harassment charges against elite men, the capital of seduction is reeling at the abrupt shift from can-can to can’t-can’t. Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical weekly, still argues that “News always stops at the bedroom door,” but many French seem ready to bid adieu to the maxim.”

She writes about how Sarkozy is trying to re-invent himself as a loving family man. She cites the “fact” that the French are no longer going to wink at sexual impropriety. Berlusconi tops the current list of misogynists.

She also makes reference to how the French have long disdained the Puritanism of America but now everything may be changing. For me, and I am a fan of Ms Dowd, she has gone from the particular to the general, a long leap and a stumble.

I know what you’re thinking: I grew up at a time when pretty girls were fair game. They were submissive and knew how to flirt and how to protest and how to say “no.” And it is not that long ago that signs appeared in the dorm and frat windows of a major Canadian university reading “No means keep trying.” I know all that.

What is missing is not, as Dowd puts it, the macho of Ernest Hemingway, but the charm of sexual jousting; the back-and-forth of suggestion, innuendo, and flirting that characterized a very human exchange between a man and a woman. Both parties knew what the other one was up to. Both were adults. Both were capable of resistance or compliance. It was, admittedly, an uneven playing field.

Many years ago when I was doing features on CBC News I interviewed Germaine Greer. She was the hottest of the hot feminists. She had just published the “Female Eunuch.” She was in no mood for pushy men. I had to try her out. At one point I called her “dear.” I could hear the uproar coming through the control room glass. She pounced on me. But I knew she would. I hoped she would.

I forget, was it Livy or Ovid who wrote “The Art of Love.” For me, all the artistry has gone our of the male-female connection. I do not countenance the degradation of women. But I simply can’t tolerate the decline of that wonderful, sensual, sexual, human encounter that is measured and clever, and represents give-and-take between the sexes. We are, I think, still different.