Female choice is the greatest force in nature. It can make or destroy species – and civilisations.
We live in a period in which the consequences of female choice-making are more significant than they have ever been. This is because it has now become possible for women to choose, to a greater extent than ever before conceivable, whether to have children at all, how many, and with whom – from a potentially almost limitless array of potential partners. Nobody should (I hope it goes without saying) advocate for a moment returning to a time when they were not so free to choose. But we have not yet even begun to reckon with the consequences of this – in historical terms – extraordinary development.
This was brought home to me while reading three discomforting newspaper articles over the past few months. The first, an op-ed in the Telegraph, has a headline that tells you everything you need to know about the article itself: ‘Population decline will destroy the West as we know it’. Our populations are declining; birth rates are jumping off cliffs like lemmings; the result will be deteriorating living standards and the deathly struldbrugism that will flow from political power accumulating in the voting block of the old. The second article, in the Daily Mail, offers us an insight into the “disturbing world of femcels“, an online subculture of women who have given up on romance, dating, marriage, childbirth and so on, either because they consider themselves too unattractive or because they have been totally put off by porn or bad experiences with the disgusting, violent and sexually aggressive behaviour of some man or men. And the third article, in the Guardian, features Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, describing how the widespread availability of “aggressive hardcore pornography” is fuelling a “culture of misogyny and sexism” among boys and seriously disrupting teaching in schools as a result.
Any fool can see that the three problems are linked. To a certain extent it seems obvious that something about the material or socio-economic conditions of late modernity tend to result in fewer children being born – that trend is evident everywhere. It is probably also true that there is some effect on the birthrate, at the margins, of “climate anxiety” and environmentalist-driven anti-natalism. But it is even more obvious that the conditions in which many people now live are, not to put too fine a point on it, in psychic terms a bit crap. The many problems associated with smartphones are becoming so obvious that they cannot be denied, but the issue is I think deeper and broader than that – young people now often grow up in a cold, unforgiving environment that can only be described as dehumanising in the sense that it is devoid of genuine human connection.
Never mind the apocalyptic effect of the tsunami of extreme pornography which has been unleashed on society since the widespread adoption of the internet – a vast and unspeakable calamity. Never mind the Tinderisation of dating, which has concentrated sexual capital in such a tiny sliver of the population. And never mind the fact that young people nowadays grow up in an atmosphere of mutual recrimination and distrust between the sexes stemming from the pervasive atmosphere of political polarisation, cancellation, cyberflashing, upskirting, and so on and so forth.
Those are really just facets of a more fundamental feature of digital modernity: the reduction of the ‘other’ to a mere avatar or sprite, relevant not because she is a person in her own right, but rather in her constituting a transitory aspect of one’s digital or physical environment. This mode of interaction is fostered by the capacity of the internet to abstract the individual from context – from past or future, from feelings and background – and display him or her as a simple fleeting artefact of the present, soon to disappear into the ether to be replaced by some other avatar.
This has two consequences. The first one is a sense of sheer achedia with respect to human relationships in the round – a feeling that human interactions are cheap, superficial and largely as a result superfluous. Why spend the time getting to know somebody now when there are a billion other people one could briefly interact with online instead? Why listen to anybody in particular when there is so much to hear through one’s ear buds? Why understand anybody’s point of view when it only appears in your awareness as a tweet, blog post or meme before disappearing into the online ether? And, it follows, why go to the trouble of meeting somebody, getting to know him and falling in love? Why even make friends? From the article linked to above:
The second consequence is a lack of healthy self-esteem. How must it feel to grow up in a world in which literally everybody you meet – your friends, people in the street, even your parents – are more interested in what is going on in their phone, or on their laptop or tablet, than in listening to what you have to say? How must it feel to have most of one’s interactions with others mediated through a technological interface which is tailor-made to distract any potential interlocutor? This can be nothing other than mildly but relentlessly undermining of self-worth, leaving aside the sense of inadequacy that is bred by the competitiveness of social media in the developing mind.
The result of all of this – not for everyone, by any means, but a significant enough chunk of the population to be itself very significant – is a deep malaise, characterised not so much by hatred of humanity but by a vague lack of interest in other human beings as such, and an inchoate sense of disappointment in what life has to offer. Who, enmeshed in that dispiriting web, would want to bring children into the world?
You are likely familiar with the film Seven. In one scene, the Gwyneth Paltrow character, Tracy Mills, confides to William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) that, although she is pregnant, she is considering an abortion on the grounds that the city in which she lives is an unfit environment in which to raise a child. What we are I think witnessing is a much less dramatic but more pervasive playing out of that logic; a feeling amongst many young people that, since life in the digital age is, to use what seems to be the appropriate term, a bit “meh”, then having a baby is likely to be a bit “meh” for parent and child alike. Why afflict that sensation on either party by going through the rigmarole in the first place?
The Japanese fairy tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (often referred to in English as The Tale of the Princess Kaguya) sheds a great deal of light on this. (If you have not yet had the opportunity to see it, I strongly recommend Takahata Isao’s wonderful animated version, available on Netflix. Make sure you watch the subtitled, not the dubbed, edition.)
The story is one of the great contributions of Japanese civilisation to world folklore. In it, an elderly childless couple discover a tiny baby girl (Kaguya) hidden inside a bamboo shoot. They decide to raise her as their own, and she quickly grows into a beautiful woman. They also find in the bamboo forest gold and rich gowns with which to give her a life of luxury. She attracts many suitors, to whom she sets impossible tasks in order that they might try (and fail) to win her hand in marriage, and eventually even the Emperor of Japan tries to make her his own. But ultimately she rejects even him, and is in the end spirited away to the moon, which, it is revealed, is her true homeland, from which she was exiled for some unknown crime. Her parents are stricken with grief at her disappearance and, it is implied, then sicken and die.
As is so often the case with these stories, the tale asks us to hold in our minds two competing dispositions – in this case, to the task of giving birth and raising a child. On the one hand, to have a baby is wonderful: it produces something beautiful and vastly enriching. But on the other, to do so is to invite into your life great tragedy: the person that you love more than anything else will by necessity leave you, both in the sense of outgrowing you and in the sense of physically going out into the world. He or she will also, undoubtedly, in turn also suffer. And sooner or later you will grow old and die and your connection to that person will in any case be forever severed.
Having children is, therefore, neither wonderful nor tragic – it is both at once. And one cannot, indeed, have the wonder without the tragedy. Every parent must reconcile him- or herself to heartache; the only real question is just how much heartache there will in the end be.
This makes having babies a leap of faith. It will make you happy, but also make you sad (and, of course, for most of human history it could also quite easily literally kill the mother – making the leap of faith a visceral one indeed). It is hardly surprising, then, that many modern young people, for whom life, as we have seen, is already often rather insipid and pointless, should not want to embrace parenthood, and should indeed view it with trepidation as involving too much potential pain and suffering to be worth doing. Wonder and tragedy do not appeal, because life is not known by these people to contain such things; they are used to inhabiting an altogether more staid, arch and banalified reality, and view anything that intrudes upon it with trepidation and hostility.
As a father of daughters, I am particularly interested in how this all affects girls in particular. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, for all that the title suggests it is about the father of Kaguya, is very much concerned with matters of the feminine. Even the Emperor of Japan himself is in the end held to be essentially without consequence when set against the interests of Kaguya. The tale positions her at the heart of the matter. And, in particular, it seems to position her choice-making as the crux of everything. She will choose whom to marry – or not. Her suitors are desperate to win her hand. Even the Emperor wants her. But she will not be moved. Her decision is her own.
In one respect, this speaks to an ancient truth that any straight man reading this will appreciate: the deep and inscrutable mystery that is female decision-making in matters of the heart. Men, when it comes to sex, are simple creatures – we are, rather famously, not particularly discerning. Women are different. This means that, by and large, the choice-maker in such matters is the woman. The result is that young men spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out what it is that will make the target(s) of their affection find them appealing. We have a vague idea that it isn’t merely looks. So what is it? Is it fashion sense? Is it success, money, a good sense of humour, creativity, being sensitive, being a bad boy, being friendly, being aloof? Is it being good at sport, or good at playing guitar? Is it shared interests, or will opposites attract? Should I “be myself” or somebody else? What if I was the Emperor of Japan? Would she like me then?
In this regard, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter has a great deal to say about certain features of male-female relations which seem immutable across space and time. But there is also something deeper going on in the story. Because while Kaguya might be free to choose from her suitors, in the end of course she makes no choice at all. Rather, she – like Bartleby – “prefers not to”. Her decision is to make no decision, until ultimately the decision is forced upon her to retreat from the world and into the heavens whence she came.
It is ambiguous as to whether her reluctance to marry stems from a desire to avoid material attachments (knowing that she must one day return from her exile to Earth) or dissatisfaction with her options. But at root the symbolic message is the same, and seems a kind of foreshadowing or reverse echo of the future we now see quite clearly before us, wherein young women are en masse “preferring not to”, and in many cases indeed metaphorically retreating into the night sky, away from the world with all its anxieties, disappointments and drift. (It is undoubtedly significant that when men retreat from the world they go symbolically or actually downwards, into basements, cellars, caves, chasms, where they become enmeshed in video games, porn and misogynistic online content. Just as men are from Mars and women from Venus, men it seems are chthonic, while women are celestial.) This could be because of a desire to avoid childbirth and child-rearing entirely, or it could be the result of a lack of acceptable options – or, obviously, both.
Female choice matters, the implication of the tale would seem to be – and in truly civilisational terms. Remember that when Kaguya returns to the moon, her parents are stricken with grief – they will never recover and are in any case too old to have children of their own. It is also interesting in this regard that in some tellings, Kaguya sends the Emperor an elixir of immortality just before she leaves – which he then orders burned, since he does not want to live if he cannot ever see her again. When women as a whole come to “prefer not to”, in other words, the results can become cataclysmic. The means by which the civilisation will endure will dissipate in the sense, obviously, that no babies will be born, but it will also suffer a mortal blow in terms of morale: its men will have nothing left to really live for. Even if granted immortality, they will not take it – because why go on if there are no families, no children, no girlfriends, no wives?
I am no reactionary. If anything I lay the blame squarely on men’s shoulders for having so pitifully neglected the raising of good, honest sons who women will find appealing. And I am glad that my own daughters will have choices that would have been entirely unavailable to them if they had been born a hundred or so years ago. I also have no desire to display insensitivity to the many people who would very much like to have children if only they could – or indeed who prefer members of the same sex as partners in life. Nor do I wish to be seen to be implying that childbirth and childrearing are all that women’s lives ought to revolve around.
But, all the same, I look to the future that stretches ahead of us with a sense of foreboding. We have, inadvertently, created the conditions in which love, commitment, and family have either lost their appeal, or are slipping out of reach. The result is that many young women, Kaguya-like, increasingly if unconsciously come to see their life in the world as a mere transition or phase that will leave no trace behind it when it ends – a kind of exile before their eventual return, into themselves and from thence to the moon. They are exercising their choice, and they are choosing not to.
Given the conditions in which they have been raised, and given what is often on offer in respect of the young men by whom they are often surrounded, I do not really blame them. But it is both a tragedy and an incipient crisis. It is a tragedy because a life without love, without family, is for the vast majority of human beings a sad and humdrum affair. And it is a crisis because it means that in the long-term our civilisation will cease to endure. One of the fundamental features of the human condition is that men and women must collectively come to terms with each other’s existence, and join forces against the world together in raising families. Nobody, I hope it goes without saying, has lived any less of a life if he or she cannot have children, chooses not to do so, never meets anybody he or she wishes to settle down with, or is not attracted to the opposite sex. But nonetheless if by and large men and women in a given society do not form long-lasting, loving, mutually supportive relationships with one another in which to raise kids, then that society will, in the most literal sense, not survive. This then is a matter of the deepest, utmost seriousness – one of the many problems we face that simply cannot be resolved by politics, and which increasingly come to seem intractable if our current arrangements continue as they are.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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It’s actually best to click the link and read the full article for context because it’s easy to jump to conclusions and minimize this young lady’s experience. I think the thing this guy did wrong, well, after basically singling her out to act in such an inappropriate and unprofessional manner, was to ‘ghost’ her and stop giving her any shifts. When he overheard her on the CCTV confiding in colleagues about how creepy he was being only with her that should’ve been a wake-up call that he was out of order and over stepping the mark as her boss. He should’ve stopped being a sleaze, apologized for his behaviour, which obviously wasn’t welcome and made her feel uncomfortable, then he should’ve went ahead and treat her exactly like her colleagues.
So at first I was like, ”Only in Clown World does somebody think getting an extra 20 quid is harassment”, but there’s much more to it than that. I think the reason, as stated in the article, she went ahead for the sexual harassment claim as opposed to unfair dismissal is that she hadn’t worked there long enough to make a claim for the latter. He’d done it with a previous female staff member but if the staff just up and leave then he’s never going to be held to account and change his behaviour going forward. Well it looks like he might think twice before being a perv with any future staff and abusing his authority, which he obviously enjoyed doing.
She tried both sexual harrasment and unfair dismissal. The latter complaint was dismissed because she hadn’t been working there for long enough.
I concluded just from this article that the guy’s a slimeball.
Me too
I’m not keen on the micro regulation of workplace behaviour but other than leaving to find a job with a better employer I think her options were limited unless she is in a trade union but they probably wouldn’t hold much sway in a small business
I think what she did took guts, more guts than merely leaving and basically allowing him to behave this way continuously with future victims he singles out. By winning her case she’s presumably broken the cycle and the creep will think twice in future. He was blatantly grooming her, telling her to keep the fact he gave her extra cash a secret etc, so I’m very glad she listened to her intuition and didn’t accept any lifts from him. People, females especially, need to listen to their gut instinct ( their lizard brain, in reality ) and if something doesn’t feel right then it usually isn’t. Being all agreeable and thinking something won’t happen to you can be your downfall.
I generally agree and you make some good points. She could have left and left some online reviews calling him out- I like the idea of the market taking care of things like this- but I accept it’s not easy. I don’t think I’ve paid anyone (male or female) at work a compliment about their eyes or anything similar in the 38 years I have been there. I may remark on them looking smart or well but nothing beyond that. I don’t think winking necessarily constitutes inappropriate behaviour but it depends on the context and in this case it’s part of a much wider pattern.
Well-said. The ever-insightful Gavin de Becker would certainly agree with you.
Well look at the title; ”Winking at a female employee can be sexual harassment”, and we are presumably supposed to form a certain opinion based on the insinuation of that sentence. So that’s why I thought I’d beat the resident misogynists and advise people to read the DM article in order to get the bigger picture before making a judgment, seeing as it was a lot more than some over-sensitive snowflake girl taking offense and playing her ”victim card” because her boss winked at her.
The article was almost certainly written by someone who wanted to support the women’s side of the story. Stripped of all the decorations, it’s (almost certainly) “middle-aged married guy making clumsy attempts to flirt with a much younger woman and floundering spectacularly at that”. Which immediately leads to the question: “What did the women do to motivate this guy to make a total ass of himself in such a hopeless and expensive way?”
Viewed objectively, he didn’t do anything justifying actual outrage and she never really told him off, she just made fun of him when she thought he wouldn’t notice because she hadn’t noticed the CCTV camera. She then voluntarily stopped working there “for her exams” and called the guy again afterwards as she wanted to have more shifts. Having finally wised up to the situation and with a bit of distance, he chose to let the matter rest at that. And then, she sued him, ie, not because of what he allegedly did before but because he wasn’t willing to throw more money in her direction.
NB: That’s an attempt to the tell the side of the story the Mail left out based on the facts and some not entirely unlikely conjectures. As I don’t know any of the people, I do not claim that it must be true, just that it could.
Indeed, the clickbait title of this article is extremely misleading.
Sexual harassment like racial discrimination cases have no upper limit on compensation.
I agree the guy is clearly a slime ball and he should have apologised to her once he saw and heard the CCTV, and that would have been that. But no: he was exploiting the very good law which avoids having the judicial system tied up with petty disagreements between employee and employer in the probationary period, during which either side can walk away without having to give any reason or notice. He could have his way with her (or so he thought) then just say she wasn’t very good at her job and that’s that, he would be off scott-free. I am sure he’s tried it (and maybe had it) many times. It’s a kind of justice that this lady frustrated his efforts in the future… I hope.
And I hope Ms Almussawi invests her damages wisely.
I also hope that her win will not make potential employers see her as too big a risk as “a litigious little so and so” and exclude her on that basis alone.
BUT, and it’s a big BUT:
People really need to learn that sticks and stones…. etc. For a woman, this should be to learn how to dismiss cackhanded/sleazy advances. Most guys get it and walk off, tail between their legs.
She was not raped. Not even close. She seemed to deal with him well enough, and although I am not dismissing how stressful it is for many young women who have never had to deal with a lecherous bloke, she should have just left and avoided all the stress of the tribunal. Those waitressing jobs are two a penny.
But like I say, I hope she invests the money wisely. And that he realises what a sleazy twat he probably is.
And it’s probably too late to hope that this won’t open the floodgates to a load of vexatious and horrible accusations by manipulative “victims”, of either sex…
This.
Yes, thank you for pointing out such an important nuance here. Context matters, and they guy was clearly being a creep.
History Debunked: Why are so many older white men angry!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=585JGCCMZBo
Jenna Almussawi? Wejdi Moussa? I bet their ancestors were not at Bannockburn or Culloden.
Maybe if their ancestors had been at Culloden, Jenna and Wejdi wouldn’t have come into existence at all…
Were your ancestors at Stamford Bridge? Or Crecy?
Come on this dude’s obviously Welsh.
What a winker.
Just change one vowel in “winker”, lol.
its a joke. And explaining why a joke is a joke is never funny.
I suspect most DS readers understood without having it telegraphed to them.
It’s a relief to find the comments align with my views on this story. The tribunal found its way to the right answer in my opinion. Mr Moussa sounds like the kind of dangerous bully that the anti-harrassment laws should be keeping in check.
Very true
My wife’s former employer once said to her on the way back from the Bank “Do you fancy a white sheet job?”. She didn’t know what one was, when he told her she laughed and brushed it off. He always wanted a bit of the extra with her. No big deal, he never got it. I wonder how much she could have claimed?
We were talking about wolf whistles and so on the other night as it happens. She used to get the builders at the company whistle her and suggestive comments. It ended when she got older. She was quite flattered when younger and never took it seriously.
Women can be far worse than men. When I was an apprentice the women used to grab and twist everything they could when you were going up a ladder. I found it funny, some guys found it distressing and actually frightening; 50 women in a small section is intimidating.
Where is the line between acceptable and abuse? Today it seems nothing is acceptable from a bloke but a woman, ever seen a gaggle of them on a night out or at a strip show? They are worse than any bunch of guys I ever knew.
Perhaps the difference is in intent? The White Sheet Job was semi-serious (its a quicky in a Hotel), the women grabbing my balls was jokey in intent. This guy, well, he seemed to use it as a weapon and that is very different.
It’s not only women. As far as I can tell, everything is acceptable provided the person who did it wasn’t a heterosexual man, because that’s the only ‘serious’ case, all others are “just fun”. But as someone who has been a target of this from both men and women (men much more frequently, obviously) I can’t help asking “Whose fun?”
The entire concept of sexual harassment has well and truly jumped the shark now.
That said, if you read the FULL story, the guy really was overstepping his bounds, being a creep and in the wrong in this particular case. There is, after all, a little detail called CONTEXT.