The thing about that Vargas-Cooper article that I discussed yesterday that has attracted the most attention is a rather gruesome little anecdote she tells. And yes, I’m going to make you read it. As she tells it, the point of the anecdote is to provide an example of the “aggressive, hostile, and humiliating components of male sexual arousal”.
A word in Vargas-Cooper’s defense, she does not claim, as some have accused her, that this anecdote in itself proves anything about men. She gives other evidence to that fact and she is just using the anecdote to put some colour and flesh on the evidence as any good writer would. Is that other evidence compelling? I would say “no” (and have said so in my previous post) but you can make up your own mind.
What I would like to do with her anecdote, however, is to turn it around and ask about women. What sorts of things might we be tempted to conclude about women in general and Natasha Vargas-Cooper in particular from this anecdote? Because that is fair? Isn’t it? If we can use this anecdote to make a general point about men, well it’s reasonable to at least wonder if there is anything to be said the other way.
So here is the anecdote:
‘Thank you for coming here today Ms. Vargas-Cooper. I appreciate that you have travelled some distance to be with us today. Would you remind me, which big eastern city are you from? Or is it a big west-coast city? I can’t remember.’
Answer from witness inaudible on tape
“Thank you. I must apologize before we begin. Ms Vargas-Cooper, but given the rather delicate nature of the case before us some of my questions may, at times, seem a little invasive.’
Answer inaudible
“Why that is very understanding of you. I’ll begin then. You tell us that you had known this gentleman for some time before the events that concern us. Some of my partners wanted me to ask you if you also knew the woman? The ex-girlfriend? And I might say the rather recently ex girlfriend?’
Answer inaudible
‘I appreciate your puzzlement but my colleagues are, well, they are all women, and when they were discussing this, they all immediately seized on the issue of the other woman and you’re relationship to her. They also wondered, while we are at it, which of the two did you know first? And they wanted to know, as I say, how close you were to this other woman? We’re you, by any chance more her friend than his beforehand?’
Answer inaudible
‘As I say, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, they wanted to know and my colleagues are not only all women, they are also senior partners and I am not. I wouldn’t want to suggest anything about their motives in wondering about these things but let me ask you a bit about your motives here. Speaking as a man, I know that if I were having sex with a woman who had broken up with a man I knew, I couldn’t help but worry about the comparisons she might be making. For the benefit of those of us trying to understand what happened here, could you tell the court about your attitudes towards this other woman? Did you worry at all about any comparisons that he might be making between your sexual performance and that of his former partner? And, if so, might those concerns have had something to do with the your, you must admit, rather strong commitment to doing whatever it took to please him?’
Answer inaudible
‘I’m sorry about dwelling on what are intimate and private matters for you but I must ask one more question. You have drawn some general conclusions about how men’s sexual attitudes drive women’s sexual behaviours. You have suggested that behaviours such as getting bikini waxes, wearing thongs and submitting to anal sex might just be driven by male desires and that pornography has amplified the force of these desires. But wouldn’t you admit that the behaviour of other women also has something to do with it? That perhaps a competitive response to what a woman perceives or imagines what other women are or are not willing to do in bed just might enter into her decision making?’
Answer inaudible
‘Moving along, however, I am curious about why you pursued this particular relationship. You are a very attractive young woman Ms. Vargas-Cooper and I assume you don’t lack for interested suitors.’
Answer inaudible
'You’re quite right, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, that was out of line. I apologize.
‘Still, I am a little puzzled about the nature of your interest. This gentleman had, you tell us, just broken up with his long-term girlfriend. He was most likely quite distraught. There is considerable psychological research that suggests that men are more emotionally upset by break ups than women tend to be. Did you know that Ms. Vargas-Cooper?’
Answer inaudible
‘Strictly speaking, I ask the questions here and you answer them. But, since you ask, what I am trying to get at is the nature of your interest in this man. You can see how someone might just wonder why you would pursue a sexual relationship with a man whose life was in emotional turmoil. That doesn’t sound like the sort of situation most likely to procure a satisfactory relationship for you or him.’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you for volunteering that information Ms. Vargas-Cooper but I think most of us had already figured out that this encounter was more of a hook up than the beginning of a serious commitment. That said, I still think reasonable people might wonder why you would be interested in a man clearly in an unhappy and fragile state for even something so temporary?’
Answer inaudible
‘I’ll move on. You tell us that this man invited you to his apartment?’
Witness apparently nods in agreement
“I’m not from the big city, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, but here we tend to ask a woman out to a neutral location first. Even asking her for dinner is a bit of a jump for a first encounter just for two. It might create a sense of obligation on her part. We’d start with coffee or maybe a drink somewhere and not with what you describe as a “perfunctory dinner” at our apartment.’
Answer inaudible
‘Again, I thank you for volunteering that. As I say, I think it is already established that this encounter was more about sex than about a relationship. But, speaking for myself only here, if I were, hypothetically speaking, asking a woman out with only sex in mind, I’d still hesitate about asking her to my apartment for dinner. You may think I am playing the gentleman here, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, but, even from a purely strategic perspective, a man wouldn’t want to appear to presume.
‘Let me ask you a direct question. You say he invited you to a perfunctory dinner and then you progressed very quickly to the bedroom—I imagine in those little apartments big city people live in that that wasn’t a huge distance? I mean physically speaking or, rather, it wasn’t a huge distance linearly?’
Answer inaudible
“Okay, so we have established that this was a fairly intimate situation from the very outset. Can I ask, had you said or done anything before this invitation that might have given this gentleman the impression that sex was likely?’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you. I haven’t consulted with them in this, but I’m guessing that the women I work with are curious about how long before you gave these indications. Did you do so, for example, while the break up of this couple was taking place? Or perhaps even before?’
Answer inaudible
‘You’re quite right, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, I am rather dwelling on these issues. I’ll move on.
‘In your anecdote, you said the following: “I asked why, seeing as how any straight man who has had experience with anal sex knows that it’s a big production and usually has a lot of false starts and abrupt stops.” Would you say it is also reasonable that any woman who has had experience with anal sex would also know these things?’
Answer inaudible
‘Again, I am the one asking the questions and you are answering. But, again since you ask, it seems to me that a reasonable person might assume, based on your story, that you had, in fact, experienced anal sex before this encounter?’
Answer inaudible
‘If this were a rape case, you would be quite right to ask why your sexual history is relevant, Ms. Vargas-Cooper. But it isn’t a rape case. You have suggested that this gentleman’s prior knowledge about anal sex was relevant. Wouldn’t you agree that it is fair to ask what basis you are making your assertions about what his attitudes might be?’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you. One of my partners, reading your anecdote, she wondered if maybe you weren’t a little concerned with establishing your own credentials in supplying this information about … shall we say about the challenges of anal sex. Because the story wouldn’t lose much if you had simply said that he asked you for anal sex and you asked why without explaining anything further. My partner put it rather bluntly. She said, “Is she complaining or bragging?”’
Answer inaudible
‘I appreciate that you don’t appreciate that question, Ms. Vargas-Cooper. I am sure I wouldn’t appreciate it much if I were in your position. I’ll move on.’
‘In explaining the significance of your own anecdote, you said the following:
Answer inaudible
“Well, you are the one who brought feminism into the discussion. You have quite a bit to say on the subject and I’d even go so far as to suggest that you resent the way some kinds of feminism set women up with what you describe as false expectations about sexuality. Sometimes you express this in ways that suggest you take it personally. Would you agree with that?’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you for that information. Returning to your criticisms of feminism, would you agree that one of your criticisms in this article was that some varieties of feminism misled women by telling them that they could “have sex like a man”?
Answer inaudible
‘You are right; I did not quote you accurately. I’m old-fashioned and an officer of the court, so I chose to put things more prudishly. The rather rich expression you use is no doubt better. But tell me, that attitude is not just associated not just with some varieties of feminism but also with a hit television show that ran for about six years approximately a decade ago now?’
Answer inaudible
‘Yes, Sex and the City, that was what it was called. Would you agree then that it is fair to argue that this attitude of wanting to have sex like a man didn’t spring solely from the vision of just some feminists?’
Answer inaudible
‘What I am getting at is that in order for an idea to draw millions of women viewers to a television show it would have to be the case that this particular seed, wherever it originated, fell on fertile ground?’
Answer inaudible
‘Yes, that is a big question for us to draw conclusions about. Let’s move back to areas where your authority is certain. In your description of the sex you had with this gentleman, you said you assumed a number of roles in an attempt to please him. You wrote, “Over the course of the tryst, I trotted out every parlor trick and sexual persona I knew. I was coquettish then submissive, vocal then silent, aggressive then downright commandeering.” It’s a fair assumption then that you were willing to do a lot of things to please this man?’
Answer inaudible
“And it is also a fair assumption that you did all these things to please him in this case and not yourself? You weren’t, for example, being “coquettish” because this was something you had always craved doing but because you wanted to make him respond?’
Answer inaudible
‘And when he did suggest anal sex because, as he put it, “that is the only thing that will make you uncomfortable” and you promptly agreed, the reason you did agree was to please him?’
Answer inaudible
‘You’ll have to be patient with me but, as a man, I am puzzled why a woman would agree to do something that not only wasn’t going to do much for her but was actually going to cause her discomfort and would do this solely to gratify the man who asked her to do this?’
Answer inaudible
‘You’re right, I do think it is odd that you agreed to this. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.’
A word in Vargas-Cooper’s defense, she does not claim, as some have accused her, that this anecdote in itself proves anything about men. She gives other evidence to that fact and she is just using the anecdote to put some colour and flesh on the evidence as any good writer would. Is that other evidence compelling? I would say “no” (and have said so in my previous post) but you can make up your own mind.
What I would like to do with her anecdote, however, is to turn it around and ask about women. What sorts of things might we be tempted to conclude about women in general and Natasha Vargas-Cooper in particular from this anecdote? Because that is fair? Isn’t it? If we can use this anecdote to make a general point about men, well it’s reasonable to at least wonder if there is anything to be said the other way.
So here is the anecdote:
Never was this made plainer to me than during a one-night stand with a man I had actually known for quite a while. A polite, educated fellow with a beautiful Lower East Side apartment invited me to a perfunctory dinner right after his long-term girlfriend had left him. We quickly progressed to his bed, and things did not go well. He couldn’t stay aroused. Over the course of the tryst, I trotted out every parlor trick and sexual persona I knew. I was coquettish then submissive, vocal then silent, aggressive then downright commandeering; in a moment of exasperation, he asked if we could have anal sex. I asked why, seeing as how any straight man who has had experience with anal sex knows that it’s a big production and usually has a lot of false starts and abrupt stops. He answered, almost without thought, “Because that’s the only thing that will make you uncomfortable.”Okay, let’s pause there a moment and imagine we’re in this situation and how we would react at this point. Got it? Okay, now you can continue below and read how Vargas-Cooper actually did react.
This was, perhaps, the greatest moment of sexual honesty I’ve ever experienced—and without hesitation, I complied.Okay, I’m going to cross examine the witness for a moment here. All you'll get is my questions; you'll have to imagine her answers for yourself. This cross examination is going to take place in a courtroom in a small city somewhere in the middle of the country. It’s a movie courtroom so we’ll play fast and loose with the rules here. It's July and the air conditioning is not working and the courtroom is very hot. A number of fans have been brought in to make it less uncomfortable. Excuse me a moment while I go change into a light suit; a suit that is rumpled so as to suggest that I have had a number of other appearances already today. See you in a second.
‘Thank you for coming here today Ms. Vargas-Cooper. I appreciate that you have travelled some distance to be with us today. Would you remind me, which big eastern city are you from? Or is it a big west-coast city? I can’t remember.’
Answer from witness inaudible on tape
“Thank you. I must apologize before we begin. Ms Vargas-Cooper, but given the rather delicate nature of the case before us some of my questions may, at times, seem a little invasive.’
Answer inaudible
“Why that is very understanding of you. I’ll begin then. You tell us that you had known this gentleman for some time before the events that concern us. Some of my partners wanted me to ask you if you also knew the woman? The ex-girlfriend? And I might say the rather recently ex girlfriend?’
Answer inaudible
‘I appreciate your puzzlement but my colleagues are, well, they are all women, and when they were discussing this, they all immediately seized on the issue of the other woman and you’re relationship to her. They also wondered, while we are at it, which of the two did you know first? And they wanted to know, as I say, how close you were to this other woman? We’re you, by any chance more her friend than his beforehand?’
Answer inaudible
‘As I say, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, they wanted to know and my colleagues are not only all women, they are also senior partners and I am not. I wouldn’t want to suggest anything about their motives in wondering about these things but let me ask you a bit about your motives here. Speaking as a man, I know that if I were having sex with a woman who had broken up with a man I knew, I couldn’t help but worry about the comparisons she might be making. For the benefit of those of us trying to understand what happened here, could you tell the court about your attitudes towards this other woman? Did you worry at all about any comparisons that he might be making between your sexual performance and that of his former partner? And, if so, might those concerns have had something to do with the your, you must admit, rather strong commitment to doing whatever it took to please him?’
Answer inaudible
‘I’m sorry about dwelling on what are intimate and private matters for you but I must ask one more question. You have drawn some general conclusions about how men’s sexual attitudes drive women’s sexual behaviours. You have suggested that behaviours such as getting bikini waxes, wearing thongs and submitting to anal sex might just be driven by male desires and that pornography has amplified the force of these desires. But wouldn’t you admit that the behaviour of other women also has something to do with it? That perhaps a competitive response to what a woman perceives or imagines what other women are or are not willing to do in bed just might enter into her decision making?’
Answer inaudible
‘Moving along, however, I am curious about why you pursued this particular relationship. You are a very attractive young woman Ms. Vargas-Cooper and I assume you don’t lack for interested suitors.’
Answer inaudible
'You’re quite right, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, that was out of line. I apologize.
‘Still, I am a little puzzled about the nature of your interest. This gentleman had, you tell us, just broken up with his long-term girlfriend. He was most likely quite distraught. There is considerable psychological research that suggests that men are more emotionally upset by break ups than women tend to be. Did you know that Ms. Vargas-Cooper?’
Answer inaudible
‘Strictly speaking, I ask the questions here and you answer them. But, since you ask, what I am trying to get at is the nature of your interest in this man. You can see how someone might just wonder why you would pursue a sexual relationship with a man whose life was in emotional turmoil. That doesn’t sound like the sort of situation most likely to procure a satisfactory relationship for you or him.’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you for volunteering that information Ms. Vargas-Cooper but I think most of us had already figured out that this encounter was more of a hook up than the beginning of a serious commitment. That said, I still think reasonable people might wonder why you would be interested in a man clearly in an unhappy and fragile state for even something so temporary?’
Answer inaudible
‘I’ll move on. You tell us that this man invited you to his apartment?’
Witness apparently nods in agreement
“I’m not from the big city, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, but here we tend to ask a woman out to a neutral location first. Even asking her for dinner is a bit of a jump for a first encounter just for two. It might create a sense of obligation on her part. We’d start with coffee or maybe a drink somewhere and not with what you describe as a “perfunctory dinner” at our apartment.’
Answer inaudible
‘Again, I thank you for volunteering that. As I say, I think it is already established that this encounter was more about sex than about a relationship. But, speaking for myself only here, if I were, hypothetically speaking, asking a woman out with only sex in mind, I’d still hesitate about asking her to my apartment for dinner. You may think I am playing the gentleman here, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, but, even from a purely strategic perspective, a man wouldn’t want to appear to presume.
‘Let me ask you a direct question. You say he invited you to a perfunctory dinner and then you progressed very quickly to the bedroom—I imagine in those little apartments big city people live in that that wasn’t a huge distance? I mean physically speaking or, rather, it wasn’t a huge distance linearly?’
Answer inaudible
“Okay, so we have established that this was a fairly intimate situation from the very outset. Can I ask, had you said or done anything before this invitation that might have given this gentleman the impression that sex was likely?’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you. I haven’t consulted with them in this, but I’m guessing that the women I work with are curious about how long before you gave these indications. Did you do so, for example, while the break up of this couple was taking place? Or perhaps even before?’
Answer inaudible
‘You’re quite right, Ms. Vargas-Cooper, I am rather dwelling on these issues. I’ll move on.
‘In your anecdote, you said the following: “I asked why, seeing as how any straight man who has had experience with anal sex knows that it’s a big production and usually has a lot of false starts and abrupt stops.” Would you say it is also reasonable that any woman who has had experience with anal sex would also know these things?’
Answer inaudible
‘Again, I am the one asking the questions and you are answering. But, again since you ask, it seems to me that a reasonable person might assume, based on your story, that you had, in fact, experienced anal sex before this encounter?’
Answer inaudible
‘If this were a rape case, you would be quite right to ask why your sexual history is relevant, Ms. Vargas-Cooper. But it isn’t a rape case. You have suggested that this gentleman’s prior knowledge about anal sex was relevant. Wouldn’t you agree that it is fair to ask what basis you are making your assertions about what his attitudes might be?’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you. One of my partners, reading your anecdote, she wondered if maybe you weren’t a little concerned with establishing your own credentials in supplying this information about … shall we say about the challenges of anal sex. Because the story wouldn’t lose much if you had simply said that he asked you for anal sex and you asked why without explaining anything further. My partner put it rather bluntly. She said, “Is she complaining or bragging?”’
Answer inaudible
‘I appreciate that you don’t appreciate that question, Ms. Vargas-Cooper. I am sure I wouldn’t appreciate it much if I were in your position. I’ll move on.’
‘In explaining the significance of your own anecdote, you said the following:
This encounter proves an unpleasant fact that does not fit the feminist script on sexuality: pleasure and displeasure wrap around each other like two snakes.That’s a rather powerful way of putting it. But reading that I get the impression that, at some level, this story is not just about relationships between women and men but it is also about how relationships between women affect and perhaps even drive relationships between women and men. Would you agree with that?’
Answer inaudible
“Well, you are the one who brought feminism into the discussion. You have quite a bit to say on the subject and I’d even go so far as to suggest that you resent the way some kinds of feminism set women up with what you describe as false expectations about sexuality. Sometimes you express this in ways that suggest you take it personally. Would you agree with that?’
Answer inaudible
‘Thank you for that information. Returning to your criticisms of feminism, would you agree that one of your criticisms in this article was that some varieties of feminism misled women by telling them that they could “have sex like a man”?
Answer inaudible
‘You are right; I did not quote you accurately. I’m old-fashioned and an officer of the court, so I chose to put things more prudishly. The rather rich expression you use is no doubt better. But tell me, that attitude is not just associated not just with some varieties of feminism but also with a hit television show that ran for about six years approximately a decade ago now?’
Answer inaudible
‘Yes, Sex and the City, that was what it was called. Would you agree then that it is fair to argue that this attitude of wanting to have sex like a man didn’t spring solely from the vision of just some feminists?’
Answer inaudible
‘What I am getting at is that in order for an idea to draw millions of women viewers to a television show it would have to be the case that this particular seed, wherever it originated, fell on fertile ground?’
Answer inaudible
‘Yes, that is a big question for us to draw conclusions about. Let’s move back to areas where your authority is certain. In your description of the sex you had with this gentleman, you said you assumed a number of roles in an attempt to please him. You wrote, “Over the course of the tryst, I trotted out every parlor trick and sexual persona I knew. I was coquettish then submissive, vocal then silent, aggressive then downright commandeering.” It’s a fair assumption then that you were willing to do a lot of things to please this man?’
Answer inaudible
“And it is also a fair assumption that you did all these things to please him in this case and not yourself? You weren’t, for example, being “coquettish” because this was something you had always craved doing but because you wanted to make him respond?’
Answer inaudible
‘And when he did suggest anal sex because, as he put it, “that is the only thing that will make you uncomfortable” and you promptly agreed, the reason you did agree was to please him?’
Answer inaudible
‘You’ll have to be patient with me but, as a man, I am puzzled why a woman would agree to do something that not only wasn’t going to do much for her but was actually going to cause her discomfort and would do this solely to gratify the man who asked her to do this?’
Answer inaudible
‘You’re right, I do think it is odd that you agreed to this. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.’
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