So it’s come to this. The non-profit Victoria Multi-Cultural Society, which operates the Victoria Event Centre, has hired a “consent captain.” Tanille Geib’s role is to make sure attendees behave themselves at mixed-gender events.
I mean, really? Men are so unreliable that a chaperone is required at public events to keep the women safe?
I recall a good friend who attended Catholic high school talking about dance nights. On these much-anticipated occasions, the nuns who ran the place would police the dance floor, making sure you could pass a ruler between each boy and girl.
But those were kids. We’re talking here about adults.
I’m with the French actor Catherine Deneuve and 100 of her female compatriots, who signed an open letter complaining that “what we are witnessing here is puritanism … claiming to promote the … protection of women, only to reduce them to defenceless prey … children with adult faces who demand to be protected.”
The female American author Lionel Shriver chimed in to note that: “We’re losing the distinction between serious sexual assault … and putting a hand on a knee.”
Deneuve and Shriver grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, when for the first time women were allowed to express their sexual desires as openly as men. The sexual revolution of that period liberated women.
Now they see that freedom assailed by excessively protective measures that threaten a return to the prudish and suffocating atmosphere of the Victorian era. They agree that “no” means “no.” But they believe themselves sufficiently empowered to make it stick.
Some reservations are needed here. There are occasions when things get out of hand and someone goes too far. That’s why we have bouncers at clubs and dance halls. Likewise, if a person is drunk or high on drugs, physical restraint might be called for.
But I don’t sense that this is primarily what the Multi-Cultural Society had in mind when it hired a “consent captain” (a term George Orwell would have been proud of). The concern, I think, is that attendees should be spared any form of unsolicited attention whatsoever.
And this is where the danger lies. We are well on the way to over-regulating normal human interactions. Indeed, not just over-regulating them, but over-policing them. The sins of the few are being magnified into an ever-present threat to all, and a new orthodoxy is emerging that turns trivial words and deeds into punishable acts.
While the segregation of the genders marches on, a similarly destructive piece of dogma is wreaking havoc on our culture.
Marching under the flag of “cultural misappropriation,” misguided activists are claiming for “their” culture its various contributions to society. Thus, only Indians can practise yoga. Only African-Americans can wear certain jewelry. And don’t even think of opening a Mexican restaurant if you aren’t from that part of the continent.
This isn’t just daft (our entire culture is an amalgam — try speaking “English” with all the Latin, Greek and French terms removed), it’s wilfully destructive.
In 2000, the American political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone, a book about the decline of communal organizations such as service clubs and bowling leagues. He traced this loss of social capital to a coarsening of civic life. If Putnam cared to produce a sequel, he might do worse than call it “Dancing Alone.”
I very much doubt you enhance and safeguard the place of women in society by fencing them off. I’m certain you do not advance the progress of culture by subdividing it into jealously guarded fiefdoms.
We tend to think of society as inevitably marching forward. But the forces of disengagement appear, for the time being at least, to be gaining the upper hand. No good can come of that.
