“Mommy, will I have your toxic femininity when I grow up?”
Heather Heying and her husband, Brett Weinstein, were involuntarily thrust into the national news over events at Evergreen University in Washington where they taught. If the name rings a bell, here is part of the story.
In July, professor Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, who is also a professor at the school, filed a $3.8 million lawsuit against Evergreen State College. The lawsuit claimed the school created a hostile work environment and failed to protect the couple from threats by students. Friday the school settled, agreeing to pay Weinstein and Heying $450,000, plus an additional $50,000 to cover their attorney’s fees. Weinstein and his wife also resigned their positions at the school.
Heying is not a conservative, but she is very intelligent and an honest intellectual, a rare find these days. On to her current essay published at Quillette:
On Toxic Femininity
Two anecdotes should suffice. Walking alone in my sun-kissed west LA neighborhood one summer, I was approached by a man looking for extras for a beach scene in a movie. Before I had said a word, he told me where to go, how much I would be paid per day, and what would be expected of me: that I stand around in a bikini, among others similarly clad. I told him I was going to college. He literally looked me up and down, adopted a frown, and assured me that I did not need to go to college. Beach scenes were my future, and from there—who can say? Better beach scenes, presumably.
and,
All of which leads us directly to a topic not much discussed: toxic femininity.
Sex and gender roles have been formed over hundreds of thousands of years in human evolution, indeed, over hundreds of millions of years in our animal lineage. Aspects of those roles are in rapid flux, but ancient truths still exist. Historical appetites and desires persist. Straight men will look at beautiful women, especially if those women are a) young and hot and b) actively displaying. Display invites attention.
Hotness-amplifying femininity puts on a full display, advertising fertility and urgent sexuality. It invites male attention by, for instance, revealing flesh, or by painting on signals of sexual receptivity. This, I would argue, is inviting trouble. No, I did not just say that she was asking for it. I did, however, just say that she was displaying herself, and of course she was going to get looked at.
plus,
Creating hunger in men by actively inviting the male gaze, then demanding that men have no such hunger—that is toxic femininity. Subjugating men, emasculating them when they display strength—physical, intellectual, or other—that is toxic femininity. Insisting that men, simply by virtue of being men, are toxic, and then acting surprised as relationships between men and women become more strained—that is toxic femininity. It is a game, the benefits of which go to a few while the costs are shared by all of us.
RTWDT.
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