This article is a metaphor for our culture. We have lost the story, the picture of what a loving, satisfying society looks like. We need to write a new story of room one, "mutual discovery and union, giving frame of mind, trust of your heart, offering yourself," for the good of the whole.
26
How would you David(not necessarily your personal life) like to open up to how love and life growing up as a male in America was for many males you never ever hear about; we're only hearing about all the evil doers concerning sex with women. How about all the males that have found the first room and and the second room and the third room. What are their stories? What makes them different? How are they really feeling about their relationships with women? Some find room one, some two, others three...ain't nothing new under the sun....and it really doesn't matter which sex, males for what ever reason, seem to have a higher vacancy rate than females in room three....
3
Most men are in those metaphorical rooms of love and prospecting. As a child and a woman I had to deal with my share of predators, those men who cared nothing for my feelings, but used me as a tool for gratification and domination. Predators tend to be misogynists, men who actually have a hatred for women or pedophiles if they prey on children.
But many men are merely sexist and are threatened by women having equal status. They may bumble and behave badly at times, but I wouldn't call them predators, not unless their behaviors become part of a pattern.
These trends in our society won't change until parents and schools start educating boys from a very young age to treat all human beings with kindness and respect.
39
Is there supposed to be some sort of insight here? Brooks has revealed nothing that we don’t already know. What he does is what he always does: to frame common knowledge in his obsessively structured, romanticized, categories, in this case the three rooms of love, prospector, and predator. Brooks does identify one legitimate cultural enabler of sexual predation, pop culture. “Most pop songs are about this kind of conquest.” But as usual he doesn’t go beneath the surface on his point. This would be a subject worthy of deeper analysis
But, there’s a fourth room Brooks conveniently doesn’t acknowledge. It’s a room adjacent to the other three rooms, but Brooks keeps the doors to it locked. This is the room of Brooks’ much-loved “biblical ethic” that he refers to so often. In this room males are taught the biblical tradition that females are mere adjuncts to males. Adam came first; Eve was created from his rib. Women are to obey their husbands and support them. Their other primary role is to bear children. That, according to Christianity, is to only purpose of sex. Both points, the subservience of women and sex only for procreation are unnatural. Yet they drive the formation of many males’ development of attitudes towards women. It’s way past time to investigate the forth room, David.
118
Room one does exist. It's not at full capacity, but it could be. It is the room where I reside. I have been faithful and respectful of my wife of 50 years and respectful of other females for about the same amount of time. I wasn't born respectful. In grade school and high school, I definitely lived in room two. But I matured to room one.
The difference between room two and room three is simple. Empathy. Those with little or none, spend their lives in room three. I have known a few of these guys and they cannot learn their way out of it. All we can do is to stop ignoring it. People like Weinstein, Cosby, Trump and the rest, have to pay a huge price - the earlier, the better. They may not have empathy for the woman they abuse but they do care about themselves.
116
And being in that first room of building a relationship also protects woman and men from the he said she said disagreements of what is rape. I suggested to my stepsons when they were younger, than if you don’t know the girl well enough (ie you haven’t built a relationship over a period of time) then you have no idea how she would react to your advances, This protects both parties.
8
The NYT printed a piece a few years ago quoting University of Pennsylvania female undergrads stating they purposely have one night stands rather than pursuing relationships which would hinder their careers. So are they predators? Harassers?
What about the female teachers who have been arrested in the USA for having sex with their male students?
If David Brooks stepped onto a college campus he would find the young women are frequently the sexual aggressors and harasses. Writing the article in gendered fashion ignores all the sexual "progress" feminists have made in the past 50 years. Substitute gender neutral pronouns and then maybe his column might make sense - but most people are not Weinstein and not predators and not victims. America is one of the safest places on earth.
13
This is predation on the spotlight on predation (thank Goddess we have a spotlight) to knock instead over the head the innocent consenting adults who generously give each other a good time with no outdated repressive religiously shaming ties attached to enforce insulated follow-up with the identical partners so bible or other holy tradition thumping Pharisees feel vindicated in the safely caged confinement of their fretful bigotry.
Here a self-anointed lust police, otherwise habitually claiming divine anointment, swaying a semi-automatic gun of superior morality condemns sexual pleasure for pleasure's sake as 'degraded', in narrow-minded denial that it can be shared in mutual respect. ISIS preacher al-Baghdadi and Times preacher Brooks are united in condemnation. Decency: no single word has historically haunted us into more useless suffering than the word the pious adore to help them inflict upon themselves and others their idiotic and oppressive will, warped by wacky (and unfortunately still stubbornly widespread) worldviews. The strongest resistance comes from the young not wholly worn down yet by premedieval overhang in the form of a moral madness majority bombardment and who dare challenge what goes counter their innate wisdom informing them playfully, joyfully, lustfully that it's okay. Resist! Rock, roll, punk, rage! Whatever makes you Tick & Fly! And may you not be punished with thwarted access to birth control, or worse.
Any lustful religious or sexual expletive!
7
Hopefully Donald Trump will be prosecuted and convicted for his sexual assaults in addition to his treason and obstruction of justice. He really should've been sent to prison for his crimes decades ago. If he had been rotting away in prison Putin never would've appointed him president.
39
Utter babbling incoherence, bordering on very disturbing imaginations. Rooms of love? Rooms dropping from common culture? Sex is a gold nugget? Most pop songs? Girl I want your body? Rack up victories?
Here's hoping Mr Brooks is kept away from humans for the next few weeks until his pulse rate is normal, and his rooms are not so blurry
27
Saw David was trending on twitter and wanted to give his article a read.
For the most part I agree with David. I grew up very literate and most of my books romanticized relationships. Relationships were sweet and tender and had by people that really cared about one another. So I was pretty much loitering around room 1 most of my life and was shocked once or twice that while I though I was in room 1, my girlfriends were in room 2 and one bitter case the feminine version of room 3. Those experiences pretty much disabused me about romance until I did meet misses right and have enjoyed many years of contented domesticity.
To comment on Bill Clinton...yeah...I've dismissed his antics as that of a horn-dog. My bad. He was still a decent President if not a great relationship example.
13
I found my way back to the Times and this article when I saw David Brooks' name trending on Twitter. After reading it, I can see why there's outrage.
"...the line between the prospector room and the predator room is getting blurrier...the line between unwanted sexual attention and force is growing indistinct."
What?! Why can't men simply control themselves and not stare, gawk, make sexual innuendos to, touch, or catcall women? Why the confusion? And how can there ever be a blurry line when it comes to force? No is no. Force is force. What's indistinct about that? How can the Times print this?
Just stop it already, this mournful Boomer agonizing over "confusing" changes in what's acceptable male behavior that should have happened in the 60s when they were "changing the world". It's now getting creepy.
27
In a long life I have had to deal many times with sexual predators. I always make it very clear that "No" means "No" and tell them very firmly that their behavior will not be tolerated. Women must not identify as victims; they must stand up to these childish, "powerful" men. This is what I believe; this is what I taught my daughters.
18
Predators are few? Boy, are you out of touch with reality. They are many, and they are everywhere.
26
Sex is a multivariate reality where the first two rooms coexist. You might move from one to the other, but the door between them is seldom locked unless you choose to lock it.
How potential and actual partners respond to you influences current and future behavior; many women are attracted to some types of men for flings, and to other types as potential long-term partners or husbands. The former tend to avail themselves of the pleasure in the second room, while the latter tend to settle down sooner.
Yes, many women like to get around too, and that second room is the place to do it. In this age of birth control and modern medicine, there is plenty of room for exploration and flexibility as long as it is done honestly. Calling the second room a marketplace for prospectors degrades a persistent and pleasurable part of reality.
None of this excuses the behavior of the third room. Equating it with the first two rooms is entirely and thoroughly inaccurate and misleading. It is an evil universe unto itself.
18
“But I don’t think good men wake up one morning and suddenly start thrusting their tongue down the throats of women they barely know. You’ve got to walk through a certain number of doors before you’re capable of that kind of behavior.”
In the recent documentary on Vietnam it was said that boot camp somehow transformed good American boys into killers. There was a comment on this by someone who had been through boot camp and then actual combat. “We are already killers,” he said. “Boot camp is just the finishing school.”
As usual, Brooks gets everything backwards. What really happens is that we start off in room three. We men like sex and will use violence to get it. We start off as beasts. But then, through a long process of socialization, we are trained to sublimate this drive into love. We learn to go from room three, through room two, to room one. But it’s only a thin veneer, and often, as in the case of Weinstein, this socialization fails. There is only a minute difference separating the human from the bestial. All religious traditions have recognized this: that freedom is the awareness that freedom is in danger. That at any moment we are in danger of becoming less than human.
21
Brooks tarnishes an otherwise thoughtful essay by demeaning non-monogamous relationships as "degraded". Bot men and women, lovers and prospectors, can lead romantically fulfilling lives provided their moral compass is guided by honesty and consent.
10
.
Sex is like air: no big deal unless you’re not getting any.
After years of field research, I feel compelled to share insights on this topic:
1. There is someone for everyone; maybe even a type of person that will work out.
2. If you’re over 30 you can find that person on Match.com or other dating sites.
3. American culture is over-sexed. We can tone it down, get some class.
4. Learn to couples dance – it’s an excellent way to get to know a person.
5. Sex and money are two big reasons people get together or break up.
6. Size and performance matter (these days - alas).
7. Wait for the third date to get physical; by the fifth date a woman will wonder what is wrong if you have not gotten physical – or discussed it.
8. Be sure to ask for and get consent; if she is drunk then there is NO CONSENT.
Good luck to you all. And wear a condom!
19
Wow. In this column David Brooks is at his elegant best. It is no small accomplishment to say so much, so gracefully, in less than 800 words.
20
It's not about sex. It's about violence and domination.
25
So often with a Brooks column, I feel like I'm reading an executive summary of a longer, more thoughtful and interesting discussion
5
Naive. "A small percentage" of men? If 20% of American women and 33% of women in the world has been sexually assaulted, who is doing the assaulting? The vast majority of those assaults are committed by male intimate partners, not serial rapists. But we'll likely never know what percentage of men are rapists now will we.............
9
David Brooks takes the phrase "tortured metaphor" to a new level. Isn't publishing this against the Geneva Conventions?
11
Boys who grow up in homes where parents model the kind of love and who are exposed to classics and other books that portray sex as part of a loving relationship probably begin with the understanding that David Brooks describes in Room 1. Think about the countless boys (maybe the majority) who have never lived in that environment or had the opportunity to observe, develop, or even understand Room 1 beliefs. Do these boys start out in the other Rooms?
5
Until the last year's revelations came to light, I used to believe as Mr. Brooks does, that the predators were "few and vicious." But recently my eyes have been opened to a world of which I was unaware and that is hideously ugly. The degradation and abuse of women (and men) in this country, at the hands of these predators, is apparently rampant. It seems to me that the first step in resolving this national crisis is that these men of power who have gotten away with illegal acts of sexual abuse need to go to prison for very long times - no more rehab and cash settlements - hard prison time.
13
IMOHO, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump don't belong in the same sentence, when it comes to this predator/prospector issue, either in kind or in degree. FWIW, I see the former as the prospector type (or used to be anyway) and I just don't believe he ran around trying to force himself on women. Trump, on the other hand, is extremely predatory in this - and really - all aspects of his life, conduct, and purpose. Sorry, Mr Brooks, false equivalence.
26
This column is beyond bizarre. It reads like an alien making observations on human sexual behavior. We know there are good men and bad men...that doesn't require any more dissecting. I honestly don't see what purpose this column was supposed to serve other than to make me cringe.
12
I too am celebrating 27 years of marriage. Mr. Brooks overlooks a fundamental power imbalance in the equation of "the secret of life". Harassment and abuse are all about power and a man's inadequate feelings in the creation of a life. Abuse is learned, allow me to suggest, from another abuser.
2
The current news is exposing how prevalent sexual harassment is and how acceptable it has always been. It is in many cases a protected entitlement due successful men. We are not hearing yet from women who have consented to be sexually available to their bosses because it seemed to be the best or only way to advance in their careers, nor are we hearing what effect a practice that interferes with merit promotion has on productivity.
8
Sexual predation is not "love gone bad" as Mr. Brooks seems to romantically imply. Women know that rape is not about sex. It's just one particularly abhorrent form of cowardly violence some individuals (and let's admit it, it's mostly men) perpetrate against others (women, children, subordinate men) because they CAN. The claim that these men "had no idea how much pain they were causing" is repugnant. It perpetuates the false notion that it's a mere misinterpretation of where the "boundaries" are. Same place they've always been, Mr. Brooks. You treat the other person as a full and equal human being. If the relationship is anything other than that, it is predatory.
25
Bill Clinton is not the same as Trump: IN ANY WAY.
32
Are you describing a nursery room? What a naive essay. Then again this is the same Brooks who penned a column vociferously defending James Damore as a victim.
10
Brooks offers a beginning to explore but this is a bit simplistic. In younger years, for example, boys sometimes exhibit behavior that would now be called "bullying" or "aggression." But are we too quick to use those terms? Is "pulling hair" or "bra-snapping" or "show me yours and I'll show you mine" the beginning of sexual aggression or is it the way immature boys show they're attracted and test? Is it is just plain old being mean? Isn't it still considered "normal" until they are told differently? -- at which point if it continues then it isn't normal any more?
There is more nuance that space here won't allow. But another example: Harassment as a next room to "prospecting": there are many kinds of harassment; not all are predatory though not necessarily mutually exclusive either. Harassment might actually be prospecting initially or even without an explicit sexual behavior attached. Usually, a signal is given that it isn't wanted. THIS is where men need to tune in. A woman might not actually have the nerve to say stop. But they might wiggle, flinch, give a look, or avoid you. Men: read cues/ take the hint. It can become harassment. Women: be aware not to send misleading/mixed signals that might inadvertently allow something to go on that shouldn't. I need to explicitly point out this is not victim blaming. Past is past and no one should now kick themselves for not doing something before. This is for the future - the future potential victim and future accused.
4
These comments the weirdest I've seen. This is truly disheartening. Do women really hate men this much? Are all men just totally devoid of being able to see a woman as a person? I just don't believe that. I'm a woman; I've had my share of powerful men trying to take advantage of my vulnerabilities. But that doesn't make me hate men. Let's give this hostility up.
15
I'm all in condemning the predatory nature of the likes of Weinstein and so many more. But, there is so much "sex" out there in plain sight. Too much in my opinion, from some of the R rated or worse rated movies, easily seen in theaters, on TV or other technological enablers, to the easy access to porn in it's many forms. And, while the majority of women will probably disagree, how women dress does matter, from the enticing mini's to the low slung, breast-baring tops (I live in Vegas). It's naïve to think otherwise. Unfortunately, but silent or open flirtatious maneuvering by females can easily create a cause to an effect not always desired. There are a lot of mixed messages out there, and when it comes to measured sexual behavior after being teased (in his thinking), men are often stupidly at a loss to do the right thing.
As a loving son, husband, father and grandfather of the those of the female gender, please know that I am not diminishing the problems caused by overly predatory men, but at times those hurt just may have brought it on, even if not realizing it, in my humble kid from the 50's opinion.
15
Pornography is the single most caustic contributor to the desensitization of human beings on earth. The fact that it lives within the realm of freedom of speech is beyond perplexing. It is available to anyone and everyone. It is gasoline to frontal lobe dopamine and makes it harder to experience interpersonal satisfaction at multiple levels. It targets women. It exploits women. Period
39
We are born savages and the people who bring us up have about seven years to get us civilized. This can actually happen. I've seen it. But it has become increasingly difficult in an age that glorifies cruelty, pornography and sexual exploitation for the sake of ratings. If decency really mattered anymore, would djt have been elected? Perhaps the best response to a predator, is a victim well trained in the martial arts.
15
In the USA everything, all, is made into a commodity, hyper-capitalism at its prime, I mean all, family possessions between sibings, 'love' objects, all. That is our world which we made and which we like and advocate to the rest of the world....what a reflection on what we have become.
9
Oh, in other words, sex is a strong motivator of men, whose range of responses to the "urges" follow the regular bell-shaped curve distribution. With freedom of speech and expression as permanent fixtures in our democratic society, women will always exude sexuality and men will always react - mostly within acceptable norms, but too many find controlling their isms of domination a lost cause.
In the Old Testament, sex was not as you claim “something you do with the person you love.” Genesis 16 and 21. “Said Sarai to her husband Abram: “Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I will build a family through her.” And her slave Hagar deeply resented Sarai for the sugestión which bore the couple Ishmael.
Widely diverse cultures until this day show that sex is not something done among cultures practicing arranged marriages with “the person” loved. And sex across racial groups among loving couples (see The Lovings case in Virginia) was often severely punished when downright prohibited in law.
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s fictional village, Macondo (“One Hundred Years”) he evokes the hypocrisy of community attitudes still current today, that sex occurs where all the single males are said to be sexually experienced and all the marriageable females are said to be virgins! It just ain’t so! If sex occurs only between loving couples it’s not the norm between human beings, not even in their dreams.
3
Since the beginning of time, women have been disrespected by men. Some of the religions of the world are the greatest offenders -- no woman in the eyes of Roman Catholicism is good enough to be a priest, no Orthodox Jewish woman is good enough to sit with her husband at services, let alone become a rabbi.
And now we have placed a man in the WH who is the epitome of no respecter of women -- even if she is the mother of his children, he still saw it as being OK to cheat on them with other women.
This is an old story and at the bottom of it is the fact that men basically hate women otherwise they wouldn't have done everything in their power throughout history to marginalize and brutalize them.
14
Why no use of the word assault? David paints it as though the worst that can happen in the predator room is harassment. Still bad, but many predators don't stop there. Why pretend they do?
8
Mr. Brooks, I don't know if you have a ghost writer that comes up with this drivel or if you thought this up all on your own, but your are really out of your element when you are discussing sex. You present everything so precise, very black and white. Have you never heard of 50 shades of gray? There are significant cultural, religious, and societal differences that you completely ignore. I love reading your columns but this one is for the birds and not the bees!!!
6
There is a connecting door between the prospector and predator rooms.This door has been getting bigger for a number of reasons.First, we are surrounded by numerous media modalities that make sex and sexiness key attributes.These go way beyond pornography and into reality TV, tabloid journalism etc.Second, obsession with youth and "being the best you can be"have led to fashion and surgical reformatting that can be highly provocative (heard of "f*** me shoes"?) and leaves little to the imagination.Third, definitions of what constitutes a sexual assault or unwelcome advance have changed.There are many prospectors that given the right conditions, become predators.
3
Who wants a pair of pink glasses? David is selling!
If I recall correctly, even our Founding Fathers had kids out of wedlock, while married to the "proper" woman. So the environment seems to have been degraded for quite a while now.
5
I applaud Brooks thoughtful, compassionate columns. Just an ordinary person, I know plenty of men who are faithful and live in the first room. Not all men are misogynistic inspiite of the current revelations about real predators
Is violence against women a real problem in our world? Yes. Other countries are far worse than ours in this respect.
But let us look too at how women play into this. So many try to dress up as sex symbols in order to "look attractive". The Oscars for example. Teenage girls for example. The enduring legend of Marilyn Monroe who actively cultivated her sex kitten image. Getting exceeding drunk at frat parties does not help either.
As women we must look at our own faults re playing into the culture of sexual attractiveness being superficial appearances and not about who you are as a human being. Button up the blouses girls and play with your intelligence, healthy looks, and integrity and expect men to do the same. Otherwise you will miss the true wonders of room one.
5
Brooks has forgotten about the room called Congress, which has proven to have a large supply of sexual predators over the decades. Maybe Brooks could get invited to a session of Congress to give his little homily and find that it would make most of these men behave differently? Or maybe they would just laugh at him.
6
"It would also be nice if there were some positive vision of how sexuality fits into a rich life, how it flourishes in the private sphere as a (very fun) form of deep knowing. If we had a clearer concept of a beautiful relationship we’d also have a clearer concept of what predatory behavior looks like and what it takes to eradicate it."
Hmm, maybe like the Bible? Maybe God has already ordained how love and sexuality are to be intertwined.
Many young men receive no guidance at all, and expecting them to walk a knife's edge between assertiveness and aggressiveness around women is asking too much. The sensible choice is to not be assertive at all, but see how far that gets you in any area of life.
3
Hmmm. This article sounds like Brooks is trying to cut off the coming ramifications at the pass. Seems to have put a lot of thought into this article. Denial by mass media rational. That seems to be happening a lot right now also.
2
The first time I can remember being sexually assaulted happened when I was about 3. It was done by boys who were about 8. They were "curious" and felt free to take a little girl off her property and into their garage, to pull down her pants and poke around and then tell her that they would kill her parents if she ever told.
Since then, it has happened far too many times to count. Sometimes in public, sometimes in the professional sphere, or in school, or in private. Often, it happens where other people can see, and it is used as a way to intimidate other women and implicate other men who are not in a position to confront the abuser.
Worst of all, it has happened to my lovely daughters, even as I knew it would. Having to instruct your daughter on how to handle something you are powerless to protect her from is wrenching.
Mr. Brooks, there are no "rooms". There are male assessments of women, putting them in categories based on their looks, their age, their accessibility and the likelihood that the man will 'get away' with differing levels of sexual aggressiveness. Most dangerous, women are assessed by what male 'owns' them - the husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, employers who are 'stronger' or 'weaker' than the aggressor and who can then be shown up by 'taking their women.'
And it is excused by "boys will be boys", "he didn't mean anything", "can't you take a joke?" or, my personal favorite, "you're frigid".
This is an entrenched cultural disease.
19
Methinks thou doth complicate (and categorize) too much, Mr. Brooks.
People have to respect that other people are not their property or their playthings. They also have to respect that if an object of their predatory desire were to walk in their direction, suggestively dressed or even stark naked, they're not in any way entitled to harass, catcall, touch, grope, fondle, attack or otherwise force themselves upon him/her.
If someone can't control his impulses to that extent, I really don't care what room he's in.
17
Oh dear, how atrocious. What about just asking men to be adults, not compartmentalized weirdos?
13
As usual, the wannabe philosopher, Mr. Brooks, leaves the elephant in the room out of the room. Women. They have no say, wants or desires. They seem to be just pawns in predators/prospectors (huh?) game.
Nobody knows how they got into room 1 or room 2 for that matter. Maybe they took a bus?
18
Of course, women are "prospectors" too. The simple-minded, male-centric, anachronistic and patriarchal views expressed in this column are just another expression of the problem.
8
Terrific piece, but I think the equation of Clinton with Trump, implicitly as mutual predators, is off: While Clinton exercised terrible judgment, and certainly exploited power differentials, he did so with (legal) adults, and never to my knowledge physically forced himself on an uninterested party. Trump, by his own admission, grabbed women by their pussies. That is a tremendous difference. To use the nomenclature of the piece, Clinton was a prospector, and Trump a predator.
14
From my perspective, I believe a predictive scale may start with boys witnessing how their fathers treat their mothers and/or having mothers who do everything for the boys thinking they are doing them a favor. Boys learn to respect their mothers or expect servitude from them.
9
You see, harassment is like there's this little room and that little room... and guys go into the wrong room, where they do bad things...
Yes, please, Mr. Brooks, tell me more - you're making it so simple that even I can understand!
I hate to tell a guy to just Not Talk when he's trying to be sensitive and all, but someone should tell this guy that this is what mansplaining sounds like.
14
Sex viewed by an adolescent (and adult) male as transactional, as in "Girl I want your body," reveals the obvious – a belief that women exist only to be used for pleasure, as an object. Acquired. Not equal.
Also, nugget? Good grief. I use better language in my tweets.
5
Mr. Brooks, there ARE men who carry a positive vision of how sexuality fits into a rich(loving) life. These men already know how it flourishes in the private sphere. Why do you not know?
You mean well, but we DO live in a degraded environment, only now we live with a vicious degrader-in-chief. More likely to be tolerated? It seems to me that women are, indeed, no longer tolerating sexual predators. The female concept of predatory behavior is very clear. Women(and men) are standing up to it, evidence everywhere. Maybe re-check your own numbness meter?
2
There are people who have studied and published on sexualized violence. You could read what some of them said and spare yourself the arduous labor of making stuff up. Rhapsodizing over "good men" in the "love room": for yikes sake, even this is male privilege and objectification. No woman writer would get this past a NYT editor.
10
Historical shifts in human awareness and perception aren’t often noticed when they happen but this seems like one of those times where it is obvious. Finally, women are collectively saying ENOUGH and calling out the perpetrators. That is enough to change most perpetrators if there will be consequences from their actions but that alone is not enough. Real change will only come when mothers and fathers begin seriously and continuously teaching their boys about proper attitudes toward girls and then latter toward women. Society needs to accept that it is wrong to treat women as sexual prey at any level. This is another value that needs to be taught just as we teach kids not to steal, lie or cheat. It has to be taught and emphasized continually to combat the counter messages from mass media, Hollywood and the endless supply of free online porn that kids are just one click away from viewing on their cell phones.
1
My son started receiving pornographic selfies from girls in the 8th grade. That first room never had a chance.
7
David Brooks is right. The room of love has diminished, as have the core values of our culture. Everything has been tarnished and degraded. I would very much like David Brooks' opinion about why this happened. Comment editors, please pass the word along.
3
"The world SEEMS full of sexual predators these days," the column begins. But are there actually more now than in the past?
Later we read, "the line between the prospector room and the predator room is getting blurrier....in the public mind the line between unwanted sexual attention and force is growing indistinct." Acceptance of Bill Clinton's or Donald Trump's behavior "helped smooth the ground for all the predators to come." And: "one core problem is the collapse of the first room, the room of love."
What we need data on is whether any line-blurring, ground-smoothing, or room-collapsing, if any of these has really happened, has contributed to an increase in sexual predation -- as opposed to merely an increase in hearing about it.
2
Obviously, Mr. Brooks never heard the "boys will be boys" words uttered embarrassingly after one's son acted like a bully in a schoolyard, or grabbed a girl's butt without permission at a high school dance, or raped or impregnated an unwilling classmate in a college dare. Men's disrespectful behavior and feelings of superiority toward women are the result of mother' and fathers leniency and lack of teaching responsible behavior toward the opposite sex which has become traditional...till now, hopefully. Sex is rarely about love and more often about demonstration of power and hormonal release because "boys will be boys."
5
Kind of crazy that a guy who married his much younger assistant is offering advice on workplace boundaries.
13
Read the article in today’s Guardian on how male rape is used as a weapon of war. The deep shame and stigma surrounding this issue means that the victims can talk to nobody, not even their wives or doctors. The underlying issue is dominance, which seems to me to be a form of hate. But why people hate each other goes even deeper.
6
Perhaps a little short on the psycho-biology of testosterone? Not to mention that the history of the interaction of the sexes has been one long confusion, and of course of violence.
1
Naked hypocrisy is the best kind.
3
While I respect David Brooks’ opinion, his perspective about sexuality, relationships, and the challenges men face seems very far removed from the day-to-day realities of any man who has come of age since the late 1950’s. From the “Mad Men” mentality and “free love,” to our confusing, often manic and dualistic liberal-conservative society, though I am a woman, it seems to me that it’s been pretty perplexing to be an adult male for the last 50+ years.
What’s missing, for both men and women…is emotional maturity. Emotional maturity and sexual maturity go hand-in-hand, or not, as we can see with our President. Lack of emotional maturity creates a vacuum that the lust for power and sex will be only too happy to fill.
In relationships, it’s not about whether men will change diapers or women will take out the trash, it’s about whether both partners genuinely value one another and choose to cultivate a true partnership. It’s more about equanimity, than equality.
Emotionally mature couples have built a foundation of authentic acceptance, respect, trust, and value of one another…every day. A playful, erotic, and fulfilling sex life is a natural outgrowth of this kind of relationship.
If men want more, and to stop the predatory behaviors of their fellow men, they too, will have to step forward with and for women. And women will have to stop abdicating their power, trying to make men more like women, and choose to be full partners.
3
"Most men are raised with a certain way of thinking about sex... Sex is something you do with the person you love."
Eros is a god of love. So says John is God/Theos (the name of a god.) But they are not the same god (supernatural psyche associated with human and cosmic powers).
Eros is the god of sex-love--sexual desire focused on a particular person or persons. Horniness is "free floating" sexual desire--focused on someone or other--like unfocused hunger is a desire to eat something!
"Men think about sex as something to do with someone they sex-love" is a pleonasm. It is MW's "Collegiate's" sense 1(2)
As for senses 1 to 9--Brooks should specify!
See also C.S. Lewis "Four Loves" an impressionistic account of five Greek words translatable as 'love" ("Collegiate" includes most.)
"Most men"?? --throughout history? World wide? Most US men? Most men Brooks knows?
A lot of men--including Thomas Jefferson--thought/think of sex as something to do with pubescent slave girls.
ISIS men seem to be variations on that theme.
Also many rich and powerful US men.
1
I'm trying to think of someone other than David Brooks, whom I generally admire, I'd less like to hear talk about sex. I'm drawing blanks.
1
Mr. Brooks, I don't know what has happened to you, but in every column you write it becomes more and more clear, from the things you choose to write about, and the way you write, and possibly most from the lack of any useful conclusion, ever, that none of this matters to you anymore. It doesn't affect you. You don't care about it. You're just tossing out your little abstract theories as a sort of pleasant game to pass the time. That's how your columns come across.
You talk about baseball fans launching into ten minute tirades near you, and friends who are embarrassed to enter upscale delicatessens, but it all rings false. It doesn't ring true, it doesn't appear to have any importance to you, and it doesn't provide any useful insights to us.
My guess is that with the election of Trump, your logical mind has finally recognized the intellectual poverty and fundamental dishonesty of the current Republican party, but emotionally, understandably, this is very hard for you to accept, so you are in avoidance.
You have experience and knowledge and intelligence, but you're hot using them.
Clear your mind. Face reality. Start over. You can still be a Republican. Be an honest one.
You can still be a columnist. be an honest and good one.
4
All of romance writing revolves around unrequited longing, which often proves sweeter than possession.
1
Men don't want to trouble themselves to learn about women. Too much work. But women like sex more than men do.
2
The language in this article talks of 'rooms' - isolated spaces, but nothing happens in a vacuum and certainly not sexism. This language falls short in acknowledging the fact that the 'rooms' are constructed out of centuries of patriarchal culture that manifest in tangible and omnipresent ways in today's society. Harassment doesn't happen at the hands of one man floating between abstract categorizations, it happens in very unisolated ways as a part of sexist societal fabric. There is nothing removed or individual about it; the 'rooms' don't have doors closing the individual off from the architect.
7
It amazes me that men of David Brooks' age (mid-50s?) can be so naive and idealistic. Am I wrong to suggest that sex isn't always tied to love, nor does it have to be??? I honestly didn't think there were still such deluded souls in middle age.
4
Mr. Brooks seems to suggest that the prospecting and predatory behaviors are learned in college. However, two-thirds of Americans over the age of 25 do not have college degrees (women and men have about equal percentages of college degrees). How were they socialized into these perspectives if they didn't go to college? Mr. Brooks often seems to focus on an elite world in which college is the norm, but that is not the case. As others in these comments point out, the socialization into sex roles for both men and women happens at a much younger age. Sexual behaviors were prevalent among third graders and younger in the 1950s (speaking from experience). We can't return to "more innocent" days.
3
Are you out of your mind David? ALL men have the urge to procreate. Most learn to behave decently because it is right. Others do what they can get away with, as if they were Henry the 8th or Louis the 14th.
Sense of power , lack of self discipline , poor upbringing in moral issues , narcissism , media , movies, tv programs , drugs , alcohol , lack of love and respect for others , lack of self dignity , uninhibited sense of possession etc among the causes of creating a sex predator .
3
Being kind, respectful, patient, being a nice and good person, hell just following the Golden Rule should be sufficient enough to keep a man, of any age, from preying, prowling or pouncing on another person.
6
Sexual predators and harassers are incredibly horrible people who have mental problems and need to be dealt with strongly and swiftly. But I feel this column borders on demonizing sex unless it’s romantic sex, unless mutual love is involved. Going by that premise, two adults having consensual sex as a one night stand, or friends-with-benefits, etc. are somehow wrong. Adults who masturbate are somehow wrong. Adults who view pornography are somehow wrong. I am sure some people feel these things I mentioned are wrong. But I also have to believe the majority of people do not think they are wrong. For adults I see no problem with sex as being simply for pleasure. Just so long as it not used as way of violating, hurting and exerting power over someone. That would be wrong.
4
Thanks, David, for these wise words.
3
The first room is not "collapsing," sir. It is where most of us, men and women, live.
The line between the second and third rooms is not "blurring." It is growing more and more distinct with every new voice raised to expose the behavior of even very powerful men.
Women like me, who came of age well before the turn of the millennium, silently soldiered on through these minefields. The behavior was always there. More and more, though, are now speaking up and even being given platforms for their voices and, wonder of wonders, seeing some real consequences meted out to their tormentors on occasion.
That is progress, sir. That is the process of sunshine making the border between "playa" and predator more and more visible to an ever increasing audience. Most men really don't act like predators. These men are often the ones becoming educated to what women en masse go through routinely. So they are now speaking up, too.
This predatory behavior, which has been with us since the dawn of time, has every chance now of actually becoming less common. The culture of the respect, far from collapsing, is growing stronger.
5
There are two distinct and conflicting human behavioral strategies associated with mating, one primitive (essentially, rape: think Weinstein et al), the other modern (technical term: long term pair bonding).
We are currently in the throes of becoming aware (finally! this is what Austen was writing about) of the difference, and especially the nature of the conflicting behavior, which has been hidden from direct examination since we first became the type of creature we are today.
There have been too many metaphorical models of this underlying nature of the species to count. Pass any of them through the lens of this fundamental fact of our very oldest nature, and it's depressingly obvious how each of them reaches for a solid foundation, some hard ground against which we might be able to push back.
Starting with knowledge of the two human mating strategies as separate, inherently unequal entities is the answer.
2
I find it absurd to express this view without addressing that the millennial generation has grown up with unfettered pornography of every sadistic and masochistic form readily available on the machine they do their homework on. THAT is where predation looks to be in the realm of normal, and more so the more you see it. And parents are too embarrassed and inactive in addressing the subject of any form of sex when it is needed more than ever.
3
Well, that's one Judeo-Christian view of things. Humans are animals. That's a fact we don't like to remember or even admit. As animals, men have one driving force and that is to impregnate a woman. When we think we're above that, it translates into a "boys will be boys" mentality and THAT is what has to change. Instead of locking your daughters up, teach your sons how to behave.
I grew up with a steady stream of close female friends, in addition to male friends, beginning in preschool. There was occasional teasing from other boys, and some push back from female friends of my female friends, but most of the time I was comfortable with the social dynamics as I crossed between immature feminine and masculine cultures. That ease began to crumble in adolescence.
As David politely describes, "prospecting" began among the boys. What David misses is that it also began among the girls. The perspectives and methods were quite different, however.
Boys would boast of the physical beauty of their targets, "getting something off her," and claimed conquests, some of which I knew to be lies because they involved my friends who had different ideas about who to pursue and how.
Where the boys were very compartmentalized and physical-first (even if the goal was a relationship), the girls projected a collection of personality and behavioral traits upon their targets and discussed how they were going capture those qualities and the attention of certain boys. Counter to the boys' getting something, the girls strategized about withholding and rejecting attention as part of their power. It was then the ugly games began.
Most of it was innocent enough, but some boys would would transform into aggressors in an instant. Most abusive girls didn't weaponize their tactics until college. While some of the men learned integration, the abusive women learned "getting something."
3
Yes, Fred, the World is poorer because the NYT gives Brooks a platform to spout water-kooler filosofy and pop social psych. So let's get serious, shall we?
Spinoza wrote that everyone wants to have his/her own way, and strives to get it (conatus). To this end, societies devise rules and regulations to prevent the total anarchy of everyone trying to empower themselves at the expense of others.
So if we look at sexuality through the lens of power, we see that certain individuals--invariably male and already powerful-- employ their capacities to demand sex--ostensibly capturing females from other males as much as forcing their will upon females.
Feminism is a means of pushing back, and saying 'No'. This, of course, is progressively good. Yet what's missing in their story is, again, the issue of power as a whole. For example, if certain women gain power, do they not impose their will over males? Perhaps we should call the "The Catherine The Great Syndrome"...(?)
So what we clearly see from the standpoint of social education is under-powered males mimicking the behavior of the powerful. Moreover, in the family, the exploitative relations of the workplace are transferred into the family: the tyrannical boss is played out as the domineering husband. Padre, padrone.
Now this circles back to the issue of the cultural legitimization of power via accepted norms of privilege and entitlement. Here in amerika, it's all about 'The equal redistribution of inequality. Delenda est.
"Most men are raised with a certain way of thinking about sex. ...It is: Sex is something you do with the person you love."
Oh, boy. What about the nudge-wink that begins in boys about the time they learn to talk, dirty jokes and tricks played on school girls, sniggering over the bathing suit issue, other soft and hard pornography? They have no clue what love is, but they have a good idea about sex.
Yes, sex is something, among other things you do with a person you love. And you can do it with persons you don't exactly love, too. Sex has little to do with love or marriage and love doesn't always involve sex. Brooks doesn't mention passion, irrational lust that overcomes the most level-headed person or the desire that lands women pregnant without help mate or the men ruined because they walked on the Appalachian trail.
Austin and Eliot, good reads they may be, have little to say now about love and sex. No mention of criminal sex, either bible-thumping condemnation of same-sex sex and love or sex without marriage, for which women paid with their lives in Austin's era.
Predation, which has nothing to do with love and little to do with sex, is just another form of bullying and armed robbery, men taking what doesn't belong to them just because they can.
A bigger question is why some men apparently so hate women that they insult, harass, assault, rape and murder them in such great numbers with great frequency.
6
Reading articles like this and watching TV these days, one would think predators exist in middle and upper classes. The worst happens amongst the poor, in shanty towns, where women ( in general) are frequently assaulted, raped, and then beaten by their brothers/fathers/husbands for being in that situation. These women cannot settle for $32 million, all they get is humiliation and hate from family and neighbours. Children in such neighbourhoods are frequently molested and that is the behaviour they carry with them to adulthood. Let us pay attention to these children before they become predators.
5
What if it's like a fetish developed early in puberty? It's in their head books,magazines,movies. Then they move out of the house. No restraints.
First room is the best!
2
Until both sexes are part of the conversation we are not going to get very far. This whole saint female thing is inaccurate. Yes many men are bullies but they did not give birth to themselves via a vacuum bottle. Nor were they predisposed to treat their families criminally psychopathically at birth. Feminist, the movement, and women in general are not going to get where they want to be by being incapable of owning their part in evolution.
5
This discussion fails to address the force of machismo culture driving the described behavior. This is nothing new either, pre-dating ‘the good old days.’
“when they hit adolescence a strange thing happens.”
When our cultural norms reward such behavior, how is it seen as strange? The ‘predator’ is closer to what many perceive as an alpha male idealization of ‘the prospector’ (he could’ve just as easily gone with ‘the entrepreneur’ as a euphemism). Yes, “a lot of men” out there see ‘predator’ behavior as a reflection of the ultimate man’s man; ‘locker-room talk’ and disregard for what others think or say about this arrogant and reprehensible crudeness merely adds to the hyped mystique.
So how again is it ‘strange’ when our society glorifies this behavior? What happens to those men who do not? They are typically ridiculed as weak, goaded by herd mentality which views emulating ‘alpha-prospector’ (aka predator) conduct as ‘manly,’ and encouraging other men to do the same. It is difficult to have a “positive vision of how sexuality fits into a rich life” when this behavior is belittled and viewed negatively by many of our cultural influences: entertainment, political, and business leaders, then hammered home by advertising. It’s less about having “a negative vision of what men should not do,” than it is about perpetuating negative images of what men should do.
4
I agree on all but one point. we are not going backwards through the rooms, we are going forwards. it's only been in the past few centuries that women have been seen as anything other than property. the situation is dire now, but it has been worse and it will get better. The evidence I provide is that this harrassment has been going on for decades and it is only now that so many people are coming forward about it
2
We endure, we prevail, Faulkner said in his Nobel address. What strange words. "Prevail" - how?
"The Buried Giant" by Nobel-winner Kazuo Ishiguro traces the "mist" of forgetting that wars, personal failings, societies, fate, aging and perhaps a sick old dragon float over our best natures and reasoning and basic appetites - as an old couple leave their home village to find a long-lost son and the sun of truth.
In the end, they finally win clarity: the son died long ago, they have touched dreams and failures often, and, somehow, they recall, recreate, belief in each other's humanity. With incredible acceptance, the 2 love best well while they bid each other farewell and offer hope of love somewhere in some new world beyond mists, lusts, cruelties, deceits, thwarted loyalties, and world-explaining myths of Gawain, Saxon warriors, Christ's love, ogres' appetites, pixies' play, and the usual suspects, a dragon or 2.
It is a novel about lusts and loves gone wrong and love gone right. Read it and try not to weep. Then let go, as even warriors have always done when loved ones leave. The Groper can't understand that this is the only way we "prevail".
1
Over the last 60 plus years we have affirmatively built an economy based on the immediate gratification of desires at the expense of developing critical thinking about long term value. Whether it’s for the latest consumer item at the expense of our bank accounts, the next quarterly earnings report at the expense of employee wages or climate effects, or cheese stuffed pizza crusts at the expense of health. Small wonder, then, that many lack of the maturity to gauge the harm their drive for immediate sexual gratification causes.
1
Well--that was interesting, Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
An anecdote kept running through my mind as I read your piece. Probably apocryphal--but here goes.
The story goes, the future Emperor Napoleon III--a notoriously lustful man!--was visiting the palace where his future bride--the Empress Eugenie--was staying. Eugenie and her sister were standing, conversing on some balcony. Napoleon came clattering on horseback into the courtyard below. He looked up at the two women.
"How can I get up to where YOU are," he inquired.
Eugenie (no stranger to the ways of the world) looked down at her future husband. Then she spoke.
"Only through the CHAPEL, Monsieur."
Even at the time, her words were thought to have a metaphorical significance. As indeed they did.
They still do.
1
Mr. Brooks neglected to mention that in each of those rooms there is a media presence: social media, television, newspapers, magazines. And each of those media believes in and fully utilizes the sexualization of women to sell itself and the products of its advertisers. This doesn't put the blame on women and it doesn't excuse the behavior, but it's impossible to ignore the influence of "sex sells" on what Mr. Brooks' "beautiful relationship" looks like to both men and women.
1
Quite the sermon! And so off the mark! It would be nice if it were true that most men are raised to believe that sex is something you do with someone you love, Mr. Brooks. But that's not what the parishioners practice. Often children of the most devout grow in blended families, listening to their parents demonize the greedy ex-spouses who co-created them and complicate life. It breeds a confusing hostility that has nothing to do with this idealistic room to room developmental house tour metaphor you've created. Children of both genders are growing up in such households. Tsk tsk tsk.
1
Was this cribbed from a high school health class talk in the 1950s? Brooks is clueless in understanding the bigger issue, and his pyschobabble about these absurd "rooms" not only does not honor the victims of sexual predators but trivializes (and all but excuses) the criminal conduct of the perpetrators themselves.
5
Sexual predation is older than H. sapiens. Our species tends towards individualism and the hegemony of the individual. Even military life is no guarantee of safety for potential and actual victims. Neither is the priesthood. A degraded environment? Certainly our living conditions are very different from those our ancestors experienced (my mother grew up on a farm), but I know of no time or place that was a Utopia--other than for a very short time. Le droit de seigneur is still with us in more modern forms. The carriage pulling up at the young lady's door is no longer horse-drawn.
2
Pornography is a problem. Many young men have no idea what real sex is.
5
There is one element missing from Mr. Brooks' case. That is men who are exploited by predators when they are young. It leaves a deep psychological wound that the predator seeks to fill or erase by preying on others who are vulnerable. Finally where on the spectrum are men who pay money to sexually exploit young girls and/or boys? This article opens the doorway to much deeper conversations and urgent actions to use to excise the root causes not apply yet another bandaid to the symptoms.
2
I think this is fair but I would say that the prospector's room is part of the problem. Once men reach that stage there are no messages that say this is not ok. The whole culture sends out a strong message to young men get your share, any way you can get it is fine and you are driven to pursue this goal. That kind of permissive environment is what I believe allows it to become a woman's problem not a man's problem. That's just not right we have to start telling our young men abuse and harassment is wrong.
David, this is America you're trying to moralize. America, where women are seldom identified as human, by the media, Hollywood, or even what passes for organized religion. A place inhabited by an odd, if dominant, biped with sexual hardwiring different than most of the other mammalian species. Wiring whose basic effect is precisely the predation you abhor.
Sometimes, I get the feeling that your sophisticated, elevated viewpoint on the human and the social universes is wishful thinking.
Those undereducated, deplorable millions of Trump women voters are actually closer to the mark when they say 'they all do that'. Statistically closer, anyway.
1
When formulating our world views, too many of us from "good" backgrounds see things from ower own perspective. As a school teacher, I've had the chance to see up close and personal that what I thought was the average home or average environment is not the average. Too many homes and environments are full of abuse and too often the abused child is primed to become the abuser or repeat victim later in life. Too often many children never learn how to love, to be kind, to be respectful or patient because their lived experience simply didn't include these attitudes of mind. By about age five, many of these children have already journeyed from the room of love to rooms of predation or victim-hood and sadness.
4
When unattractive men with weak egos move into positions of wealth or power they seek affirmation. They have been rejected by women during adolescence.
1
Women have to put up with a lot. Today we have to put up with a pig in the White House at the same time we listen to "his" general bemoan how women used to be sacred. I think of that wonderful bumper sticker of the 70's "if they can put a man on the moon, why don't they send them all there?". The other great one was "My other car is a broom". All the single moms in Berkeley had these on their second hand cars, as they struggled with responsibility , while watching Peter Pan syndrome men acting like flakes. Right now I'm taking some pleasure in knowing that the men I'm seeing on television, or running studios or companies, are most likely NOT sexual,predators as they have lost their jobs. Now if we could just can that slob in the White House, things would look even better.
2
Nah. A better way is to think of it is as a reproductive strategy guided by evolution. Some men are made one way, some another. Some are prone to stay in love relationships, others in exploitative kinds.
Even given unchangeable behavioral tendencies, it's the environment that can push people one way or the other. Normal men rape in war. Control the environment to keep predators at bay. Throw them in jail, try to teach young women not to get blind drunk at frat parties.
I have to admit some disquiet about the current events, especially in the light of Me Too campaign founder Tarana Burke's assertion that “For every Harvey Weinstein, there’s a hundred more men in the neighbourhood who are doing the exact same thing”.
That could be true, but not in my experience. There certainly will be a few, but male predation on the scale of Harvey Weinstein is surely the exception, rather than the norm? If there are hundreds, then the world is a different place to the one I know.
Here's what concerns me. When Weinstein [who's a monster, and deserves what he gets] was outed, some men complained of a witch-hunt. They were rightly derided, to the extent they meant Weinstein. But some meant a risk in the current process, and I think they're right to speak up.
The public movement to out men who harass women is fantastic. It's a way of using social pressure and shame to enact a revolutionary social change: almost a tectonic upheaval in the way we do things as a society. But as with all revolutions, we have to make sure we don’t go too far.
Punishing men for normal sexuality [such as asking for sex, and then taking no as an answer] gets us nowhere [re]productive. And visiting revenge on the many for the assaults of the few is morally indefensible. Not all men are rapists. Some people need to repeat that each day.
I've known quite a few couples that are in really positive, well-adjusted marital relationships, and they all have had two things in common: first, the man adores his wife, and will do anything for her, and second, she appreciates his love and support and does her best to reciprocate. My parents, for all their other faults, had that kind of relationship. I believe that family training-by-example is a big, tho admittedly not the only, factor in how men grow up relating to women sexually.
3
A very good analysis, and kudos to Brooks for noting that the mixture of sexual motivation and power differential is where this is rooted. The blaming of all men is offensive and stupid and those who do it simply alienate potential allies, but one area where many humans do contribute to the success of predators is when we lionize all forms of social dominance and, in addition, are too eager to forget the documented behavioral patterns of exploiters of all kinds. No, we do not need to forgive or forget the abuse that sexual harassers, bullies, economic pirates, and others dish out. the trumps and fiorina's of the world should live friendless lives filled with rejection and disdain from others. If somebody like that ever changes, let the record show it. Otherwise, they deserve contempt and no compassion .
I work at a foundry where with only two women on the production floor and 25 male workers. We've not a well educated group but we've got wives, daughters and nieces. Over two years ago a coworker went ballistic and threw things against the rest room wall that was occupied by a female coworker. She was too new at the time to be in the union, and was obviously terrified about being on a back shift with this man. Another man witnessed the incident and told me about it. He was scared, too. New to the company myself, I asked the union steward to take action. He did and the man--who had been there for over ten years and was well connected and protected by his supervisor, was given a last chance to keep his job, only because he admitted his fault, committed to stopping the behavior and has kept his temper under control ever since.
Recently another woman was grabbed by a male employee after repeatedly flirting with her, actions which she rebuffed because he's married. She reacted angrily and was upset but said nothing to management. Male coworkers who witnessed it reported it to management. He lied, denied and blamed her. They fired him.
I thanked my management. I knew it was difficult for them to fire someone who had just finished 2 months of OJT--and I am proud of my coworkers for standing up for her. Intervention can stop sexual predators. You just need people with enough caring and courage to do the right thing.
15
The main problem is rooted in our culture where masculinity is proven through sexual prowess and dominance (regardless of sexuality). We must change our society that supports masculine conquest into one that respects others as equals and not as prizes. There is no direct place to start, but teaching the next generation respect and empathy is an excellent place to begin.
2
A clear idea of a beautiful relationship?
How about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
1
The religious right has allowed the third room to exist. Pence pretends to follow God, which would essentially lend itself to Brook's first room example, yet Pence gives cover to the abuser Trump, who has allowed DeVos to get rid of campuses investigating sexual abuse. The GOP has allowed the third room to exist by supporting Trump.
2
Once again, toward the end of his little essay, Mr. Brooks commits the Republican sin of equating Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Sorry, but that dog won't hunt. That sin, a standard Republican strategy, is the primary reason we have ended up with a predator in the White House. Probably too old now to prey much upon women, Mr. Trump continues to prey upon the weak, the poor, the ignorant, the innocent, and the power hungry.
Mr. Brooks no doubt considers himself an inhabitant of that first house of love. Unfortunately, he has used the fine tools he learned there to provide cover for the predators who long ago decided lovers are fools.
Mr. Brooks innocence is touching, but extremely dangerous.
3
This column by David Brooks is a good example of why writers of opinion columns need to know who their audiences are and need to write about what they know.
Does Mr. Brooks really think that most readers of the NYT --men or women--use the standards of "classic novels" to identify life partners? Jane Austen and George Elliot? Really? No mention of James Joyce or D. H. Lawrence or Shakespeare at his bawdy best as "classic"? The tortured suburbanites of Roth and Irving or the modern fiction found in the NYT Book Reviews have had no impact on who and how we love? The movies and videos most see apparently don't provide a "classic" framework for the Brooks' room of love?
The ugly stories showing up in PG media hint at the more lurid tales to be told of how power corrupts and how that corruption expresses itself in sexual harassment or "non-consensual" sexual contact". Brooks implies that just a few men (or women) damaged themselves move into the rooms of "predatory" behaviour. I would insist that all power corrupts so all men and women can become predators. It is a test of character to resist corruption, to resist opportunities to sexually harass one's subordinates because as both Bill Clinton and Trump said "I can". Trump said it before his election so his voters knew.
Human imperfection is the reason organizations have checks and balances, auditors and watchdogs. Men and women fail tests of character; systems should catch them before too much damage is allowed.
2
When an older woman I barely knew did that to me with her tongue I'll I admit I was surprised. Great, now I can join the growing hoards of acknowledged victims of sexual abuse. I always wanted to be in a club, but hopefully this won't be the kind where I have to go to meetings every Sunday morning and drink a lot of coffee.
1
It could be that Brooks is not mentioning what is most obvious. There is a reason in human nature why the sexual union is rarefied.That is that sexual intercourse can lead to babies. We don't think of sex strictly in this way any more. This has led to possibilities, good and bad, that were not there before. Because of this the sexual "game" has become more complicated. The entertainment industry pours fuel everywhere because it is super exciting to most people. The seriousness of sex and love used to serve as a counterbalance to the gratification. That has changed now. Evolutionarily we are still working it out. We might continue to see various things, some not too pleasant. What's incredible to me through all of this is how for many, or most, people really haven't changed that much. Many, or most, of us are still shy or somewhat reserved and need to be goaded by strong feeling to overcome. The salmon still has to swim upstream, unless you are running a studio or the host of The Apprentice and those guys seem pathetically unfulfilled. Crazy, crazy world isn't it?
1
Accurate analysis, and good ideas in these comments about how to move back to the first room, or at least to reduce the number of men in the other rooms.
1
Great analysis...how about a column applying similar classifications for politicians and corporations/business people?
I worked as a receptionist in a priests' rectory in high school. One day, the pastor grabbed me and thrust his tongue down my throat... and then, just walked away. I never reported him. What is it about men in powerful positions? One huge problem is that our country can not agree on a sex education curriculum and one that focuses on healthy sexual relationships as well as how to respond to sexual harassment (reporting, etc.). Sex continues to be 'taboo' in schools. That said, children and youth have too much access to pornography on the internet -- how does that shape their beliefs about sexual relationships?
4
Sorry Mr. Brooks, this sounds to me just another of the ongoing efforts to try and "normalize" Donald Trump by pretending there is something in common between him and Bill Clinton. No, there is not!
3
Again more baloney from Brooks. I don't know any young boys who give much thought to sex & marriage. They know that moms & dads love one another and have children they love. Most parents do not provide or allow sex education or let their children participate in such a course. Most think girls have cooties and recoil at the idea that they will one day marry one of them, let alone have sex.
Once boys hit puberty and then adolescence sex is pretty much all they think about. Brooks is right that they view sex as transactional. By this time many are already polluted with our culture's message that females are objects and that sex is a commodity. Some will come out of this hormonal fog as they grow to adulthood. For others, not.
As for the "predator's room," Brooks confuses sexual harassment with sexual assault. Regardless, harassment and assault have NOTHING to do with sex. It is ALL about power if you are a predator. Brooks tells you that there isn't enough research about the minds of harassers. Not true.
There are no standard personality types because all males are subjected to the societal messages about women, sex and male entitlement. Some buy it hook, line & sinker. The entire society is under the influence of the Rape Myths. Even women believe them. Watch "The Undetected Rapist or Jackson Katz's "Tough Guise" or read his books. We definitely social some of our young men to be sexual predators.
Predation can begin in middle & high school.
2
Much needed words in the public space about the moral hazards of not taking to heart what should have been learned in Sunday school. Does anyone go to Sunday school anymore or is that just all someone's relative opinion now? This essay could easily have been attached to David's prior essay regarding the insidiousness of idols. To summarize:
As Crouch puts it: “All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands. ... In the end they fail completely, even as they make categorical demands. In the memorable phrase of the psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, idols ask for more and more, while giving less and less, until eventually they demand everything and give nothing.”
In the present case, pleasure has become the idol. I must believe that what we are presently witnessing is the multitudes no longer being guided by the wise and informed Spirit of that which is the wise path on a journey and that which is the foolish.
Like it or not, human beings are more than just flesh and blood. If you don't believe this then move along to your next addiction.
1
David Brooks reducing the complexity of love/sex/aggression to a 3-room shotgun house from his perch in the Global Center for the Understanding of Healthy Sexual Attitudes a.k.a. Washington, D.C.? How absurdly linear. Perhaps I missed the line where he explains his background in psychology, biology, chemistry, eroticism, and sociology. I do realize that this is an op-ed, but each paragraph should end with, "because I say so." Citations, please?
2
In days of yore when there was such a thing as the Men's Movement with the likes of the most venerable Robert Bly and Sam Keen, at one I attended where women were invited, a wise and wordly male participant got the ball rolling by confessing "when we unzip our flies, our brains fall out" !
sorry -- it should have been one wise and worldly man, not wordly
Wow. It is both happy and sad to have you write this column. It is happy that you see the merrits of sex in a meaningful mutual relationship. But it is sad to think that all straight men are run through a male cultural experience that does encourage them to become sexual predators. Most cross over, but they still have this cultural oaky to be "predators" and this needs to stop. Will it make sex less fun-- no, not at all. It will make it a mutual experience and a nice one for women too.
This is worthy of the refrigerator door. I have two college-age daughters and will definitely share this with them. I so appreciate the description of what people should be looking for in a positive relationship.That is the important missing piece in the current sex dialog.
David,
All societies are Paternal, the men are virile, the women are wanton. Since time and memorial, we all know how the endgame plays out.
Still, the game is in play, the men rule. Trump is rewarded for being a sexual predator. Religion also plays a big role in keeping the "vessel" in her place.
In reality, both men and women are sexual creatures, why does only one wear the scarlet letter?
My problem with this analysis is its questionable universality. Does this apply to the French or Italian notion of love and marriage . Where does the wife or the"mistress" fit into this paradigm
We experience a gazillion situations in our lives and are confronted with a gazillion decisions from which we acquire our values and our sense of judgment. If we're fortunate, we have people around us who reinforce decisions that keep us on the path and let us know when our actions are hurtful to ourselves and others. "Hey, you can't do that, it's hurtful" doesn't work if no one ever says it. David Brooks obviously understands this. I think his wish to provide more of this is at the core of his conservatism which, sadly, is not on the upswing in the world.
Is there supposed to be some sort of insight here? Brooks has revealed nothing that we don’t already know. What he does is what he always does: to frame common knowledge in his obsessively structured, romanticized, categories, in this case the three rooms of love, prospector, and predator. Brooks does identify one legitimate cultural enabler of sexual predation: pop culture. “Most pop songs are about this kind of conquest.” But as usual he doesn’t go beneath the surface on his point. This would be a subject worthy of deep analysis, but it would require Brooks to challenge his cherished, conservative free-market capitalism which privileges financial profit over social profit. E.g. should “art” be exempt from regulation?
But, there’s a fourth room Brooks conveniently doesn’t acknowledge. It’s a room adjacent to the other three rooms, but Brooks keeps the doors to it locked. This is the room of Brooks’ much-loved “biblical ethic” that he refers to so often. In this room males are taught the biblical tradition that females are mere adjuncts to males. Adam came first; Eve was created from his rib. Women are to obey their husbands and support them. Their other primary role is to bear children. That, according to Christianity, is to only purpose of sex. Both points, the subservience of women and sex only for procreation are unnatural. Yet they drive the formation of many males’ development of attitudes towards women. It’s way past time to investigate the forth room, David.
2
Boys today are exposed to some form of pornography by age 10. That innocent first house of sex and love that David writes about has been replaced by images of men satisfying their urges with every form of sexual act imaginable, including beatings, rape and other abuse "offered" as entertainment.
The women in these films are portrayed as enjoying being 'ravished' by men. These images reinforce a broader message of patriarchy, that women are supposed to 'serve' men. They can either do it willingly or be brought into line through coercion or force.
These are not just fantasies or images. These are powerful ideas that have morphed into social form. And until and unless there is an equally persistent and powerful social idea with a counter message, then this behavior will continue.
That powerful counter, social message has been part of some elements of the feminist movement for decades. It's equality. Not breaking the glass ceiling equality, but a radical reformation of social relationships between men and women that can only occur as part of a radical reorganization of society.
That was the original message of the women's movement before it got coopted and turned into a civil rights issue. Maybe today's revelations will reawaken the movements origins. This is certainly what is needed.
1
Finally, a healthy take. We need more good examples of healthy relationships to shine a contrasting light on unhealthy relationships, as many as there are.
In so many areas of our lives in this consumerist, individualistic society, we are taught to think instrumentally about other people and ourselves. Mr Brooks's even says that in the love room, it's a transactional relationship, each person measuring the other to see if they are worthy of love. Such is life when there's are no values but capitalism.
I hope Mr Brooks does a follow up piece on intimacynamd vulnerability. Vulnerability is at the heart of love. Love is terrifying. You open yourself up as you do nowhere else. To rejection. To humiliation. I don't see where people, but especially males, are taught about this. On he contrary, the culture says to avoid being vulnerable at all times, and that, especially for males, humiliation is hell. This is educational path to prospecting and predation. It's opposite is being an actual human being.
1
Aretha would say R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Boys are not raised to respect women. Locker room talk objectifies. Rating girls in high school is ok. Hooking up-having a list of how many girls a guy has had sex with is ok. Getting women drunk with the goal of sex is ok, raping unconscious women is ok. Devos has undermined sexual assault investigations at colleges. OTOH girls are not raised to feel empowered, to know it is A-OK to say NO; to realize tbey have control over their bodies. GOP/WH is undermining women's rights, respect & power with their laws. Notre Dame no longer pays for birth control for women, but BOYS (& many men are simply over-grown boys) will still expect & demand sex from women who cannot afford birth control. David, your article is way TOO simplistic for a complex subject. I get you-in the 1940s, 50s, into the 60s life was more as you describe it. You & John Kelly are nostalgic for a past-that romaticized ideal of life in 1950s; it wasn't really ideal. The rise of social media complicates life for kids & teens in terms of sexting, bullying, obsessing over 'followers' & celebs. Coaches need to shut down locker room talk as NOT OK. Schools need to be pro-active & recognize sex harassment, bullying, & institute swift, serious punishment for social media actions. I get ANGRY when I hear schools say they can't do anything about it-THEY CAN institute a code of conduct for social media. Twitter, instagram, & facebook can montor, shut down bullying.
8
Mr. Brooks, please read some Dan Savage columns. Not some, a lot. Listen to his podcast. The LGBTQ community has been on the forefront developing precise and nuanced ways of communicating about sex and power and consent. Your room analogy is too simplistic.
3
The disgusting people are women and the system of laws and social inequalities that makes men 3/5 a human being in relation to women. I don't know a man who has not been punched and slapped by their girlfriend, are the cops ever called, who would care. You have not been to family court and you have not seen men ruined both financially and emotionally by spousal support, inequitable distribution of assets, child support and accusations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. It is these men who are broke, who are homeless and hungry, who never can see their children, who are in prison for arrears, who blow their brains out, who drink themselves into a stupor, who have zero human value except for working and giving money to women. You do not care about men, nobody cares about men, just what men can bring to the table. According to almost everybody except their own mothers, men have no feelings, no emotions, no humanity in this country. Even men do not recognize this as they pay for fancy dates that if they had a female friend would know they are being taken advantage of when all they genuinely want is someone to maybe like them and talk to them.
5
If this discussion were taking place 40 years ago, it would be neat and tidy, such as, "Men are only following their hormones. If women did not dress and act provocatively, men would not behave that way." Its good to see that the blame has shifted away from women, but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
I don't want to return to the day when this was completely the woman's fault, but with the exception of outright rape, women have to contribute to the game too.
Perhaps there are two predator rooms, one where men are the predator and one where women are. I refuse to believe that all of the women that went up to the rooms of Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, and Harvey Weinstein were innocent young things who thought they were going up for coffee. They saw a rich, powerful, famous, married man who could transform their lives (note the absence of the word "love" here). They only had to go into the predator room and seize him and drag him back to the "love room". The problem was they were in the wrong predator room and the plan backfired. And 15 years later when someone else had the courage to speak up, they saw the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and inflict a little revenge because they had the tables turned on them.
I'm not defending the actions of these men, and I am certainly not saying that all the women they preyed upon were in predator mode. But it's naive to think that some of these women aren't playing their own game.
5
Ten million dollars - Wienstien paid more - purchases something like 10,000 hours of attentions from a reasonably high-class prostitute. It might even make one or more women marry and stick with you until you tired of them. Pretty obviously the Wienstien and similar stories are NOT about not caring about the feelings of the partner. Consistent with accepted knowledge about most significant sexual assaults, it is about deliberately dominating and hurting the partner.
1
You’re not quite there. Sure, there’s a room where men view sex as transactional. But “transactional” implies a willing exchange of items of commensurate value. You’re falling into the same fallacy that the religious right often does- blaming harassment on the ‘transactional, cheapened’ nature of sex. But it’s not simply the transactional nature that leads to harassment. It’s the fact that men are taught that they need to go out and *take* sex. That they’re entitled to it. That if she says no she doesn’t really mean it, she’s just saying it so you won’t think she’s easy. That you just have to push a little further. That she’s playing coy. That it’s ok to sleep with her if she’s drunk. That she wants it if she’s dressing like that. That you, as the man, fill the role of pursuer so you must keep pursuing. Men are raised with- and our culture is saturated with- the idea that men are entitled to women’s bodies. Even as children, girls are raised to be “modest” and not tempt boys, who are excused from poor behavior because “boys will be boys.” Thus, it’s not a simple question of transactional pleasure (which implies total equal consent), or a simple question of men getting “pleasure” from exerting power. It’s not just a personality flaw that some men have. Men are trained by this culture to look at women as something to be conquered and they adjust their behavior accordingly.
2
Women can't ever own their bodies because they are always being sold. Check modern advertising, papers, magazines and TV. Women are advertised for sex to sell soap, to sell sports, to sell Cialis. Modern women try to look like 12 year old girls with their long hair even our first lady at 50 tries to look 12. Advertising needs to be looked at and revised, sell the product, not promising along with the product you get free sex and free girls.
5
It doesn't make sense to say that a predator wants to punish the women who arouse him and then say that the predator has no idea of the pain that he is causing. By definition punishment is meant to cause psychological and/or physical pain. The serial predator knows very well what he is doing and the pain he is causing; this is what he revels in.
The Harvey Weinsteins, Bill O'Reillys, and Donald Trumps of this world use lawyers to harass and silence with women who complain and pay big settlements to the ones who will not keep quiet about their pain. And then they go out and offend again and again. Like the child who pulls wings off of butterflies for the heady rush of destroying something beautiful, these men need to bolster their fragile egos by destroying what is beautiful in others. Their narcissism and sense of entitlement leads them to think they are attractive; the only thing that they are clueless about is how repugnant they are to their victims.
4
How about asking women what we want? And I, for one, don’t want “love and commitment only”. It sounds too much like the Victorian belief that women have no sexual needs and that a virtuous woman reluctantly submits to her husband’s sexual advances out of pure love. Women are sexual beings, just like men. We want fun. We want temporary and convenient relationships. We even want risky adventures. What we don’t want is to be harassed, blackmailed, or assaulted. We don’t want some sack of lard to imagine that he is irresistible because he has money. Sexual harassment and rape are abuses of power. They have little to do with sex. Give me a Don Juan anytime. But keep away if you all you have to show for yourself is a big wallet, a fat belly and a sense of entitlement.
2
Really, Mr. Brooks? The abusers in the third room didn't know they caused pain? Who doesn't recognize that as a throwaway excuse? The point is that they do know. They revel in it. Your overly simplistic explanation leads to rationalization, and that's dangerous.
8
Looking back on this process and wrestling within the zone of stage two (the prospector), there is already a strange paradox. To be successful with asking a woman you really want to have a relationship with, it would seem that this requires asking many women you're not that interested in so you develop the "skill" of catching. Yet this already seems like a fraud of sorts.
Moreover, if you have systematically perfected such a "skill set", why would you actually want to stop now that you finally have caught your fish (so as to say)? There must be some desire to know if you're still in the game -- that you can still score at age N.
It is harder for me to understand the even more disgraceful behavior of the predator. It seems like the typical behavior of bullies; only they have harnassed social/political power and use it on adults. The main difference here is that they bully through the very personal avenue of sex. The adult infrastructural bullies are much harder to confront because we often depend on them for a living.
One thing that might help those who still reside largely in room one (the room of love) is more literature and art that helps us face failure. Hollywood movies make it seem easy to just say the right words and you'll get that special woman that you passionately desired. Yet our ignorance at successful prospecting means that we risk failure, looking ridiculous when we reach out to a woman we like. In that search for compatibility, maybe this would help.
1
I hate to belabor a point, but sex is a consensual act.
Rape, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment, therefore, are not a combination of sex and power - just as having been violently robbed is not a combination of the perpetrator accepting a willing gift of another's possessions and power.
Sexual assault is about power and the abhorrent objectification and intimate violation of another. Perhaps the English language has yet to evolve to adequately address this, but it bears repeating - sexual assault is not about sex.
1
A tad simplistic. None of this happens in a vacuum. We live in probably the most eroticized culture — in spite of or perhaps because of its Puritan origins — on the face of the earth. Using sex, or at least sexual allure, to sell products is a type of commerce Americans have perfected over a century. It’s as pervasive now as it ever was. Why do you think the TV networks, guided by their presumably mostly male executives, dress their (often very accomplished and talented, like Megyn Kelly when she was at Fox) women anchors like show dogs, including half-inch long false eye lashes? It doesn’t have to be this way, but peddling sexual attractiveness is still a mainstay of our commercial American life. Man still control it and women go along with it. Guys are exposed to the results long before they have any understanding of women. It is the air that those “prospectors” and, I suspect, a fair number of those young “lovers” breathe. What we are seeing, in part, is the cost of very successful marketing, in other words of doing business. Let’s shine some more light on that.
1
Whether one is a predator is, I think, the direct result of one's relative security. Those remaining in David's sweet Room of Love are most of us, most of the time. We are secure people in secure and rewarding relationships which we help to build and maintain. Some, unable to navigate the inevitable changes as that relationship matures, may stray into the lobby of the Prospector Room, but basically secure, never venture too far across that room and never enter the Predator Room. But the insecure? Prospectors from the get-go, craving public and private affirmation, they accumulate trophy brides and grooms until that fails to fulfill. The really insecure go full-on Predator. Those who have to grab and take, and use their power to dominate someone are so insecure, mere conquest is not enough, they must be recognized for their prowess. The irony of today's predator-shaming is that the most insecure predator of all, the Predator-in-Chief, is permitted to inflict his predation in forms beyond the merely sexual upon all of us as tweet-by-tweet he leaves us feeling as sullied as the victims of his admitted sexual predation. Every GOP member of Congress by now knows what it feels like to sit on the casting couch and be violated. Yet, having made their Faustian bargain, still hoping to get that breakout role, and unwilling to shame their abuser, the victim toll mounts. Wither his shaming?
3
Wait a minute Bill Clinton was accused of having affairs. Consensual sex is not in the same realm as Trump grabbing women against their will or GW Bush grabbing tushes. Stop trying to use Clinton as an excuse for Trump. It is not the same thing at all. You lose all respect with this false equivalency. If you want to hit someone like Trump on the more liberal side, use Weinstein or Cosby. Stop it with the Clinton stuff. It is not the same.
2
When Hugh Hefner died recently many people were celebrating the fact that he was instrumental in the rise of sexual freedom in the sixties. Years later most have learned that there is no such thing as sexual freedom. Illicit sex can have dire consequences. The Law of the Harvest certainly applies to our sexual behavior. You reap what you sow.
Part of the problem of the "collapse of the first room" (love) stems from an ever greater number of children growing up in homes with no father present, or father's presence being intermittent and not linked to a solid relationship with mother. So many of my generation (Gen X) are children of divorce, while Millenials and younger (and minorities of all generations) are often children of single parents altogether. We really don't have that model of loving commitment, of growing in knowledge of the other, of working through problems together, of shared and permanent commitment. We have seen, or are seeing now, our parents permanently in prospector mode, if they're in the building at all. No surprise, then, that for many the only image they have is supplied by the media, which focuses on the prospector and tolerates the predator. The capacity for deep, trusting, committed love begins in the home, or fails to.
8
I'm still astonished that Americans elected Donald Trump after that audio tape.
10
I think Mr. Brooks misses the point here. Focusing on sexual engagements, loving or not, misses the underlying patriarchy that allows, and even promotes certain bad behavior in men. Looking to the past for our lost moral center is equally flawed: My grandfather's generation may have been more outwardly polite and reserved than my own, but those men certainly did not see women as their peers.
Men mistreating women, at all levels, is nothing new. What is new are men actually hearing and believing the stories of rape and abuse and harassment from the women they know and love. Millions upon millions of women in the US alone. It's not just about how we treat the women we sleep with, it's about how we treat all women all the time.
7
“It’s done in a giving frame of mind.” Sometimes, too giving.
Thanks again David, for a thoughtful column that I agree with completely. ."Sex is something you do with the person you love."
That makes sense on many levels, emotional, healthy, and permanence.
And of course, there could be consequences such as an unwanted child, an unwanted STD, and unwanted emotional scar.
After years of Benedictine schooling, I realize that this lesson can bring true happiness to both persons and the resulting children.
5
So much is imploding all at once politically, sexually, ,socially ,culturally. It's a scary, but a very exciting time in our history. I think it will lead to major revolutions in our thinking and our values.
2
David - I'm not sure you have the needed steps correct for this statement - "But I don’t think good men wake up one morning and suddenly start thrusting their tongue down the throats of women they barely know."
You don't have to 'walk through a number of stages' to get to that stage. You just have to be born wealthy and entitled, become a celebrity reality TV "star", and be elected president. Then, so I understand, you can "I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."
So there's no rooms, no multiple steps needed, just incredible ego, a narcissistic self-entitlement, and complete lack of normal self-control, class, and honorable behavior. We have elected a Predator-In-Chief, and it is our continuing shame. You write column after column trying to work around the edges of this fact, but there are no redeeming qualities, none at all, to Trump or his administration. None.
5
I haven't laughed this hard since he held forth on his lower-class acquaintances' discovery of cured meats.
4
Wow,not a word about nature.
1
"In the first room people see each other deeply. In the second regime they see each other in a degraded way."
David, you are such a victorian prude! There is nothing degrading about mutually enjoyed pleasure and nothing superior about monogamous sex. I engaged in plenty of the former in my youth and have enjoyed a monogamous relationship for the last 40 years. Consensual sex is all good.
Brooks is so off base with this analysis that I don't even know where to begin. But one observation that I can make that touches on all of the things wrong here is this:
If you assume that the social, cultural starting point for boys and girls is mutual respect and sexual autonomy, then every aspect of your analysis after that point is going to be wrong. Because it isn't.
Austen and Eliot were writing about women who were attempting to make the best out of a bad situation. They were forced into marriage or forced into another form of dependency, or penury. They were robbed of their birthrights by law and custom. They saw marriage to someone who wasn't an idiot or an abuser as about the best that could be hoped for. And were taught to be grateful if they got better than that.
If Brooks sees that as an equitable 'room' to start in, no wonder he gets the rest of it wrong, as well.
2
Well at the end of the day we can just follow Rick Perry's insightful guidance and leadership regarding this problem. Producing more fossil fuels is the answer. Yesterday he said, "But also from the standpoint of sexual assault, when the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts," Perry said. "So from the standpoint of how you really affect people's lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think it's going to play a positive role."
The staggering stupidity and incompetence of the predominantly male Trump cabinet leads only to hallucinations rather than vision for problem solving.
3
Well written and thoughtful. Let us celebrate the first room, love. Let us show the prospectors what real treasure is. That they are not loosing anything, in fact gaining more than imagined, by living in the first room.
4
If Mr Brooks had spent 10 minutes in a woman's body, he would not think that times are getting worse, lines are getting blurrier, and environments more degraded. He would know that every waking moment, until the day that sexual attractiveness declines, is an exercise in avoiding the predators.
Many women celebrate the day when they finally become invisible to men. That day is freedom, to a certain extent.
1
Your experience is so limited, David. There are men who are raised from infancy, socialized, to think of women as objects to be abused. Other men are raised to think of women as objects to be worshipped and protected, but never to be equal partners. There are women raised in these ways too. Each of these upbringings can result in sexual predators, victims, and overall unprofessional and criminal behaviors and environments, but they don't start at puberty; they start at birth. A child will look to hir parents (if there are any) for hir behavior. In addition, the pill and condoms have freed many to explore their sexuality with others and without romance, love, commitment or economic partnership. The world is a vaster place than your tiny little fairytale kingdom.
1
So why is there only sex education? There should be classes on human relationships. When we focus only on the act, we are doing a disservice of teaching kids about boundaries, relationships, abuse, positive interactions, etc. Our president set this precedent by getting away with his abusive behavior. Why does Weinstein get fired and Trump remains in office?
3
I sometimes wonder why I keep reading Mr. Brooks' opinions but I've decided that it's for the comedic effect of his pretension.
For me it comes down to what you want and what you are willing to give. In the first room, if intimacy and love are sought, you give your vulnerability and see what is returned. If you and your partner can get on the same page, you grow in your relationship. In the second and third rooms, their is no offering, no intimacy or vulnerability. Nothing of any lasting value is derived by any party, but you didn't want it anyway.
3
Holy guacamole.... There's a better way to teach boys about right and wrong. We can actually enforce laws against assault and predatory behavior.
2
The respect Mr. Brooks opinions. But he tries to sell them as facts, which is completely dishonest. Let me tell you a real "fact-based" story: A met a man recently (probably in 50's) - a steel worker from south chicago - on a train station and we have a good conversation. We decided to exchange our numbers and then after few weeks he texted me about going to a football game. Following the text there were some nude photos of women. This is how men thinks. I still don't understand why/how our conversations dropped so fast! I am a male and I have already blocked his contact on my iphone.
1
Even those fairy tales contribute to the problem: they convey the idea that the object of one's romantic desire can always be "won" through perseverance. "Romantic comedy" shows and movies teach the same thing. Romantic love (and, later, sex) are the reward...the payment...for effort.
It's a small step from perseverance and determination to stalking.
How much further from there to harassment and violence?
Mr. Brooks is only partially right. His essay presents a sweetly understanding view of three types of men and situations, but he completely avoids the main point about culture, which is "male privilege." Why has no one spoken of the self-appointed power structure created and driven by men? Males have been in charge of politics, society, religion and often culture for centuries, placing women in subservient positions and literally lording their physical (and other) powers over women. They expect to direct, they expect to be obeyed, they force themselves--in all ways, including sexually--on those they see as weaker and less worthy than themselves. Taking back our rightful, equal place, in society was and is the potent point of the Women's Movement. Ithaca succeeded in certain ways, but many men still resent and reject its accomplishments and the women that achieved equality. I believe that men who sexually assault women do so for reasons of ego, power, hostility and "simple pleasure" (if we can call sex that), assuming that theirs is the right. It is this mistaken and dangerous attitude that our society must expose and fight.
3
does the female portion of our society bear any responsibility for male predeator behaviour? if one takes an objective view of all the magazine photos of nearly naked women beckoning with the "come hither" look, or simply watches the women expose themselves in public on red carpets or Beverly Hills sidewalks, then the answer seems obvious. such images are designed to attract attention and stoke the male response. if we want to contribute to changing such behaviour, then we all, both males and females, bear some responsibility.
2
Nice article, Mr. Brooks. In no way does my comment excuse Bill Clinton, a 49 year old at the time of the Lewinsky, 22 years old, affair - BUT, Lewinsky openly admitted she had flashed the President and sought to seduce him. Of course, being a mature, powerful man he should have immediately gotten her out of the White House....but there is a difference here that I can't equate Clinton to Trump.
1
This is far too simplistic treatment of our very complex sexual development.
1
Can't leave out the birds and the bees and that thing called love, Mr.Brooks.
Don't know much about history or the French I took but I can tell you that Sam Cooke sang the songs of my youth and never did the lyrics come close to the predator room you write of. With today's music the kids seem to be listening to a different tune.
2
Substitute "money" for "sex" and this piece still rings true. A predator class, whether sexual or financial, found attacking and conquering whoever they can, not because they need some basic amount of it to satisfy normal needs, but because they feel a need to have as much as they can, and won't be limited to getting it from mutually beneficial interactions.
2
Oh, by all means lets study it to death. Meanwhile most sexual predators are cowards and bullies. They will cease when they are exposed and have no one to hide behind. When men no longer have control of testosterone fed moral righteousness they have claimed for centuries, the bullies will have nowhere to hide. It won't stop serious criminal behavior like rape and domestic violence but it will make the man you profile here shrivel like a vampire exposed to the light.
1
"Can a leopard change its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil." (Jeremiah 13:23) Brooks's rooms go back much earlier than Jane Austen. Sexual predation is not merely a US phenomenon or the result of modernization. It most likely predates our emergence as a species and will be difficult to eradicate. We must work to cure ourselves of this horrible affliction, and until we succeed we must also teach the gazelle how to avoid leopards.
1
Beautiful column, Mr. Brooks! I absolutely agree that no one talks about, brags about, spends time in the "room of love" anymore. Country music is the only genre that still bothers with love songs - every other genre (except possibly South American music) consists of sex and violence songs. I don't think anyone under 40 knows or cares that the "room of love" once existed.
I actually thought this was a good column until you brought Bill Clinton into it ! As far as I remember the Clinton affair it was a MUTUAL relationship.
1
Progress is possible in the way we treat each other. The wolf whistle, for example, is thankfully a thing of the distant past. And now, instead of men holding doors open for women, all of us hold doors open for each other. But the critical issue that remains, and is timeless, apparently, is the abuse of power in sexual terms by successful men: presidents, movie stars and producers, professors, priests. Often these powerful predators are very insecure people, losers at what Mr. Brooks calls prospecting, dreaming of something that could have been but never was, now "obtainable". The test of character of any man is how he treats women. It makes no difference whether you are a Trump or a Kennedy or an average guy on the street. Are you a real man? Do you know yourself? Do you have the intelligence and the courage to do the right thing?
2
This article, as most commenters have written, is excessively simplistic. Let me tell you my story:
I entered the room of love when I was 6. During quite time, sitting behind her, I played with her hair. Our love grew over the years, but my family moved away when I was 10; we continued writing how much we loved each other until she graduated from 8th grade. She sent me a "Dear John" letter and I was devastated.
I was also the new kid in school. I was bullied; some of my bones broke. We entered junior high and the athletes would beat me up at recess, in gym class, and after school. The worst part of it happened in PE where out sadistic teacher would encourage the bullies to beat me up, "to make a man out of me." Once we got to high school, PE was optional, and the bullies started hitting on girls instead of me.
Eventually, I found love again, but I still do not trust men after 50 years. Predators do not cross from room to room; they cross over from occasionally beating up guys (which they consider a form of pleasure) to occasionally beating up and forcing sex on women (which they consider pleasure).
Why isn't this ever recognized in the debate? Why do gym teachers think that beating up less physically mature boys will encourage them boys to become men? (You can't tell them to fight back after their bones have been broken!)
David, where were you when you saw pre-pubescent boys being towel whipped by pubescent boys in the shower room? Which one got your friend pregnant?
5
I think we actually do a disservice to young people when we put too much emphasis on this "offering up the most vulnerable part of yourself" in a "form of deep knowing" version of sex. It ignores the messy, uncomfortable, absurd, and awkward aspects of sex that are present even in happy marriages of long standing. Making sex sound like it should be this amazing union of souls thing has the unintended consequence of creating a sort of FOMA effect as people question why their own relationships don't necessarily measure up. Better to be honest: there are lots of different ways to have sex, and lots of different ways to incorporate it into lots of different types of relationships. Sometimes it's amazing and sometimes it's a hilarious bust. We'd all be better off if we lightened up about what we should expect in long-term relationships in regard to sex.
4
We have seen the worst of sexual predators and elected him President. He bragged about it and "they" still voted for him. "They" are as bad as he is.
6
I really can't understand how any man can repeatedly force forms of sexual contact with women that are clearly repulsed by them.
And, no matter how pathetic these patterns are, adding coercion only makes them more loathsome.
This article gives a start for that conversation.
If the Trumps and Weinstein's of this world do not see these victims as humans, if the victories are only understandable in a predatory male world, what does this say about their sexuality?
It's been fifty years since Women's Lib which was supposed to enlighten us to the fact that we weren't our husband's property, that we could work outside the home, that we could decide how many children to have and when, and that our future didn't depend on being an appendage to a patriarch. Women's lib gave rise to an understanding that there was sexual harassment in the workplace and that it could and should be acknowledged and addressed.
And yet fifty years on, apparently, women have still been suffering louts and boors in silence in the workplace and, astonishingly, the pill has given rise to a shallow, casual hook up culture and it seems, campus fun now includes drunken bacchanals with he/said she said encounters where any legal concept of consent is shattered or muddled to the point that a Christian zealot like Betsy DeVos can waltz in and take the side of the frat boys.
The weight of history is important here. We've been talking about this for a half century. And yet? Ailes, O'Reilly, Weinstein, Halperin ad nauseam. And worst of the worst: Trump. Our predatory male figurehead. Plus ça ne change pas. I weep in my beer.
2
Predators have been excused by the church since the Crusades, the love narrative has been controlled by the church since the bible, and man has been prospecting all in the name of the church since the Inca's. When the church looses control over man and his ability to think history will keep repeating itself.
It's a good column except that he morally equates Trump to Bill Clinton, who has a long history of violent sexual predation. While there are reports of Trump engaging in boorish behavior, there are no credible reports that he acted violently toward women. Reports of violent behavior toward women by Bill Clinton go back to his college days.
I would also suggest that out here in flyover country, the first room is still the norm among church-going folk and is rigidly enforced by vigilant fathers.
2
This childish mansplaining fable accomplishes the opposite of what it intends by reducing male sexual choices to "moving from one room to another." Human beings CHOOSE whether to seek meaningful relationships or exploitation of others for their own sole benefit. The former is hard work. This is a culture in which everyone avoids like crazy anything that takes work and responsibility (you know, like working hard to learn something in difficult subjects in school, doing critical thinking and compromising over tough political issues, resisting being a mindless consumer of food and goods, etc.) Capitalism has succeeded in driving out difficult experiences and replacing them with physical and spiritual junk food. As religion always told people, virtue is a narrow, thorny path while wickedness is a well-beaten fair lawn.
2
"If we had a clearer concept of a beautiful relationship we’d also have a clearer concept of what predatory behavior looks like and what it takes to eradicate it."
Mr. Brooks, the problem with your habitual use of generalizations is that it enables you to assert viewpoints like this which are barely meaningful and entirely unsupported.
If Brooks would talk to a fair percentage of college students in his second room, I very much doubt they would say they see each other in a degraded way as he asserts.
Again, Brooks intellect serves up a poetic essay that says precisely who we are. Alas, I am stuck in the second room and haven't as yet figured my way through my adolescent maze.
2
There's just one problem with this analysis: virtually all women have experienced unwanted sexual actions from men. So there must be a much larger group of predators than Mr. Brooks suggests. And many fewer women who share the view that sexual conquest is a prospecting game. But the article should be helpful to women who don't understand the male games. Don't look for love at a frat party. And stay reasonably sober.
3
Astounding! Trump is in the WH, thanks in part to Putin and despite his overt racist campaign against Obama, Mexicans and Muslims, and his disgusting history of assault and harassment against women.
Wax poetic about love in context with Trump in the equation reveals the typical Republican abandonment of moral ethical principles and fake reluctance to keep Trump for the rich donors.
2
I agreed with your analysis until you compared Clinton to Trump. Typical republican analogy, but utterly inane. Trumps entire life has been one of lies and deceit, misogyny and revenge, egotism and amoral behaviour. Lecherous describes this mentally ill spawn of the devil perfectly.
1
This column dissects the many ways in which love is expressed and the many ways in which that intersects with sexual relations, but only from a male perspective.
While that does capture the bulk of transgressions, the role of a supportive woman is minimized. I do not mean the woman who may have been beguiled into a transactional one night stand. I mean the spouse, such as Hillary Clinton or Melania Trump, both of whom stood by their man. Why?
Predators tend to be bullies with men as well as women.
There have been numerous accounts of violence by Harvey Weinstein towards people of both genders. Donald Trump viciously attacks those who displease him almost daily on Twitter. He has successfully bullied and intimidated most of the leaders of his own party into craven silence. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, isn't a bully. The very few accusations of predatory sexual behavior on his part seem to have been politically motivated. In fact, his general behavior is one of the factors casting doubt on such accusations. Clinton doesn't try to get his way with male opponents by bullying them. As Newt Gingrich can attest, he deploys charm and endless persuasive argument. He talks them to death.
People like David Brooks need to learn to distinguish "sexual misconduct" from "sexual harassment." Adultery is one thing; using sex as a form of hostility is another. I realize that false equivalence is such a common technique of Republican pundits these days that they use it automatically, but it seriously dilutes the strength of their argument.
6
The problem, in my view, is that some men require chaperones to mind their behavior: men like Trump, Cosby, Spacey, Clinton, O'Reilly, Ailes, Weinstein et al.
By now everyone knows what predatory behavior looks like; just ask the women and men who are telling their stories. Believe them.
The solution is as simple as reporting common thieves: Call the police and lock them up!
1
I am often critical of Mr. Brooks' vision of a society that magically fixes itself by becoming more of what he thinks an ideal society should be. But this column is a new low in terms of simplistic analysis and dearth of solutions. It is famously said that no man is an island. Nor is he a room. I suggest that Mr. Brooks address the specific societal and cultural problems which foster sexual abuse. They have been part of Western culture and the Jewish-Christian-Islamic religious traditions since they began.
1
Anyone over 40 knows all this. What you need to do is call out the cultural propagandists who perpetuate and sell this culture. You could start with Dan Savage, Cosmopolitan magazine and Ariana Grande. Start naming names.
1
When will more men start speaking and acting to stop other men when they recognise that they are abusing, disrespecting or shaming women, children and other men?
1
While the intent here is good, this is a weirdly old-fashioned, moral piece. Never forget humans are intelligent animals and mostly enjoy sex. Young men and women looking for sex in the prospector room are degraded? They're nothing but mammals, they just want to "do it like they do on the Discovery Channel."
I don't know which boys are ever in that romantic "first room" that Brooks describes. The rapists were NEVER in that room. But girls are there, for sure, and women are there.
Women are accomplished self-deceivers when it comes to men. We see a few qualities at attract us to a man and then we sketch in the rest, fill in the blanks, in a way that fulfills our fantasy of love. It is not real.
Conversely, too many men see women as lesser beings. And to them, we are prey. They take what they want. Brooks forgot the mention the simmering rage of men who think they deserve more women than they can "get," and "hotter" women. They deserve these women sexually because they are "nice" guys. It's so sick, it's sad. Makes me glad I'm old now and out of this arena.
2
Of course, this goes beyond sexual predation. There is increasing space in our public realm for all sorts of mean-spirited nasty behavior. We see it in our president and we see it in the media -- in films and cable news. And now we have a better idea why there is so much apocalyptic, zombie, and horror films -- they are the manifestations of the minds of the owners and producers of media companies. They have tried to normalize their anti-social selfish greedy instincts by projecting it into our living rooms and into our not very smart phones. A bunch of disgusting people, from Trump to Weinstein (with too many politicians in between) have captured the airwaves and bombarded us with their sickness. Nice people (like President Obama) did not know what happened to them when these sickos threw their garbage at them. Obama tried to use reason; hah! David Brooks tries to find the answers in some good books. But the market has given free reign to the sickness of a few, capturing the body and souls of our children, motivating good people to mimic this sickness. Life (politics included) imitating the worst art available. We can do better.
From the looks of things, the vast majority of the powerful predators dragged into the light were far from Adonises. These were men likely rejected by women they were attracted to as adolescents. When they grew into power brokers they used their position to bend their victims into “accepting them.”
Simple. Base. Vengeance. Against Women.
1
Trying to resurrect “responsible sex” are we, David? That’s about as exciting as regular toilet habits. It’ll never catch on!
Sex is meant to be spontaneous, adventurous, and passionate, untaxed by Republicans, unregulated by Democrats, and unconcerned with the God-given purpose of procreation.
Footwear and fashion accessories must be strewn on stairs and in hallways. Garments must be ripped. Ladies and gentlemen must assume undignified positions, grope and grapple, sweat, talk dirty, and mimic animal sounds. Clouds of fetid pheromones must overpower expensive perfumes. The affair must be cloaked in mystery, with a whiff of danger. Scandal and censure must ensue.
I ought to know! I’ve burned through scores of romance novels, and melted a few e-readers. I have receipts from Amazon to verify the extent of my research.
4
In one our late exchanges, I ask Paris if she has ever heard of a stalker, or read a bodice-ripper, causing my romantic friend of a certain age to start laughing. The author of 'Little Women', Louisa May Alcott, in order to make ends meet would return from her travels, sit at her desk and one of her works is entitled 'A Long Fatal Love Chase', which ends unhappily.
David Brooks takes the trouble to give his readership an essay on Love in America. My eyes remain veered on the plight of women in developing countries, but launching an International Year of The Woman is not going to happen. Not with this President.
'Men Love Women, Women Love Children and Children Love Hamsters', causing a friend to ask 'What's with all this loving'. Better than hatred for one, and amusing.
Contrary to Mr. Brooks, and what one might call a surrender to freedom behind closed doors, one might give one's heart to another, while keeping one's soul. You are not offering your vulnerability, the very essence of your being to anyone. Unless you want to, but it's risky business.
Your friend makes you happy. You are not thinking in romantic terms, until a surprise declaration is made because he is a male. You had forgotten his gender in this love story of friendship. At heart you are still both children but you love with a love beyond love. And the rest comes with it, the compatibility of a life-long mate. Singular, it can happen when you are looking in another direction.
Speaking of Predators, around 1992 I had a dinner with Arthur Miller in a Tel Aviv restaurant. When I came to pick him up from his sea-shore hotel he looked at me, and though we haven’t met for about five years, said “you’ve lost a lot of weight Meir, and you look distracted – is it a woman?” I said “yes” and he replied “I want to hear all about it”.
And so we set in the “Jewish” restaurant and talked for hours on the twists of obsessive love (lust) and on how it feels to be after the fall. Arthur mused, without actually mentioning her name, on the nature of Marilyn and the woman I was telling him about: “Women like her, they think they are the center of the world and worthless at the same time; and this whirlpool is the source of their power – they draw you in”.
4
If we apply David Brook’s analysis to Donald Trump, it is clear that judging from Trump’s track record and his own words, Donald Trump apparently went straight from “Prospecter” to “Predator” and never looked back. He completely skipped the “Love” stage except for the “self-love” part and his narcissism is getting worst. Terrifying for men and women alike.
3
I've tried sticking my tongue down women's throats. It does nothing for them or me. I tried it, dropped it, it has no appeal. Many other porn concepts are equally bankrupt, un-useful to anyone. David hasn't captured the warp and woof of males, let alone women's takes on what rooms can be checked into. There are more small back rooms between heaven and earth David than you have imagined. The article's too short, the subject too long for the tiny analysis.
In the second regime they see each other in a degraded way.
The words of a social conservative there. I say you are degrading the pleasures of sex between consenting partners not seeking long term relationships. This room is no closer to sexual predation than your cherished monogamy.
In most of my adult life I've lived in the monogamist room and it suits me very well now, but there was nothing degrading in the relationships of my youth that were primarily about pleasurable sex whether between friends or friendly strangers.
2
I don't think the world is overpopulated with creeps. I think most men, like most women, are decent and respectful. It's wrong for all men to now be lectured about their sexuality as if they are imbeciles. It's wrong for all men to have to fit into a category, as if sexuality was an A,B or C choice with no little nuance. Lover, prospector or predator? No. Both men and women can own their sexuality with more than this simplistic view served up by Mr. Brooks.
Predators and harassers do exist, but the majority of men are not in those categories and deserve better than this.
Oh boy....what to think. David, did you put something in your coffee this morning? Or maybe I did.
Okay...I'm male, so I'll think simplistically (heh). Men over the course of their lives, just as women do, must ascend the ladder of rationality in order to become fully realized human beings. Part of this ascension is in the recognition that all personal relationships are partnerships. Partnerships of equals.
Those with the predator mindset, in failing to recognize and understand this, are simply inferior humans lower down on the rungs of that ladder. One could, and should, laugh at them as simpletons all the while reporting them, depending on how egregious the violation, to the proper authorities. But regardless a bit of laughter and social humiliation, as is finally beginning to occur on a broad scale via social media's resurrection of the scarlet letter 'P" in digital form, seems a proper cure - or at least limiter - on any of the behavior.
But in the end, regardless, we're all hairless chimps driven by hormonal and natural urges aren't we? As such I always advise all newly minted young adults to remember a popular old rock and roll refrain. Welcome to the Jungle.
John~
American Net'Zen
Love in modern America?
Love, poetry, wisdom, knowledge, philosophy, art...imagine our political order, session of congress, on such a thing. It would be a modern comedy, a model of hypocrisy, falsity, cliche. I recollect when young loving. By twenty love within was dead. To love is to put oneself and what or who one loves in danger. It is to admit weakness and to declare object of love to be above the usury, predation of society.
Purity of sentiment in America seemed best expressed in music, but we know the course of so many of the lives of musicians, all those dashed dreams, hopes. I thought I could become a philosopher, but whatever success I have had is marred by being fundamentally bitter, hating rather than loving. My course of life has been to have been subject to weak, cowardly people, ignorance, incompetence of institutions, largely transactional on base level experience.
You try to keep above it all, but everybody seeks to use you, sell you, buy you, manipulate you, to find out how you can be moved, that in the end you just move people around as well. Probably remnants of love, affection today are best expressed toward pets. And who knows when that weakness will be used against you and animal. Loving, honoring a person in modern society cannot be really trusted, you just never know whether you are being attempted to be bought off.
Listen to our politicians: Constitution, country, honor, God, etc. Trip them up and ask them about wisdom, about meaning of love.
Speaking of the Classics: there was once (or was chauvinistically conjured) a semi-goddess named Helen. She eloped with her Lover, a handsome Prince of Troy named Paris, abandoning her, elder and not so handsome, husband King Menelaus in a “Room” full of masculine shame and memories of lost desire (and she left behind her daughter too). As things turned out, Menelaus and his band of Greek noblemen assembled thousand ships and sailed to get Helen back and destroy Troy – it worked out for them and Helen was returned to her husband’s bed.
Now, a current popular PC version is that both Menelaus and Paris were Predators and Helen was objectified and abducted and was actually one of the many, many victims of the sordid affair; on the other hand, throughout the ages, men, with higher levels of testosterone than today’s average, were convinced that the fact Helen won the universal beauty pageant made her a Mega-Prospector and had something to do with the unfolding of the whole tragedy. And in the final count, the semi-Goddess was the instigator and “winner” of the greatest mythological Love and War story of all not-PC times.
To a fair number of men, women aren't really human partners of any sort: They're just holes on the hoof, here to be exploited by men.
The majority of men don't see things that way, but, on the other hand, they don't really take exception to those who do. If they did, prostitution would be a whole lot less widespread than it is, and we would have a different president.
5
It is easy in our commercialized and consumer world to start to view ourselves and others as products rather than humans. We can see the effects not only in intimate relationships but in society with racism and other isms. We should try to see beauty in others and enjoy nature during our short stay on earth.
1
To this column should be added the perverse legacy of the early Puritans on our national psyche. They were a brutish bunch these misogynist forefathers of ours and they left a deep imprint on our national psyche. Meanwhile, to believe TV ads, entertainment and social media, sex with highly desirable (and desiring) young bodies is everywhere to be had. Call it the three rooms of love or sex, call it a macho power trip or call it what you want but there is a lot of anger, confusion and repression out there and it's getting worse. And focusing on sexual harassment only addresses the symptoms of this kind of boorishness, not its causes. Let's have a national dialogue about our confused sexual feelings first and why they so often get acted out awkwardly if not violently.
To Ken P:
Historical reality check: puritans got much of their reputation for sexual prudeishness from the Victorians.
1 predator can hurt many of us. That's why it's vital to demand all sex assaults stop. The worst offenses (outright rape; or worse, rape with murder) are hidden in the shadows of myriad milder offenses (groping, verbal abuse) that for too long have been viewed by some in authority as "too trivial" to ban.
To understand the mental twitches of a rapist, you have to trace the roots of the crime back to their original social habitat & their native soil in the mind.
Rape is rooted in slavery. Slavery has a long history.
In ancient times, conquerors raped captives. Rape marks the victim forever: "Anything can be done to you; you are nothing; I don't need your permission; no one cares if you die; no one will come to your rescue. My people defeated your people."
When a female schoolteacher rapes a teenage boy, the attack is a demonstration to him of her power over his family, as well as his own body. The traumatized child becomes the pathologically deficient rapist's instrument of self-aggrandizement; she revels in her power as much as in the sex itself. That's a pathology we must confront. Predatory habits often come from profound mental illness. That's not making excuses for it: that's pointing out facts.
We need to stand up to those who feel safe hurting others because they have been praised so much they feel invincible. We've treated them like gods.
Let's all stop rewarding mentally ill, disturbed people with more power, excuses & opportunities for indefensible assaults.
However akward David's discussion, however historically common domination has been, nothing changes till we admit it, TALK about it, get tired of it, and move on . . the days of seeing each other as terrifying sex objects, or conquests is over . . and no amount of saying it's just boys being boys, will help. But it's much bigger than sex. This is no different than religious, racial, or any other excuse we use to divide us . . We're clannish, and need to grow up, whomever the "other" we choose to objectify is . . I was once in a volunteer fire department where we argued for months over whether to put in a water cooler or not . . all because "one" group wanted it, the "other" group did not. Biden had it right, "Time to grow up".
2
You Mr conservative, voted for and elected a predator for our leader. Most men I have met that are prospectors or predators are just plain horrible people. How and why do we elevate them to leadership?
2
For women and girls, the world is full of male predators. Brooks does not see it because he is of the privileged male class and no one trying to prey on him, rape him, beat him, get him drunk or drugged so that he can be sexually preyed upon. No one is trying to gang rape him or kidnap him into sex slavery.
Brooks does not get that women are nowhere safe from male violence and predation. He does not get that women all over this land fear men and take hyper-vigilant precautions to avoid being victimized.
3
Bill Clinton and Donald Trump should never be compared in the same sentence. To do is to perpetuate a dangerous false equivalence. Donald Trump is a self professed sexual assaulter. He has been accused numerous times over decades of the behavior he admitted to on tape - and worse. Bill Clinton had consensual affairs. Terrible judgment - yes - but not a crime. HE was accused by two women of sexual assault - but he denied those allegations and they have never been proven. Furthermore, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that those accusations were politically motivated, but in any event they were never even close to being criminally substantiated. Stop perpetuating reckless false equivalence. Donald Trump is a self confessed criminal. President Clinton is not.
7
Well, you're half right. Sexual abusers are indeed pathological Narcissists. Thing is, though, the mental illnesses that drive sociopathic behavior are equally distributed across genders. Thus a sociopathic abuser is just as likely to be female as male. That's why articles like this aren't surprising:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sexual-victimization-by-women...
Society has an odd fixation on male abusers/female victims. This false preconception creates a false narrative; so nothing ever improves. Let's start from the facts, and decide what to do about predators from there--regardless of gender.
A teenage boy who follows the television news or reads a newspaper has now heard of Trump's exploits with women, i.e., the kissing and grabbing of women quotes from the Billy Bush tape. So, this teenager thinks, "If Donald Trump can do that, why can't I try it on some girl? He never got in trouble for saying that, or doing that, and now he is the President." Children learn by watching and mimicking. Trump is an admitted predator and sexual harasser (that tape is the evidence coupled with several credible women's testimony). Why is he still President?
3
The gaping hole in Brooks analysis is the failure to see that boys at a very young age learn to objectify women, especially in recent decades, through the easy access to pornography. Maybe David grew up at a time when porn was not just a click away. To not address this overwhelming influence on children, leaves his analysis on adults schmaltzy and based on ignorance of the world our children grow up in.
4
Brooks creates a fantasy of male gentility with just a few “bad guys” but if you scratch the surface you will find a predatory creature hidden within the “amygdala” of the male limbic system. It’s built in and requires societal vigilance to control.
2
Hermes Trismagistus
Perhaps you are right.
Men and women are certainly different when it comes to sex. Men think of sex all of the time.
Perhaps if there was mutual empathy, good manners, civility and respect between the sexes society wouldn’t have to “control” anyone.
Notary Sojack
Sexual predators are the farthest beasts from being able to commit, they just want to take, by force if necessary, or sneaky persuasion (via alcohol, drugs, food), to get away with sexually assaulting their ever transient partner. There is no love here, hate instead (including hate towards himself, as his insecurity and immaturity won't allow him to take responsibility nor conscience). Like any criminal behavior, the culprit must justify to himself what is about to occur (she deserves it!, given she kept ignoring my advances, however unwanted; or, a perfect stranger caught by surprise and subdued by brutish force (or a gun). I suspect that this obeys not only to sexual urges familiar to all of us, but the feeling of rejection otherwise. That 'rape' occurs at all may stem from a violent childhood absent love and caring, and parental example, and admonition, to love or at least respect each other...before we attain an age where our impulses may become irrepressible, out of control, even condoned by certain social circles where 'machismo' is allowed a free hand. Sexual predatory practice, although nowadays widely advertised, is not a routine practiced dehumanization of women, but still abhorrent to hear about. One wonders why we react with so much disgust about this abuse; could it be that any of us could, given the circumstances, do likewise, if our mind, under the effects of altering medication or influence, goes temporarily insane?
• It would also be nice if there were some positive vision of how sexuality fits into a rich life, how it flourishes in the private sphere as a (very fun) form of deep knowing.
"Sex is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other."
DONATIEN ALPHONSE FRANÇOIS
MARQUIS DE SADE
(1740 – 1814)
French aristocrat, revolutionary and novelist
3
Did the marquis de Sade ever marry or even have a relationship that lasted longer than a few days?
I really don't think anyone is preventing anyone from indulging in whatever sex they want. Mr. Brooks' column had to do with relationships, in case anyone is still interested in relationship.
"I still think most men, when they are children, grow up in that room." You need to get out more Mr. Brooks, you are out of touch with your people and reality.
49
Why do you say that?
I was disappointed that there was no room for the Italian ham and salami. That's the room for me.
1
This has ltitle if anything to do with the black experience in America.
In the United States of America built upon enslaved black African labor working on land stolen from brown Natives black men were and are seen as violent moral degenerate sexual predators fixated on white women and being baby daddies. While black women were hot-blooded promiscuous seductress craving white men. A 14 year old boy from Chicago named Emmet Louis Till was lynched in Mississippi as a result of such mythology. While Sallie Hemmings had serial procreative sex with her owner Thomas Jefferson.
In the seperate and unequal American Jim Crow era and it's lingering aftermath the black family has been shredded by slavery and involuntary servitude aka prison and welfare reform aka no welfare for black people. Along with poor public schools and terrible housing.
51
You are so right.
1
Much like this comment has little if anything to do with the article. Unless you wanna talk about Bill Cosby or Michael Jackson.
So what? Why should Mr. Brooks be obligated to write about the Black experience when he isn't even black?? Must every column be about the Black experience? I think he was writing about the culture at large, which is his right.
We used to have all sorts of words to describe that certain kind of guy who preys upon women: Lothario, Casanova, Don Juan, Romeo, debaucher, rake, seducer, lecher, wolf, philanderer, womanizer, lady's man, satyr, gigolo, roue, cad, libertine, and even "dirty old man." Perhaps we need to bring these terms back.
43
Leave out Romeo for this type of man. Romeo was truly in love.
Either sex can con the other sex with phony love. So can sex partners of any sexuality(ies).
I believe they are useful terms and they describe some different behavioral types. A difference between being a Cassanova and debaucher, rake, of lecher. There is a difference between being a womanizer, a dirty old man and a predator, rapist, or harasser. We need much greater refinement in terminology as there are nuances, absolute differences, connotations and degrees. Not all harassment is sexual; not all sexual harassment is predatory or an assault; not every unwanted touch is sexual and not every toucher is harassing. Not every woman needs to feel like a victim because of an unwanted touch nor did that one incident mean they were victimized. So we need words that distinguish "victim" from someone who felt intruded upon or just plain icky. We need to determine when it is appropriate -- as it might very well be - to just move on because no real harm was done, and when even if no harm was done to me, I might need to warn others. All of this merits a lot more discussion, training and examination from many points of view and should not exclude male input and education all around.
Boys start out in the “love room” respecting and caring about girls until they hit college? Bwhahahahah. Just about every woman out there has had to put up with boys trying to look under her skirt when she was on the elementary-school slide or snapping her bra strap in junior high/high school. Boys learn real early they have to constantly prove they are real men—and doing so means distinguishing themselves from girls by putting them down. As usual, Brooks wants to pin harassment on the sexual revolution instead of on the patriarchial beliefs that still warp kids’ upbringings.
283
In the puritanical 1950s, girls would sneak peeks at bashful boys too.
The availability of internet porn takes mystery out of sex now.
"Some" boys grow up how you describe, Deering24. A huge number do not. From my earliest memories I always wanted girls to like me as a friend or friendly acquaintance, so it never entered my mind to do anything aggressive toward them that might jeopardize this. Don't recall anybody ever teaching me this, but I count myself very lucky to have grown up like this. I've always remained friends with my exes, never splitting from them bitterly. The term "real men" is nearly nonsensical to me. Yes, I am a military veteran.
2
Brooks seem entirely naive. He ignores that boys as young as four are already showing attitudes of male supremacy and disrespect for women.
Surrounded by a culture that hates women, that sees women as sexual objects to which men are entitled, where at least in in 5 women is raped, where it is acceptable on TV and elsewhere to refer to women with a term that means female dog, it is unsurprising that boy children early that men count and women do not. And these days, boys start viewing and using Internet porn at the average age of 10.
Today, Christian fascist woman-haters are violently hacking away at abortion rights and even birth control, slamming women backwards. Violent porn and rape culture is indoctrinating young boys to become the next generation of rapists. Women are being killed by abusers and locked in cages when they defend themselves. Women and girls everywhere are being shamed, blamed, disrespected, hurt, belittled, and abused.
Come on, if men were generally capable of loving women and considering women as full human beings, there would be no prostitution, no porn industry, no campus rape, no domestic violence, no referring to women as with ugly sexualized slurs, no wage gap, no date rape drugs, no Cosbys or Weinsteins, no misogyny, no culture of "pump and dump." Male hatred of women is at an all-time high in this land.
Men basically see women as sexual objects and males grow up thinking they are entitled to women's sexual & domestic services.
131
This is horrible. Men as natural-born predators -- you will never, never live in a world free of abuse if your response to it is to point at a toddler and say, "monster."
I am not discounting your anger. It is quite evident. Taking personal experiences and emotional underpinnings out of the discussion sometimes helps us move forward as a society as opposed to calling out and laying blame and seeing every male with one set of lenses. Those of us who - for whatever reasons - have escaped some of these horrible experiences might have something to offer. Men who either were or were not guilty of these offenses also might have something to offer to the discussion and it seems to me no one has the authority to declare exactly, precisely, with no questions asked what is wrong or what should be done about it. We need to be aware, we need to be inclusive, we need to listen to a variety of experiences. Right now the extreme examples seem to headline and draw attention. But we also need to be clear harassment is not the same as sexual abuse as a child. We need to recognize that not every touch is sexual assault even if it isn't wanted. There are a lot of nuances and definitions that need to be understood all around.
I consider myself a feminist but I also consider myself a humanist. I'm not a man-hater and at the same time I can see a lot of bad, horrid and plain old yucky behavior that ought not be tolerated. Calling it out is a start but we need to do much more than to complain, scream and blame if we want anything to change.
I think when you call people evil or deviant you prevent understanding. It doesn’t mean it justifies the behavior by trying to see the motives, it means you are trying to prevent the triggers that develop theses behaviors. I tend to see mental health as a health problem.
I also believe that no person is as bad as the worse thing they have ever done. With self reflection and taking responsibility for ones actions, a person can be redeemed. People who blame others ( Trump and Hitler) cannot.
In these times of chaos maybe we should spend more time as a society looking into behavior profiles rather than the old “this person is evil and we should lock them away forever.” We have filled our jails and it hasn’t worked.
It’s time to be less tribal and to get smarter.
21
Right, they're just sick and need to be shown how their behavior affects people. Because, how would they know?
Seriously, though, I don't think you understand malignant narcissism very well. These people, particularly the very intelligent ones, are very aware of what they are and how their behavior affects people. That's why they do it. They get pleasure from controlling and humiliating others. Therapy doesn't help them because they don't want to change. Evil is the perfect word to describe them.
2
Our jails are NOT filled with sex offenders. Hardly. These cases are the toughest ones to get convictions on, partly because of a societal prejudice that sees women as liars or unreliable reporters of the truth. Moreover, these are exactly the people who should be locked up, as they are predators, and studies show that, contrary to your intuition, they do not end up changing their stripes, as it were. So, while I have no problem with changing the criminal laws to avoid incarceration of non-violent, non-predatory offenders, I also support long incarceration sentences for sexual predators and pedophiles.
2
Richard Burton Matheson a man of Hollywood, who lived with the very same woman during 61 years, wrote the screenplay of "Somewhere in Time". This scene shows what a beautiful woman says when she is really, really in love. The movie is from 1980, but it looks as it was produced after the Weinstein scandal. Jane Seymour plays the character of a harassed woman. Christopher Plummer plays the character of you know who. The others are the persons that did not say anything, and look surprised when a woman says what she really wants.
And Christopher Reeve looks really in love
The best lines?
- "There must be something you like about him.
- "Yes, his absence"
https://youtu.be/ltfwZRcd-aE
5
Cringe worthy.
24
The ubiquity of free, easily accessed porn that kids are exposed to from a very early age probably plays a part in this equation as well.
38
Is there anything that Mr. Brooks is not an expert on?
17
Haha, yes, it seems the Great Catagorizer has no limits.
I would say the sexual inclinations of the human male.
As an older adult who enjoys a variety of popular music, I often muse about the influence that popular music has, or often reflects, on the mores of the times in which it emerges. Back in the '50s and '60s, it was much as you describe the "room of love", all about "Getting to Know You" and eventually "Goin' to the Chapel". It eventually evolved into "take off your Bobbie Brooks and let me do what I please". Today is much more graphic, and implies domination and disregards consent, or even an lewd invitation. Kids arrive at "parties" with throbbing beats inviting them to bump and thrust with strangers, often wearing clothing that leaves little to remove before they are engaged in a sexual act. Forget all about "getting to know you". Half the time, they don't even bother to get a name. Fortunately, a certain sector of young people are actually put off by this whole scene. They are left adrift wondering how in the world do I find a mate in this jungle? Enter Match.com or a similar service for those who actually want to find "love" whatever it is.
17
Uh the majority of these pedo/pervs are baby boomers...from the 'getting to know you' era of music...
1
I remember the sixties. Did you forget Lou Cristie's "Lightning Strikes," where he expects to have as many women as he wants while his girlfriend waits for him? Then there's the ones that tell women to do what their boyfriends want, such as Lesley Gore's "That’s the Way Boys Are," "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" by the Crystals, and "Wishin’ and Hopin" by Dusty Springfield, among many others.
While they were not as graphic as songs today they still got their message across: women are secondary to men and that's just the way it is.
1
When I was growing up, back in the 1950s, girls were taught as they approached puberty that males were slavering beasts who would take advantage. If you give them an inch, they'll take your whole arm. It was up to us to defend our bodies and preserve our chastity so the men we'd eventually marry wouldn't think we were sluts.
Now, a lot has changed, but as I watch my grandsons mature, I notice that they mostly function in sex-segregated environments. Girls are alien creatures, yucky. Who would want to KISS one of them? It's almost as if they have to fend off seeing girls as real human beings. Even toys are designated as being for boys or girls.
Of course there are exceptions. Some boys do have friends who are girls. If they participate in activities where girls are equal opponents or team members, I think it makes a difference.
After puberty, there is a change. Boys not only want to take showers, they want to figure out how to make girls like them. It's a tough transition for a lot of them.
Some, a lot unfortunately, never make it beyond the stage of what "I" want. They never get to see girls as real human beings who deserve the same kind of respect as their male friends.
I've heard adult men, my ex-son-in-law for one, admonish their offspring not to be "girly-boys." Sissy is an epithet. It's not strange that people who grow up in that environment succumb to the temptation to be sexual predators.
14
Reading this storm of sexual abuse stories of late, I find myself thinking of the word "inchoate". The word describes something not fully formed; something still incomplete. Instead of the demonstration of power we are told it pretends these occurrences seem more likely to end in masturbation (maybe to completion;maybe not) that requires a witness in an almost little boy, trying to be a big boy, "look what I can do" moment. It seems so incomplete;in both the act and the development of the person committing the act. They appear to be people that recognize their incompleteness and have compensated for it in the accumulation and demonstration of talent, power, and/or authority. Knowing that is of course no compensation for the people that have to suffer through these episodes, but it does rob the perpetrator of the supposed demonstration of power and reveals them as the pathetic and inchoate sexual beings that they are.
13
men have been disrespecting and abusing women since the beginning of time. this is an issue which needs to be addressed by males. men need to grow up and behave as caring, mature adults not horny adolescents.
48
No more boys-will-be-boys.
I grew up with a father who was fairly moralistic about sex and told me that he wanted me to wait until I was very serious with a girl to have it. As I went through puberty and saw peers engaging in hookup-type behaviors that teenagers do, I adopted a value system in which I judged everyone for being superficial in how hormonally driven they were and wanted to be above that. By the time I reached college and realized my trajectory wasn't maintainable, I took a 180 in which I suddenly became monomaniacal in the desire to get laid - out of horniness, out a sense of rebelliousness over the restrictive values I'd grown up with. And yet I still perhaps retained some of my shameful childhood associations with wanting casual sex in which it wasn't something I was able to pursue openly. I did what a lot of college kids do, I drank myself into oblivion at parties with the hope that this would somehow lead to sex. I now see how easily this could have led me to cross certain moral boundaries.
I only offer my story because, as I see it, the solution is not to lecture
people about how they should only have sex within the context of a serious relationship. Young adults have hormones and it's normal for them to want to experiment, but speaking with them about how they can express these desires openly and with pride, while also avoiding anything that risks violating someone else's boundaries, might go somewhere toward preventing a subset of incidents that occur because of shame.
162
Yes, Dan. Good to see a rational and humane approach to a problem that is both as old as the species, and utterly new. Male and female attitudes toward the other gender are aboriginal, and so unsettled as to be the basis of most myth and stories. So nothing new there...save the fact that control of fertility is hardly a half a century old.
David always wants to approach problems as if dealing with people in a sitting room, polite, well appointed, modest and sensible. In fact for the most part we're still living in a cave, with some improvements.
The Pill really changes things, frees women in an unprecedented way. The fact we are still finding out how that impacts relations is hardly surprising, when you think of it.
after all, mother nature as a pretty low bar for successful relations between the male and female. She does not care if the cat complains that the guy was too rough, or if the female dog drags her partner around in an unseemly manner.
Any standard past "is she pregnant" is a human addition.
I've been reading all of the comments here with intense interest as this topic is a deep passion of mine. And I must say that I was actually very moved by what he wrote. I came through the wild 60s and 70s and always yearned for (and sensed) something more sacred as possible...I think those times (and hopefully the excesses of today) are phases on the way to deep connection, profound soul-deep intimacy Yes, the column does oversimplify testosterone driven biology, leaves out pornography and too much else of socialized culture..but I do think he is getting at the essence of something that is so needed: that deep love, sacred sexuality and profound commitment may be the only way to really grow into who we are meant to be!
I like your comment, but how does a guy "express these desires openly and with pride" when those desires might be unwanted, and therefore are now (according to Brooks) no different from a form of sexual assault? I ask because I was so paralyzed with fear that anything I did would be construed as sexual assault that I didn't even lose my virginity until age 25 (what a risk THAT was). Seriously, with there no line now between unwanted attention and sexual assault in the post-Weinstein world, why wouldn't we guys who are risk-averse and skittish by nature simply crawl into a hole, join a monastery, survive on porn, or otherwise castrate ourselves because we otherwise live lives of fear now?
Even if I genuinely fall in love and want the best for the other person, she can divorce me at any time for any reason and take half my assets. No thanks.
8
Or you could take half her assets. You fall into the old line thinking of the male always makes the money.
What is your point?
What does that have to do with sex? You can still have a respectful relationship without comingling assets. Sounds like you want to use divorce law as an excuse to dehumanize.
1
Good article. However, I fear you greatly underestimate the number of men who are predators. It is not a small percentage and much larger than you can imagine. Porn usage is a pandemic and trains young men into viewing women as consumables instead of people created in the image of God.
40
Though no doubt written with benign intent, this is nuts on so many levels.
It reads like Mr. Rogers' sketch for his master's thesis in pursuit of his psych degree, written while zipping up his sweater after a nice cold shower.
31
I dunno. Sometimes sex blossoms into love, and the prospectors take their nugget to the "love room".
10
>
This has become a bouncing baby witch hunt. The only missing pieces are a stake and some fire.
The accused assumed guilty until they prove themselves innocent.
There appears to be no statue of limitations.
Of course, I blame nature with its eternal unchanging "Will". You ever watch those nature shows on TV? Look deeper into them. The same overriding theme is expressed on every nature show, that theme being, sperm on egg. That's all nature and the Will care about. Human's are no different; they just sublimate a portion of their sexual energy into social aims. Animals with their overriding instincts probably tend not to sublimate their sexual energies into social aims like deformed humans.
But rest assured nature, the Will, lie just below the surface of Man and everything else in the cosmos. Without libido civilization would crumble, and no witch hunt of folly is any match for nature. And if people aren't having sex they're thinking about it. I do admit that conservative women affect me like a barrel full of salt peter. The Eva Braun types just don't do it for the Titan
I'm amazed to no end at the pathetic men women are willing to marry and lie with in order to fertilize their eggs. Nature doesn't do reason, nor apparently have good taste
All said, no women show have to watch the appalling spectacle of Weinstein showering
“On the surface of it, the lover wants the beloved. This, of course is really not the case.”
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
7
As soon as I stop laughing I might comment.
32
I gave my 14 year old daughter the homework of reading some of the most explicit articles describing Harvey Weinstein's attacks on women. I had to tell her that one day she will be alone in a room with someone just like him. I hope that never happens, but the odds are pretty good it will. What should she do when that happens? Part of having a healthy love life and a successful career as a woman might require some karate or a dependable can of mace with good instructions on how to use it. Plus, my job as a parent is to build a back bone in my daughter that can withstand a lot of hard knocks. Like when she doesn't get the job she deserves because she didn't cave into the creep. Any advice on how to do that? I'm all ears.
Men don't get enough education about what it is really like to share intimate space equally with a consensual partner. The porn industry is designed for men, by creepy men, and serves as a hearty education in the wrong direction for all who enjoy it.
Religion and the patriarchy are other engrained problems (echoing another comment). The sexual power struggle, loser and winner, was decided a long time ago and we have been spending hundreds/thousands of years trying to lift that boulder off the bed in the bedroom. I would love to hear David Brooks tackle that one.
33
I think many boys grow up not just with bad input as you describe, but are now never exposed to the love house that David describes. So many single moms, so many disengaged dads.
No answers, but I'm sure your daughter will benefit from all your efforts. Wonderful assignment (sadly).
In previous generations men had access to "girlie" magazines. Porn was harder to procure. Now youths of any age can access porn on the internet. This could fundamentally distort their relationships with women.
24
Only in the new york times and only in the column of this
make believe conservative who writes for them could such
eloquent words be shifted to just another "Trump bashing"
article.
Well, James, it's appropriate that you're from Neverland, because you've clearly never grown up.
Mr Brooks fails to recognize the role of peer approval and support for mildly to moderately predatory conduct. The prospector/predator is often behaving the way he is to be able to share stories of "the win" with peers. It is bragging rights in a male culture that rewards conquest that is the real thrill of sexual pursuit. Dismissed as "locker room talk," we saw it live from the guy who inhabits the White House. Believe me. The kiss was not nearly as satisfying as the story. Boasting of one's ability to grab the genitals of women has nothing to do with sex or orgasm, it is about the number of pelts one can hang in their cave. This is up to men. Open condemnation of such behavior is the only route to getting people out of the "room" Mr. Brooks so poetically describes.
32
I guess the room analogy works well enough for this essay. However, it completely ignores what's going on for the girls and women when they enter these rooms, as if they are nonsexual and/or have no role in what occurs between people throughout psycho- sexual development. They go in the same 'rooms'.with the horny guys don't they? Might they also be horny and looking to conquer? And how does horniness become aggression?
It is sweetly yet dangerously simplistic to leave all that out....and to leave out the psychology behind aggressive behaviors, as if it is only caused by hormones and a lack of understanding of 'deep love' learned in fairy tales and love stories.
Rape and aggression toward women by men has more to do with power and control and really nothing to do with love and hormones. The focus should be on how to recognize when and how such aggression starts and how to help.boys learn early on how to respect girls and women as equal beings in all those rooms throughout life.
7
Do you really think anyone reads fairy tales or love stories any more?? They don't, and that's part of the problem. The "love room" romantic bond is mocked in North America and Europe; love, friendship, relationship, marriage, and family are all endlessly excoriated as sexist, repressive, patriarchal "institutions" that should probably be made illegal. This kind of value system leaves people truly alone, and so exploitation of all kinds thrives.
David, we applaud you for speaking out. "In the political world, for example, partisans of left and right rationalize their support for Bill Clinton or Donald Trump because they could tell themselves in effect, “Oh, he’s just a horny prospector.” By treating such behavior as “locker-room talk” or laddish behavior, they helped smooth the ground for all the predators to come."
But we cannot even begin to forgive you. Yesterday we watched Liz Warren on PBS Newshour tell us that indeed the democratic primary was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.
You stood all along, doing nothing. Not telling us the truth. And on top of it all, just like the rest of the media you piled on Bernie, for being an angry old Jewish Uncle! Shame on you David, and your ilk. For not doing your sacred duty of telling the truth to your readers and viewers, about what you always knew, that 2016 elections, were not an honest one. So for all your dumping on Trump and calling him names, please know that he alone spoke the truth about Hillary's campaign and the media, back in June 2017 "In a tweet at precisely 8 a.m. (is he sleeping in?), the president expressed grave concern about collusion. But it wasn't collusion with a foreign power, which his associates have been under investigation for by the Justice Department since last July. It was collusion between far more nefarious enemies: Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee."
5
Why go backwards?
1
Trump surely had some inkling of how much pain he caused his victims with his sexual assaults, even with his narcissism. This sociopath simply did not care. It might even be what he got off on.
8
Time to publish the Bad Boys Calendar. Let's see, we've got Trump, Hoffman, Weinstein, Weiner...
2
But boys are learning sex from porn. It's going to get worse.
We need thoughtful sex education in junior high school.
Porn sites need to be regulated.
4
Quality sex-ed in schools is very important. But it is even more important that sex, sexual/romantic relations should be discussed within the family; not as a set of prohibitions and interdictions, but a whole, honest and open talk about the role sex plays in being human. And along with that one might also discuss how to enjoy alcohol and not abuse it.
The ads in the column really through me.
Oh my. David, your column reads as if it were written by a sexually repressed Jewish man of a certain age. You are neither a relationship advice columnist, nor a sex advice columnist. I think you would do better to stick to politics.
4
Sorry, but citing someone's ethnicity as a means of rebutting their argument does not qualify as intellectual effort. It basically you means you have no argument to offer.
trump, trump, trump all the way.The sexual predator-in-chief. Sad.
2
Does anyone remember there used to be rules? Perhaps those rules of behavior were observed more in the breach than otherwise, but society operated under the umbrella of concepts, ideas, about how men and women were supposed to behave. One rule above all was that women set the boundaries for intimacy and the logical conclusion of people sleeping together was that they would get married. How quaint.
Women in the 1960s and '70s forcefully asserted that they were, now, liberated, that they could make their own decisions and chart their own course. Good, so far.
This, over time, led to the idea that women can do anything men do, no matter how stupid. If men want to stare at the backsides of women, women can stare at the bulging parts of tennis or biking shorts worn by men. If men give the finger to people, hey, women can too! What a wonderful world.
The coming of the pill removed a lot of the heavy consequences of unmarried sex. Bit by bit, the old idea of limits disappeared. No more shame. You want it? Go get it.
I do not intend to defend, even in the slightest, the horrid behavior of abusing men. But, as rules broke down, young men in particular, drunk on hormones and often alcohol, miseducated in sex by rampant porn, came to believe that anything goes and acted on the information being fed to them.
The worst abusers now making news are likely far different, sufferers of mental imbalance and a need to use power as an aphrodisiac and transgressive behavior as a stimulant.
4
The room analogy is lame. Its more complicated than that. I would say that the inability to acknowledge others is more indicative of a psychopath, than a poor perp who just didnt know. Not knowing is a not a valid reason or excuse in the subject of sexual harrassment and sexual assault. Nice try though. I will try that next time I rob a bank - I didn’t know! I thought i was just forcefully borrowing money. Something tells me my defense probably won’t work. The real reason - patriarchy gives the little brain between a man’s legs free reign to do whatever it wants. And projects and places all of the responsibility for the results of the choices made by men’s little brains onto women - policing what women wear (islam) and using it against them (most sexual harrassment/assault trials) , using womens sexual histories against them (she is a slut when men who do exact same behavior are naughty bad boys and get a high five). The tide seems to be changing now, its about 2000 years long overdue.
10
Mr Brooks is hopelessly naive with his comment that most men think of sex as something you do with the person you love. While probably true of men who are in love with their soul mate, it probably does not apply to most single, unattached / loosely attached men over the age of 18. Sex is way too powerful an urge, especially when social mores are ambivalent at best.
Two factors contribute to the sexual predatory behavior of despicable men. (Note, not all men are despicable, even if they relish sex with women without responsible ties to the women).
The first factor is a breakdown on what it means to be an honorable man. Honorable man take "no" for an answer. An honorable man doesn't bully others into submission. An honorable man doesn't use power as a means to coerce or demean women. An honorable man doesn't take advantage of women who are drunk or incapacitated. Such people as Trump, Weinstein, or the NYPD cops with the teenager are not honorable men. They are exactly what they appear to be: despicable scumbags.
The second factor is the coarseness that pervades our culture masquerading as "freedom of speech." The pervasiveness of pornography in its many guises has contributed to the demeaning of women in our culture. The internet has magnified both the brothels and the Hollywood sale of sex into an atmosphere that Caligula would feel most at home. If you cannot tell the difference between a Manet nude and the movie "deep throat," you're part of the problem.
14
Mr. Brooks, I am usually not one of your fans. But as a woman I have to say that I consider this to be one of the most insightful essays on this topic written by a man. You describe the third room correctly as the hell it is for women. And good luck to the woman who reaches out for help!
The reason I am saying all of this is because we are in room 3 at my work place. A man in a very high position (second in command) abused his position of power to harass a female whose career was in his hands. She complained to the highest manager at headquarter. Instead of firing him, he was demoted and now has power again over women. He recently was interviewed by one of our local TV stations. He showed absolutely no remorse and smilingly acknowledged that this happened in social setting. He actually laughed. While my female co-workers and I felt sick to our stomachs when they watched this interview, the males in our male-dominated environment believe that what he did was no big deal and actually complain that the media have destroyed his career by reporting on the harassment. Mind you, he still has a beautiful office, has a six-figure salary, and is climbing up the corporate ladder again.
8
Thank you for this thoughtful essay. It is heartening to know that most men, contrary to the headlines, are Room One people. In contrast to one of the commenters, I feel m world is richer for your essay.
5
The love room, while idealistic, is hardly the issue here. Religion certainly has no claim given the number of sexual predators in the hierarchy of organized religion. Conservative "values" offer nothing in this regard given how often those who proclaim them are busy not adhering to them. No, this about something more fundamental...too many men failing to offer women what they themselves want and expect: respect.
All that testosterone in men needs managing, but some men simply can't and won't do so. They treat the wives, sisters and daughters of other men as objects to be wanted and to be used for sexual purposes. They may even resent women for controlling access to what they want, and their threatening and sometimes violent actions toward women demonstrate that anger.
And they know it's wrong because they don't want others to know...except other males who share and approve of this behavior. And this leads to making women not being the victims but the source of the problem if they speak up about what is taking place. When women are in positions of power, this is far less likely to happen or be tolerated.
So we, and by this I mean men, have to make it very clear in every way that sexual harassment of any kind is simply not tolerated. No means precisely that. Respect no, and respect the person saying it, and the problem goes away.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
11
David Brooks stopped being relevant and interesting sometime after he transformed from social satirist to Very Serious Person. The world is much poorer for it.
3
Amen Brother! Mr. Brooks has been lost in the age of Trump. We don't need any right-wing intellectual savior.
Here in Silicon Valley, it's possible for guys to live in perpetual adolescence -- playing video games, watching porn, surfing, throwing frisbees into their 40s, even picking up skateboarding again. Our culture helps men stay in the Peter Pan syndrome ("I won't grow up!") and think that every attractive woman is fair game. And if she smiles (because she's been raised to be nice, or out of embarrassment or confusion) it's a come on. I've observed that since the so-called women's lib movement and the rise of porn consumption (20 times more revenue than mainstream Hollywood) and growth of porn culture--there's been a steady erosion of healthy boundaries and respect. People don't know how to navigate; both men and women.
25
Ann: but those silicon valley boys are not really the ones doing the harassment or raping -- not the majority of it. They are actually a very passive bunch. And you also are making an assumption here that women (young women) do NOT want sex, or do NOT pursue wealthy men in the hopes of everything from marriage to favoritism at work. Or that attractive women do not realize they have a "currency" that older or less attractive women can never dream of having.
1
"...since the rise of the women's lib movement.."??? the porn culture is the fault, somehow, of a movement for fair workplace treatment and equal pay for equal work?? In what stupid universe? Please.
The commercial marketplace across the television landscape, popular music and pop culture is lousy with the objectification of women and the glorification of casual sex. Turn it off. Just turn it off. Nobody is forcing anybody to watch TV or read tabloids. Turn it off.
Women collude in this, especially younger women who exploit what they see as their own worth. In the past 40 years women have rejected the worth they had as wives, mothers, friends, or workers/professionals, in favor of their worth depending solely on what they look like in thong bikinis. Women allowed this shift in values to happen; they colluded, so don't put all the blame on men.
Children learn values from every day interactions between parents, grandparents and extended families. If what they see, hear, feel, experience is based upon respect; motivated by love, caring, forgiveness and compassion, what are the predictable outcomes of those day-to-day interactions?
7
Mr. Brooks focus on men with his "lover-prospector-predator" is a interesting start. Hopefully he will talk with a number of women and see if there is a similar mirror trilogy for women.
I also wonder if there might be additional rooms in his metaphor. Maybe there is a "nurturer" room where an adult wants a partner with whom they can have children, and so nurture themselves, their partner and their offspring.
6
Here's a simpler view.
A child is born with all the needs and wants of every other child. At some point that child is physically, sexually, and verbally abused. That child grows into a teen who wants nothing to do with anyone because no one came to her aid when she needed it. She tried to tell but no one believed her. Or they told her that she must have done something to deserve the beatings, the verbal attacks and the sexual harassment.
She goes to college. She graduates. She gets a job. She has learned to work hard and to do a good job. Men find her attractive but she doesn't respond because she wants nothing to do with intimacy, sex, or them (except on the job). Men make derogatory comments about her and about women in general. They tell her she ought to get married. She never says a word to them except for what work demands. Some of these men see this as a challenge and try to embarrass her or take advantage of her. Not one of them tries to understand or treat her with respect.
She never has a job that is commensurate with her abilities. Because she's a woman no man bothers to mentor or encourage her. Because of how she was treated she views all men as dangerous. Sadly enough not a single man she's encountered at work or elsewhere disproves her assumption. She feels non-human, like she's playing a part. Why? Because no one bothered to care about her except as a female object.
45
You are a smart, compassionate person, hen3ry. I am sorry you encountered so much injustice. You deserved better.
For what it's worth, I hope you feel appreciated and respected on these forums. I unfailingly enjoy your posts and know that others do, too.
As always, thanks for writing.
1
This is where I agree with conservative arguments about the power of religion or community or family to establish moral and ethical boundaries for the kinds of behavior that appears to have become a norm in certain industries. Given the right situation, all men are capable of entering door 2 and 3--what closes those doors off are legal and cultural mores that condemn such behavior. Unfortunately, it appears that money, power, and environments with no adults in charge (e.g. college campuses) systematically erodes or completely eliminates these social mores. Should add, that there is a door 4---those groups who do not enter door 2 or 3, but say or do nothing about the behaviors of those colleagues/friends who do.
19
Beautiful David...thank you for focusing us back on the sanctity of love as a counterweight to all of this suffering. While I grew up in the wild 60s and 70s and had my share of acting out, as an adult I've come to believe that only in sacred connection can these wounds be healed. I've watched with pain as our culture has taken on the excesses of modernity--uncaring, transactional (at best). I do believe on the other side of this the evolutionary move is that the sacred comes back in, not from some imposed "should" but because we know in our souls that anything less is fracturing, hurtful and just not satisfying.
4
Lots of people in charge in the military and lots of rape. Who guards the guardians? Ethos... Honor... Sadly weak today. And is religion really a bulwark? Ask the Catholic Church and its victims.
10
Well written and full of truth. We are made for so much more than a carnal existence. The only way out of a broken culture is through belief in the only one who can set things right -
a personal relationship with a very personal God.
It's a worthy consideration here, but you don't touch on how our behavior has been modeled by our entertainment industry, our media.
It's a high-paying, sensational subject, which is so over-sold every day that we have become the illusion reflected back, where we find ourselves watching and imagining ourselves there in the mirror of the screen.
And are we adequate? Are we attractive? It has become too omnipresent, touching on everything all the time.
And if you don't want to buy it, there must be something wrong with you.
And while we buy and sell all this Hollywood imagery, science has found- contradicting our earlier sense of separation and superiority- that we are provoked by the same smells and tastes, profoundly influenced by the same physical cycles as what we used to consider to be the lower animals, the beasts.
But after all the heat dissipates, we are left with two sensate beings who hold, help and comfort each other as their respective centers slip away.
The perpetrator is a lonely aberration, still looking at his adolescent self in that mirror.
13
Do not forget the power that parents should have dealing with their adolescents. It is the use of "fear." There are several problems we face today that remove the fear. First, many parents are simply not parenting. Grandparents or surrogates are often not present either. Secondly and more importantly. If you don't have any repercussions during your teen years, men never "grow up." The bad behavior persists. There is no psycho babble that will replace the fear of serious consequences for your actions. If that were the case, why have things deteriorated for so many decades?
13
What kind of fear do you propose? Beatings? Maiming? I suppose cutting off hands and feet would be a deterence. I have a feeling anything less will just annoy the teen and they will show the parent what fear really looks like. The kind of kid who would be controllable by fear won't need much correction anyhow. We already criminalize many school infractions hence school to prison pipeline. What do you actually want?
1
Today is our 27th wedding anniversary. I am married to one of theses good men. He still opens doors. Listens to all the women related or not. Offers to help strangers and tries to balance the chaos of family - work and home. He cries, has a long pony tail and hunts. I am thankful to how he shows our sons and daughters what is expected of a Human.
188
The "room" of respect should be the first room we enter as human beings. If we all were brought up to respect each other it might lessen the "room of Predators". Perhaps this is the first lesson we need to learn and have re-enforced every step along the way to adulthood. Maybe by the time we reach adulthood we have learned to force yourself on another is the ultimate disrespect and if you have self respect, you would not do this.
18
This excellent short essay should be required reading in middle schools.
15
The nature of the human male animal is towards sexually predatory behavior, in that half of all those who were Puritans who lived early on in New England, were pregnant before marriage. Since time began, the male animal has been physically larger than the female, and had its way with the female animal. There have been periods of time that culture kept this at bay, where being pregnant before marriage was frowned upon, and so, this attitude kept most men from acting on every impulse. During the time when the birth control pill arrived for females in about 1965, it made it easier for females to have sex outside of marriage without the worry about getting pregnant when they weren't ready to commit to a long range marriage with children. The pill freed most females from having to have many pregnancies like in times past, when the average female had on average 14 pregnancies, with miscarriages, stillborn babies, babies who died in early childhood, or the women themselves who died during childbirth. Having lived in both New York City and Beverly Hills from 1968 until the end of 1970, I myself have stories to tell of what transpired in relation to sex, and the attitudes of both females, and males. Luckily for me, very few of my own experiences with men were bad. My work experience was very pleasant with no sexual harassment of any kind, as the place I worked at in New York was started by two male partners, who were genuine Christian Science practitioners, and very decent men.
6
Birth rates and family size started to decline LONG before the invention of the Pill or even more primitive birth control -- it had far less to do with contraception than it did with things like advances in medicine, sanitation, germ theory and clean water -- so that families knew their children were likely to survive birth and childhood, and live to adulthood. If you know that, you don't HAVE to have 14 children.
The collapse of the first room is the indication of the trend line of modern times - the sense of pleasure as the measure of success in life. We spend most of our time in taking virtual reality to understand our world and seek pleasure from physical world in life - a big contradiction that cause friction and unhappiness. More unhappy we become, greater is the need for pleasure from physical world and we are struck in perpetual cycle of misery. Only way we can get out of this ever enlarging grip of misery is to focus on our won inner being. Unless we start focusing on our inside to get happiness we will be crushed by this pleasure seeking, as law of nature will not allow this tendencies. We have to restore the first room in our life.
7
David, it's not just about love; it goes well-beyond that to respect for the other--human dignity. Predators treat women and men as objects for their own entertainment and advancement. The flaw goes deep down into the core of one's very humanity. Perhaps these are men who were never loved, always felt rejected, but even there it doesn't fit with the psychological data (I'm a psychologist). we're into the realm of psychopathology and extreme narcissism which is characterized by a total lack of empathy. That is what we see in Harvey Weinstein and, more troubling, Donald Trump. And sadly, narcissism is extremely difficult to treat.
26
It's all about power, in the end.
If men and women had more equal power--socially, politically, and economically, as well as physically--the "rooms" being described here would likely have very different configurations and furnishings.
And, of course, not all sexual abuse is man on woman. There's a considerable amount of man on man, and even some woman on man and woman on woman abuse out there. Again, it's because one party has the power and can, and the other party has less power.
So maybe we ought to be talking about a much wider inequality. And doing something about that. David's third room would probably not exist if more people had the power to flee it when a predator enters--it would be empty.
13
This is an excellent column, Mr. Brooks. Thank you! There is one element that I wish you had put more emphasis on and that is the room of "the lived experience of married parents".
You write that "Sex is something you do with the person you love." Well, I guess that's the thinking and teaching today but in my generation and that of most Baby Boomers, we were taught that sex in marriage was sacred and thus the goal to aim for. While we all had that "strange thing happen" when we became teenagers, for most of us, the teaching that "sex in marriage is sacred" was so strong, it conquered our sexual urges. The majority of people didn't think of that as being prudish or Victorian. Restrictive, yes, but something we could live with as we looked forward to our ultimate sacred goal.
You definitely are correct that the lines are getting blurrier and it's harder to tell when we've crossed from one room to the next. I still believe that while the bar has been set so low, a majority of men (and women) still yearn to experience the "room of love" in a life-long committed relationship with the person we love.
After almost 40 years of living in that room, I believe this is the only room human beings were created to live in. Any other room leads to sorrow and disaster.
21
Your wife/partner and friends are fortunate people.
The prospector is not just panning for physical pleasure, he is also looking to acquire affection, even love, without the reciprocating commitment. The sad truth is that even those who cannot love need love.
11
Everyone I knew thought I was looking for a fairytale. But I knew that somewhere in the world was The One.
I dated some pretty wonderful women but they weren't The One. Then 8000 miles away from home I found her. Two weeks later I asked her to marry me. We just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary.
I refuse to give up on romantic love.
11
I like your metaphor, David, of the three rooms. And I agree we desperately need a positive vision of the first room, the room of love. You will find such a positive vision in the Theology of the Body--St. John Paul II's teaching on the nature of human beings as male and female and the glory that is sexual union.
5
That's the guy who for a while ran that worldwide cult with all the homosexual pedophiles, and who was accused of helping cover up that scandal, isn't he? And you are recommending his work? I think I'll pass.
3
There is still very much the idea of "man as the conqueror" and women as the spoils of war. Many men are brought up to be tough and ambitious. When they reach the seat of power or wealth (preferably both) they set about using their power for self-gratification, and women are part of the spoils of war.
13
Very enlightening essay. Perhaps some of us don't get the harrassment scandal as we are mainly in room 1 and occasionally room 2 and never room 3? We spend ages, decades in my case, in the room of love. When things go wrong its off prospecting we go (yay match and tinder) with the idea of getting back into the room of love. The whole idea of humiliating someone just doesn't fit into our world view so we find it hard to understand men like Weinstein can do such awful things for decades.
8
This is sort of sweet, if you're into essays by adolescents written to please their teachers. But for adults? “Rooms" of love, sex and sexual predators are way too metaphorical to be of much help.
How about openly acknowledging that adolescent boys are driven by powerful, raging hormones that they don't understand and barely know how to control? How about acknowledging that modern society, not sending its boys off to war or marrying them off for dynastic purposes, hasn’t figured a way to channel this hormonal energy? How about openly acknowledging to our boys—and girls, too—that we know that Internet pornography is ubiquitous, alluring and easily accessible, and that being civilized requires resisting it--not all of it, but too much of it.
And finally, how about teaching both boys and girls a little of the historical context for their modern lives? That for most of history, in most cultures, men have exercised complete political, economic, social and sexual power over women because they are generally physically stronger than women and because this was a great way to allay male anxiety about who, exactly, the father of any given child is?
I don’t pretend to have the answers to how best to raise men in modern times, but for the sexes to be happy with one another in an age of such profound individual freedom requires more than metaphors about “rooms.”
10
Brooks tackles the conundrum of sex: it can be the ultimate of love and respect, or of debased objectification. Whether a sexual relationship is "good" or "bad" depends entirely on how both people see it.
Relationships with a healthy dose of respect don't lead to rape; objectification very well might.
We can place our moral understanding of sex into all sorts of contexts from religious, feminist to hedonist, but the bottom line is that it has to be consensual. So at the very core, each person cannot abuse power to get what they want, and each one has to be very good at communicating, and respecting each other. The moral problems begin when someone bypasses respect and communication and abuses power.
None of this is new.
We are just not very good at standing up to powerful people when they abuse their power, whether it is corruption or sexual misconduct. Every whistleblower knows the real cost is high.
And we are not very good at communicating, and taking the time to assure that what we want is what the other person wants, that we are on the same page, that we are not running over the other person for our own purposes. That we are not pretending to ourselves that we respect what we have objectified.
All of that leads us to problems in sexual behavior and relationships. And none of that is new either.
6
This makes me wonder: maybe the reason that trump is not paying for his past behavior is because the men who would have to go after him have their own secrets to keep.
12
It needs to be pointed out that David's model implies people are digital members of these three rooms - either you are or are not a predator, a prospector, or a lover. This is (obviously?) not the case. While someone like Trump may be so practiced as a predator that he simply cannot remember how to be a mere prospector or lover, virtually every man who chose to have premarital sex with more than one partner knows that you transition between "prospector" and "lover" fairly easily... I suspect this is even true for "predators", especially if you tend to adopt a predator mode as the result of mood altering substances or behaviors. A 20 year old teenage boy, drunk at a party, can become a perfect predator, be shocked and ashamed of his own behavior at trial, and then given a few years of good choices become the best of husbands and fathers. It is a serious mistake to presume that those with many accusers from the past are necessarily "predators", still.
5
It wasn't until college and my 30's I learned about abusive versus healthy relationships. I wish there was more education about this during puberty that way men and women could steer clear or call a wolf for what it really is, a predator. There are amazing poly, monogamous, gay, straight, etc. loving relationships out there and then there are wolves.
5
Isn't it common thought that we are a sexually repressed society? My daughter's eyes nearly pop out of her head when she sees people romantically kissing in public. I don't think that is normal.
The room of animalistic sensual pleasure, vulnerability and trust is rarely divulged or exulted. I feel like there is a general sense of shame cast on young people who naturally engage or desire this. generally there is too much expectation for young people to exercise restraint. Their brains (especially boys') aren't ready. From what I've read their brains haven't normally fully developed this restraint (prefrontal cortex) until their 20s.
So that's when we adults need to oversee things from a health and safety concern for the good of them and society. However, it seems most kids have no idea their parents know about these things. And most parents would be embarrassed to bring them up.
I am not proposing opening up our animalistic, pleasure filled vulnerable and trusting bedroom doors to our children (if they still exist). However, I wonder how if would go over if a video of that type of behavior was shown in a "health" class.
2
These are very recent ideas. Remember that traditional marriage was one man and as many women as he could afford. It wasn't even that long ago, and is still true in parts of the world. So all this stuff Brooks is talking about is some gauzy 1950s dream from "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet." He's a hopeless romantic, which is nice, but he's not grounded in reality and history.
5
Were your grandparents and great grandparents married? Did they stay together for decades? If you answered yes to those questions - and most people can answer yes - that proves that Mr Brooks IS grounded in reality.
flydoc: also ignoring biology, evolution, and religion. Of these, we might consider revising the third to align it with current moral thinking, but this seems to be a losing battle.
"Most men are raised with a certain way of thinking about sex. It’s the way contained, implicitly, in every children’s love story, in most every classic novel and in the lived experience of most married parents. It is: Sex is something you do with the person you love."
"Thinking about sex" should not be viewed in a vacuum. Most men (and women) should be raised to understand the difference between right and wrong. Most people should be raised to understand that life is not a free junket through a candy store, that growing up includes a degree of learning self-control.
One might look and want and indeed even covet and crave, but if one has succeeded in life and has gained power, that does not mean that right and wrong and self-control have been abrogated.
These sentiments are probably hopelessly outdated, but they seemed to have worked for me.
1
One of most profoundly awful things about humanity is propensity to exploit the things that are otherwise universally accepted as good and sacred. For most men and women, the core of most of their private lives is still their sexuality; but for women it is also the place where their dignity always hovers. Perhaps my generation was the cause, but one of the most disturbing things I have witnessed as we hand ourselves over to the next is to see this profound gift exploited further: Men now celebrate their conquests in sexuality by shouting atop of cars or from the highest podium, in person or online. Each time, or in whatever form this platform takes, while it may seem for them in the moment that something has been gained, something has actually been twice lost: besides the loss suffered from the stolen dignity of women, they have relinquished their own.
2
"If we had a clearer concept of a beautiful relationship we’d also have a clearer concept of what predatory behavior looks like and what it takes to eradicate it."
Interesting that we had such a clear example of a beautiful relationship for the previous 8 years with Michelle and Barack and then went directly to the opposite.
17
Exactly! The sad thing for me is how their relationship seems like an anomaly in this day and age.
1
Well, it always used to bother me how Barack would automatically defer to Michelle when he spoke about her. That's something that seems to happen in male-female relationships which is accepted and even expected. I recently participated in a group event facilitated by a married couple. The husband several time referred to himself as his wife's chauffeur. While such remarks are humorous, they may also belie some sort of imbalance in the relationship which IMO is not necessarily healthy.
Something that could add to this analysis is to examine the way men develop their sense of who they are supposed to be and what is culturally and socially attractive and 'masculine.'
As a boy moves to teen years and then to manhood there are discreet clues and signals - whispers. They know there is such a thing as love. But also passion. There is divorce and divorce often comes from passionless homes. Also called loser town.
A man is aware that there is such a thing as being too nice. Are you a young Werther or Don Juan? Pick one. They hear rumors that women prefer successful men who are confident, strong and assertive. Men can be mocked for small hands. Admired I suppose for large feet. Women like a man who can take charge. A man who knows what he wants. Now some of this may be coming from men. But some of this signaling is coming from women. Literature and plays are filled with insights about the type of man a woman does and does not want.
So many of these predators are men who seem to have dedicated their lives to be being the paradigm of all these attributes that are supposed to be attractive. And their crimes inevitably stem from not knowing or caring when the line has been crossed.
So maybe we need a lot of open conversation about what we are telling boys and teens about manhood if we want men to stop feeling that power and aggression is attractive. There are too many of these predators for us to not admit we have a cultural problem.
10
This would’ve been a better essay if had been without the Puritan undertones. On the bright side,
it isn’t a binary metaphor.
I might point out that Hillary Clinton's defense of her husband's sexual deviance played a role in her lost election bid. I can't explain how that thought process works when compared to Trump but you can't ignore the impact.
In any event, I'm not sure this description accurately describes the evolutionary interaction of romance, love and sex. The argument sounds plausible. After thinking about it though, the scenario seems unrealistic. Yes, everyone is exposed endlessly to the Disney version of romance and love. However, this concept is not necessarily connected to any understanding of sexuality. Everyone learns about sexuality the same way: Awkwardly.
Moreover, you don't suddenly start playing Duran Duran's "Hungry Like a Wolf" upon entering college. Last I checked, puberty starts around 12. You have a solid number of years to experiment with courting the opposite sex (or same sex) before entering college. Whether we like to admit it or not, teen romance is extremely sexual in some vaguely understood way even when the relationships are abstinent. And the exchange isn't one sided either. While sexual predators are predominately male, let's not pretend feminine sexuality doesn't exist.
I'm just saying this is all packaged a little too conveniently. There was no smooth transition from childhood into meaningful adult relationships. Everything was trial and error. Mistakes and more mistakes. More often than not, things turned out a mess for both parties. That's love for you.
5
Your post seems cynical and nihilist to me. You are saying humans are incapable of relationship. So, why try? Why not just purchase a sex robot?
"More important, in the public mind the line between unwanted sexual attention and force is growing indistinct." Maybe in men's minds - I do not think many women are confused about the line between unwanted and forced. And even more to the point, harrassment and rape are about POWER OVER women, or sometimes men. Let's not lose ground here and make it about sexual attraction.
8
If predators were truly as few as this article suggests, what do you call the gropers, the cat callers, the stalkers (online variety too)?
And the Love Room concept is rather childish, and mostly non-existent.
Even in arranged marriages with no familiarity between bride and groom before the wedding, the marriage mostly always gets consummated on the first night. Often baby arrives exactly 9 months later. Couples stay married for eons without feelings for each other, simply because divorce is not an option. They have sex because biology asks for it and society demands there be children born in a marriage.
So what's that again about us learning about sex as a form of love from our parents?
1
The fact that you think love is nonexistent says a lot about you, not much about other people. And even in arranged marriages, love can and does grow. Sorry you seem to have missed much of the best in life.
Parents need to help adolescent boys maneuver through the confusion and appetites. "Boys will be boys" is not acceptable, although common. It sends the wrong message. Judges and all in the legal system do not find sexual predators much of a problem, as they are primarily men. They don't pursue any of the crimes with any intent since they are "just being guys". Women have been on their own forever with this.
3
Movement is the enemy of love, and middle class young adults move alot. High school in one town, college hours away, grad school in a third place, work in another city still. People become capable of deep, sexual relationships in late high school, hard upon the precipice of a move. Everyone in college knows they will scatter to the winds after graduation, women have their own careers and are loathe to follow their sweethearts around the country. Falling in love during such a nomadic time is more a strategy for masochism than fulfillment. The hookup culture exists at the junction of rootlessness and lust. Later in life, some people settle down and escape the hookup culture, others do not.
2
But most men of Harvey Weinstein's generation have not experienced the narrative that sex is the deepest expression of love. I suspect the term sex
was verboten in his household as he was growing up and there was scant mention of love.As an adolescence they feel that even though girls may want it,
they are hard to get and must be persuaded or enticed.Sex is viewed as a form of aggression.And this notion persists
My thoughts are David Brooks has found out that he knows very little about sociology and politics and decided to write about something he knows even less about human sexuality.
We talk a great deal about sex here in Quebec and although we lose a lot of the angst when we talk about sex there is very little about art and whole lot of biology.
When we talk love and abstractions we listen to philosophers and psychologists when we talk about sex scientists not priests are our go to people.
Does power bring out the predator? Because as we see now, so many men in power are predators.
4
The way your article started out I was ready to quit reading because I thought you were either naive or promoting the idea that men, like women, tend to think of sex and love as almost the same thing. But then you got to the puberty part and things started to seem more realistic. I really believe that testosterone does tend to push men to be prospectors and predatory, and it does that because in early evolutionary humankind development, those were the men that reproduced more and were the ones that survived and who we come from. Now that we're more civilized and have less need for that to survive, it's a characteristic that is not needed or desirable, but unfortunately, it's taking a while to be bred out of us.
1
I attended college, 1979 to 1983. Like many people my age, I sought love, and what I now realize was a pseudo form of validation.
And time after time, men preyed on me.
In retrospect, I was a treated like a slot machine, a one-off.
Mr. Brooks is perpetuating an entirely false mythology. I will read this column to my 15 year old son.
This is an unsatisfying analysis that contorts complex attitudes and behaviors into three boxes. It is useless to make generalizations about the manifold sexual foibles and crimes of men and women, especially at a time when relations between the sexes are rapidly changing.
In the 1950s when women were segregated within the household, there probably was a fair amount of unwanted sex and marital rape. General Kelly said that in those days women were on a pedestal, but what about single women who became pregnant. Either they were forced into unwanted marriages, had back-alley abortions, or became outcasts whose children suffered. The Times just ran two stories on how these children were horribly treated in Ireland. Many endured stunted lives and died young.
For young men, visual cues trigger sexual responses. Their parents normally tell them, they can look but not touch. For many older men, whose sexual drives and abilities are waning, a phallic "conquest" may strengthen their feelings of power.
David Brooks applies a sociological/moralistic analysis that has meager results compared with the approaches of the psychologist who undertakes a clinical history or the novelist who can examine the human heart.
1
“But a small percentage of men are not satisfied with this room and they cross over to the next room, the predator’s room.”
David Brooks suggests three rooms of male sexuality, and that is a good way of looking at it. It seems likely, however, that men do not move from the prospector’s room because they “are not satisfied” with it. They become predators because they were too physically unattractive or too clumsy as prospectors. And, they may be only marginally successful, if at all, in the love room.
Let’s not flatter the sexual harassers by saying that they chose to impose themselves on women because they simply became bored with consensual relationships.
The psychologists may be right, but I'm thinking there is a much simpler explanation for what some men do. They see an opportunity and exploit it. I'd also be willing to bet that hostile masculinity is present in everything they do.
1
Not everyone understands or wants "love". The desire for understanding, acceptance and respect is universal.
1
Thank you, friend, for this fine ode to civility in romance. I shall share it with great pleasure.
3
Unfortunately, in spite of tough laws on sexual misdemeanor at the workplace, most of the women don't report the sexual harassment they are subjected to, especially people at the senior echelon who have the power to dismiss them for service. Apart from the power enjoyed by the perpetrators/predators, it takes years before the victim gets justice. However, it is a matter between two individuals, it is very difficult to prove in the court of law.
One way of reducing the incident to have independent directors in companies, who should be empowered to take action against the offenders, even removing them from the job if found guilty. It has been seen that HR is the point where a complaint is made. However, more often than not, HR Manager is powerless to initiate action against the seniors. Another way is training all the employees that that sexual harassment would not be tolerated under any circumstances, irrespective the position one holds in the organization. Another way of reducing the incidents is to give training on prevention of sexual harassment. Only a multi-pronged approach will help in reducing such incidents.
1
Three rooms might be a series of "talks" that dad has with his son. That's what I thought as I read the article.
Predators are predators because they are in a position of power, and they think they can get away with it. So they give in to their urges.
1
Thank you for this insightful article Mr. Brooks! As a marriage counselor I have been seeing more and more couples who have lost sight of or never found the first room. There does seem to be an emerging common theme with the many couples who have sexual problems in their relationships. One or both often seem to be "prospecting" each other.
There are forces in our culture that benefit in many ways from having human sexuality at the service of prospectors through sex laced films and television along with, to a lessor degree now, print media. And we, as a culture, have not stood up to the infiltration of pornography in our homes and society. Young people (and old) can access pornography on almost every social media platform with a few clicks. By not resisting all forms of demeaning sexual content for ourselves and our families, we are then complicit in the degrading of women and human sexuality, in making sex something to be prospected by men and women alike.
Along with resisting all forms of demeaning sexual content, I would highly recommend, as an alternative path for our culture, the collective teachings of Pope John Paul II entitled "Theology of the Body". This treasure of rearticulated Christian views on the nature of human sexuality is helping untold numbers of people rediscover the beauty in Room Number 1. If we are collectively courageous enough, I believe it can also help move our culture as a whole toward the sexual healing we so badly need.
2
if this curious mix of psychological and cultural glosses is telling us anything, it's that we need to bring an increasingly incurious population to george eliot and jane austen and away from the temptations of our "degraded environment," the films, television, advertising, etc., that set the tastes and tempo of our culture.
good luck with that.
2
I think that men are influenced a great deal by what other men think, or what they think other men think. Since most men do not discuss what they feel about women that influence gets convoluted. Too bad for all of us in that regard.
89
Men are also strongly influenced by what women think -- in particular, what women think of them.
Story shapes society. Look at the stories we tell in books and movies. Look at who pays attention to them. In the Olden Days, the stereotypical love story was the Knight and the Lady. Then it became the Boss and the Secretary, by which time men no longer bothered with chicklit and women's movies. Movies now tell stories of male-on-male aggression, of macho men blowing things up, and occasionally, and oh-so-regretfully, losing the One Woman Who Understood Them. Popular culture reflects popular values, and by doing so reinforces them. But the audience has fractured. Datapoint: Consider the different, but equally numeorus, audiences for Shades of Grey and Wonderwoman. The fractured audience for stories guarantees a fracrured electorate. I don't see a quick or easy way out of the present impasse.
6
For the crime of existing while female these predators will target and try to hurt a person. It's incredibly burdensome having to deal with them. Especially because the legal system provides little recourse. Yet if one were to resort to self help and blow the harasser's head off the legal system wouldn't hesitate to punish them.
7
Mr Brooks you have left out the most important part of this equation--and I agree with others that your "room" analogy is just weird. The most important part is the role of men: if you don't police the behavior of other men; if you don't stand up and tell them at those young ages that predatory behavior, objectifying women, and treating women as inferior beings is wrong, then you are part of the problem.
Nothing--and I mean nothing--will be done to ameliorate the abuse of power that many men and, indeed, women, engage in until men (who hold most of the reins of power) step up and challenge this behavior.
14
I agreed that we start in the "first room," our nascent ideas fed by fairy tales and bedtime stories. But I think people of both sexes go on to the "second room". We are a species of experimenters, especially as adolescents, and that, for the most part, is how progress is made. But then we graduate to another room that Brooks left out, one in which the "first room" ideals of deep love is joined with the wonderful thrill and fulfillment of sexual love. It may not be "forever after" love, but it lasts for a beautiful while. The predators are just as we regard them today--unfortunate, sick individuals who require help whether they want it or not.
9
While I lived in a monastery sex was a powerful impediment to peace of mind. When I left it became another mystery to explore, and I was lucky to meet a woman who with her own interest in exploration. When I met the woman who has been my wife for decades, I'd already found the balance. Love was there always as the permission to trust and share.
This article seems very simplistic to me. Predators and prospectors are people who have crippled or undeveloped personalities, tearing at the world because they have no way to understand and control themselves. That they can manage to find the power to damage freely is due to a society with the same problems.
This has nothing to do with sex.
10
A column by David Brooks predictably attracts both brickbats and applause because he invariably seeks to probe beneath the surface of difficult topics which defy simple analysis. The sexual behavior of the male of the species remains a partial mystery even to men, themselves. Perhaps in no other area of our lives do contradictory impulses battle so fiercely for dominance.
Sexual behavior, as Brooks suggests, can express deep love for another in an intensely intimate manner. But it can also expose the beast that lurks in the character of most men. These two potentialities in men (and in women, too, for that matter) infuse concrete meaning into the adage that power corrupts. Many of the sexual abuse cases recently publicized involved young women at vulnerable stages of their careers whose success or failure seemed to depend on the patronage of a powerful man.
The increased willingness of women to challenge predators in public marks a healthy change in public attitudes. But we need to relearn the lesson that harsh reality has taught us in so many other areas of life. So long as powerful men or women exercise unchecked control over vulnerable individuals, abuses will occur. No one, priest, movie producer or politician, possesses so pristine a character that he will remain free of temptation.
We limit the power of government officials because we don't trust human nature. The same prudent approach should apply to professional and personal relationships.
8
1) I am familiar with the room metaphor as a way of understanding similar but still distinct psycho-social behavior. The concern was addictive behavior, the room was the living room, and the issue was which persona controlled what went on in the living room, the "Maitre'D" or the "Wine Witch". 2) Other sexual predators preyed on adolescents and younger, both boys and girls. Does this analysis help us appreciate the horror and awfulness of those crimes? Seems to me there is an additional trust issue that is broken. Children trust adults, adolescents look to adults as possible mentors, adult sexual predators of minors likely do not see the children for who they really are but only as a means of gratification. 3) Leonardo da Vinci drew a submarine and crossed it out and never even made a model. He said it was too dangerous to bring into the world. So too, our sexual fantasies, many of them should remain a fantasy and not realized, they are too dangerous to realize.
An interesting lesson in sexual development. My take away: Clinton skipped the first room, going directly to the second. Trump went, ran actually, to the third room bypassing the first two. Clinton denied his behavior and was caught in that lie. Trump lied about the behavior, but then felt the need to degrade and humiliate the women involved. And both men have survived their "indiscretions". Clinton remained widely popular, his behavior viewed as not that unusual. Trump survived his. The problem for his supporters is they have to also ignore the emotional and psychological assault on the women involved. They cannot just leave their rationalization at "locker room talk". Their willingness and eagerness to embrace the bullying is what makes it so incredibly offensive.
7
I always appreciate Mr. Brooks's columns and comments on NPR Newshour, but I think in this column he's a bit naive. The concept of sexual harassment is rather new but the behavior is ancient. In my experience in the 1950s and 60s it was something women put up with and so did my mother; it was part of American or even Western culture. In sixth grade (1954), I was sexually harassed by boys because I developed earlier than most girls. In my first full time work experience in 1963 I was subjected to harassment by a man older and more senior to me. The concepts of sexual harassment and hostile masculinity were not part of the lexicon then, and my supervisors would not have reacted positively had I complained. It seemed easier to marry him than change jobs, but he turned out to be a control freak and then an abuser. After 8 years and two children, I left that marriage and with the help of a wonderful therapist, became a 'real' person who has no fear of asserting herself to anyone. Am I better off for having had that experience and incentive to grow into a more complete person? I tell myself yes.
202
Thank you for this beautiful commentary Mr. Brooks. As a mother of two boys in their early 20's I've transitioned from an active 24/7 "mom" to an entity who watches from the wings. Perhaps my husband and I aren't consulted as often as Google or reddit but we see the living, active results of our 40 year relationship in our sons' work and personal relationships. Teaching kindness, respect and love for one's own self can go a long way in helping kids appreciate the first room and hopefully guide them when they visit the second.
16
Bravo to both you and your husband...well done
1
Power is both measured and exercised in many ways. There is the obvious amassing of money to keep score of one's power and often the bending of the wills of the less powerful to further define its reach. Sex is often more about power than anything else. Society as a whole seems to define sexual relations to a large extent as a necessary ingredient of love among humanity's ordinary, among other things. How often is it said: "they have separate bedrooms" as code for they no longer have a great marriage? On the other hand, predators seem to think of sexual relations as something that falls within their license to power. There is no justifying this kind of exercise of power and there is every reason to empathize with its victims, but it's usually rather easy to tell the difference between predators and ordinary fauna.
3
Ultimately, in my mind, we live in a highly paternalistic society. Men have worth and women do not. Children are raised these days to think they should get whatever they want whenever they want it. In the end, in my mind, in our society and a significant number of others, women and children are chattel. It is just that no one wants to realize that.
15
Women now also think they should get what they want when they want. And they can, and do, use men as tools to get what they want, which often does not include the men they are using. Why are feminists blind to that particular exploitation?
Thank you for your article Mr. Brooks. I have been fortunate in mylife to have two men who married me with love as the most important motivation of their life. I lost my first husband after 37 years of marriage. I delight in living with my second.
I don't say that these relationships were and are without hardships, because they have been. At the core however, there is always love.
23
Thank you, Rosella. You are one NYT commenter I would actually like to know.
Social media and our very serious addiction to technology is only going to make this situation worse. While on the one hand, we have more education going on as a result of social media, the more insidious problem has to do with our neurobiology. The more time we spend on a screen and less on face-to-face relating, the less empathy we have. Not being able to feel the other person is a boon for predatory behavior, and not just sexual behavior. This happens on both left & right of the political spectrum - people getting threatened and stalked if they say or do something someone doesn't like.
12
Wonderfully well-thought out article, although I would suspect nothing less. However, one thing I would ask is whether the predator seeks out power because it enables his (it's almost always a "his") predator nature or do we give predators power because we admire their predatory instincts in other avenues of life? I have seen glimmers empathy from Mr. Trump and it could be that he actually possesses some, but not, apparently, when he's sitting across a boardroom table from you. His seeming goal is to win at all costs, and when we saw that on television it got him ratings. There's a point we need to decide if glorifying predatory behavior and trying to condemn it at the same time is a consistent message.
18
America is about competition. Little boys in particular are taught to be competitive, not cooperative. The clue to how adolescent boys approach the playing fields of dating and mating lies in the vocabulary that, at least in my day, was used to describe physical intimacy: first base, second base, third base and going "all the way". It was cast as a game, and the symbolic baseball terminology was a shorthand way of establishing bragging rights and enhancing personal status within your peer group. That was about 50 years ago. Has anything changed?
15
The timing has certainly changed! As guys apparently now expect to hit a home run on the first date, or without any dates whatsoever. I graduated from college in 1959 and was a virgin when I married the second guy I ever dated. I now look back on that as a big mistake, I needed more experience. I sort of played the field (thanks to reliable birth control, not available in my college days) in the 11 years between husbands, and had a far better idea of what I needed in a partner than I did the first time. I did have a couple of work experiences that would be looked upon as sexual harassment today, but I just considered an annoyance at the time. I am glad that today's young women are more outspoken. BTW I raised a son who married his college sweetheart, the only girl he ever dated, and they seem very happy after 25 years and 2 children together. I sometimes wonder if being raised in a household dominated by his mother had something to do with that!
2
Love and Sex are often confused. A friend of long-standing, who I admired for his brilliant mind, humor and compassion, on the eve of his divorce took me by surprise when asking if he could stay the night. You will feel terrible, I replied, when you wake at early dawn. Why now, I continued, and he answered that it was a sense of curiosity. He left after a moment of silence. It was never mentioned again and our friendship continued.
Another friend, married and with grown children, we both find the topic of friendship far more interesting than romance. A widow, I was thinking earlier of my late husband, a long separation where he wrote letters which I placed on the side.
The years went by, and it was recently that I revisited this correspondence. More powerful than any I have read from a man, for he is not only a husband, but a father and a protector. When he died seventeen years ago, he left an open family letter where he adds please tell her that she was the only woman I loved. We met when I was seventeen and this weekend he would have been celebrating his 70th birthday.
Predators and Parasites walk in our midst. Some of the fiercest are women when they have their heart set on possessing a man. D.H. Lawrence sounds anguished when he wrote his 'Sons and Lovers'.
Past midnight, I wish the beauty of tenderness for those I love, and close the door on predators.
13
Your post moved me...how authentic and lovely you sound...have a wonderful day and thank-you
As someone who has worked in several corporations (mostly fairly unglamorous) ultimately at a fairly senior level let me assure you everyone in a particular milieu knows who are the philanderers and where they fit in the passive/aggressive spectrum. And it's not entirely a one way street. Many women are not immune to the attentions they receive. Gross behavior is seldom tolerated for very long however. The Weinstein or O'Reilly capers are more or less impossible to imagine at any time in the last 40 years in any environment I've ever experienced.
10
Yet more reasons to teach and read the classics.
Wuthering Heights profound depiction of love as transcendental decorated that room of love nicely and deeply.
It helped develop my attitude toward love at a young age.
9
Oh, dear. I haven't read this in many years and perhaps my perspective woud have changed, but I found its depiction of "love" horrifying... spiraling into a wild obsession and madness. No, thanks
Yes, the love room is the ideal, but did most men and women grow up believing the love room was an actual place? In our culture, the meaning of human sexuality has largely been reduced to sexual acts, as opposed to being an aspect of personhood and identity. And sexual acts have most often been viewed as a secret, a sin, or a joke. These are the views transmitted to many or most children. Sexual harassment and abuse occur at the grade school level and worsen by the teen years.
12
David - I really enjoyed your essay on predators. There are many different ways to look at the reason why men abuse women. I will sum up my experience.
Woman in her early 40's leaves her husband, going through divorce proceedings. Lonely, hasn't had sex or affection in several years. Starts on-line dating. Hasn't dated, or thought about another man, since she started dating her husband almost 20 years prior. The kicker: recently diagnosed with bi-polar and still hypo-manic. Someone who is manic CANNOT judge another human being's intent. They can barely take care of themself. Got involved with a couple of really bad men. Psychological abuse, sexual abuse, and a couple of "domestic disputes" that left me pretty shaken up but not too hurt, other than mentally.
These men both came from severely abusive homes. Both were heavy drinkers, one a serious alcoholic, and used marijuana. Both have serious mental health conditions that they deny and refuse to seek treatment for. One didn't give a crap that he hurt people. The other HATED himself and the fact that he was abusive.
There are literally thousands and thousands of more examples of how people become abusers. I think the main cause, which may be supported by research (I'll look into that now, I'm curious), is that they were abused by someone else at some point. I'm referring to abuse. I believe the causes for power activities like harassment, sexual assault (forced touching), and rape, may be different.
8
Been married now for 39 years. She was terrifically pretty when I met up with her and often laughed at what I said. We recognized in each other a desire for kids, dogs and cats, and a quiet life. That, for the most part, is what we've had. Last week when I was in the hospital, she brought me a Burger King milk shake every day. A lot of water has flowed under our mutual bridge and the wear-and-tear on both of us has been significant. The sex is pretty much in the past now. But I still like looking at her.
210
... under our mutual jointly-owned bridge ....
2
This was a thought-provoking commentary that leads down paths to discussions and explorations of nature, nurture, home life, parents, schooling and schools, religion, church, synagogue, temple, mosque, peer groups, cultural contexts, etc., etc. The more public discussion and exploration the better. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
94
I think David Brooks is our finest public theologian, actually!
1
Read this article thinking that David is a really sweet person and would love to have a wide ranging conversation with him. I wish humanity was the way he describes- there are substantial element of truth, particularly his concluding sentence- but in the final analysis, the world for most people just isn't like this.
19
"If we had a clearer concept of a beautiful relationship ..."
That concept ... a very simply one ... is very clearly expressed in "the way contained, implicitly, in every children’s love story, in most every classic novel and in the lived experience of most married parents".
We don't need a clearer concept. We need for people to latch onto that already-clear concept.
41
Free porn teaches kids all about rooms 2 and 3. Where do they learn about room 1?
2
It would be easier for them to learn about room 1 if so many people of BOTH sexes didn't deny that room 1 exists.
Men and women are traditionally raised not thinking about sex. Sex is something that is just not understood or of interest, since the biological underpinnings do not yet exist. It comes into awareness mainly from friends and schoolmates, and for males the introduction is to prospecting. For women, it is to being prospected and inviting or discouraging prospecting. The goal is social success more than pleasure -- getting the one everyone else wants to get and avoiding the one no one else wants.
Children's love stories and classic novels do not involve sex. Sex is part of the living happily ever after, which is never discussed. The love stories and classic novels are part of raising children not to think about sex.
The room of love, for most, comes later. Only the lucky few get to avoid the stage of prospecting; most of us must work through this and learn how to lower barriers. Sometimes it takes several relationships.
Sexual predation is not getting worse. It is being discussed more, and it was probably worse when it was private. We cant say because it was private, covered up, not discussed in public, and not because it did not happen.
The positive vision of sexuality arises from discussion and sex education. In a time without much discussion or sex education, each couple had to work for this positive vision on their own, and most failed to do so. Contemporary openness lets us springboard off the experiences of others.
99
As long as me don't have to deal with getting pregnant and can make it difficult (with the culture's assistance) for women to get access to contraceptives, the room of love disappears for too many of them, to be replaced by the room of either prospector, conquest or predator.
At least if contraception is available, women can choose to be prospectors too which equalizes the power play.
It's nice to be in the room of love forever for both parties, but based on the divorce rate, I wouldn't bet on it.
As long as the culture does lots of winking (depending on the man's wealth, power or influence) in the non-love rooms, we will have this situation. Time to consider the other rooms signs of unhealthy relationships for every gender.
34
Nobody has "made it difficult" for women to get contraceptives. They are legal in all 50 states, and have been legal for decades -- since the 1960s at least, and were widely available most places long before even that.
Why can't you say what you MEAN? you are angry because contraceptives might not be FREE in the future -- vs. (say) insulin or heart medications or cancer drugs! which I guess you do not value as much as birth control!
Nobody thought women were "denied" anything prior to 2014 -- a mere 3 years ago -- when Obamacare was not in effect.
Despite contraception being available....women still get pregnant. Women on Medicaid have very high birth rates, most of it out of wedlock -- despite having ALWAYS had 100% free birth control.
1
Couples, (there once were couples, btw. real couples not just momentary hookupers) once DID spend most of their adult lives in the room of love. It is just in the frenzy to appear hip and liberated that the room of love has been completely abandoned.
1
As is too often the case with Mr. Brooks, his scenario is simplistic.
First, love is impossible to define with any clarity. It depends on one's state-of-mind. What is love for one person is merely sexual attraction; for another it is commonalities.
Where do insecurity and exploration come in?
Mr. Brooks is on a fool's errand. He pulled this column out of his left ear.
80
Simple does not mean simplistic. It’s true that the love of which Mr. Brooks writes is a simple ideal, but to criticize it as simplistic is to pick at a tiny point and miss the simple, larger truth. That, to my mind, is a foolish trip.
18
Of course many of us disagree with your comment. While its difficult to gauge the emotional temperature behind the words on a screen, I sense a bitterness in your comment. Its like your retort is somehow personal against Mr. Brooks. This guy reads widely and thinks deeply. He is so fundamentally decent.
3
Obviously you lead a sad life. Sorry.
1
As teenagers we all wanted to look at Playboy, and there was illicit porn, but it did not take the place of just having nice girl friends. One advantage of that was learning how to seduce them. Never had to resort to any physical actions, it just did not seem right.
Women are fun to be with,sure guy things are important, but by the time you are in your late teens impressing women take precedence. Beginning in Jr. High there was a group of us that walked home together played ball in the street, went to dances and dated to movies. Sex was risky in those days so the girls were far more circumspect about it then. On of the most popular ones got pregnant in her junior high school year, married her boyfriend who went to Korea as a marine. He am back become a professor in Texas, she made sure al her kids got a college education before the got married. The school wanted to keep her from coming back, a large group of us went to administration and made them let her.
As time went on, the fun was seduction, noting better than a woman who really wants you, they are fun. Some affairs do not last, but that is life, you go your way and work to do better next time. Using intimidation does noting for the ego, it only diminishes it. After each affair, i resolved to do better next time, and I did, it has been a lot of fun, life is fun. people like tRump are inferior to real men, they are an embarrassment tothe rest of us.
30
Holy moly. David Brooks on how men think about sex. Have to admit that reading this column was kinda like the experience of realizing in the wee hours of 9 November 2016 that Donald Trump was going to be our next president: disbelief seasoned by perverse but intense amusement.
The “room of love”. Wow. David, for heaven sakes, you’re six years YOUNGER than I am.
My perspective on the issue is … different. Human males regard females as oddities largely to be avoided until puberty hits. When that happens, baseball and football largely are replaced these days by Internet porn (in my day trying to figure out where in the garage dad kept his stash of Playboy magazines), hormones transform potentially dangerous little monsters into truly horrific, slavering beasts. As adulthood approaches, some of us realize that this single-minded, hormonally-induced madness could consume a life that otherwise might be socially useful if we can only exercise some difficult-to-master restraint. And we make choices about how we behave.
But regardless of the degree of success some of us attain at responsible restraint, or the failure of others at that necessary effort, women shouldn’t assume that we’ve become capons: our eyes are still yellow and our canines sharp at all times. We’re constantly forced to remind ourselves that civilization cannot endure unless Hydes are banished regularly in favor of Jekylls. So we sigh, take our potions and civilization, for the most part, endures.
35
“Rooms of love”, “Prospector rooms”, “Predator rooms”. It’s not that compartmentalized. Almost all men remain predators, at least in Jimmy Carter’s heart, for largely their entire lives. Decent men come to realize young that sexual predation causes incalculable harm to women, and CHOOSE not to engage in it as one aspect of a character on which they wish to build a life – and most men, to one extent or another, are decent. We move from one to the other “rooms” and back again constantly, and all that keeps us from expressing that movement by actions in the real world are the choices we constantly make that either reinforce or destroy character.
It’s not a “degraded environment” in which we live (any more than it’s ever been), and it’s not a Walter Scott novel, either. It’s a constant test of character in the teeth of biological impulses that have complicated existence since before we were human.
84
You've hit the nail on the head - "test of character in the teeth of biological impulses".
Based on human variety the test is much more difficult for some people than others. And there are other character - biological tests as well that we face like violence. competition, eating and drinking.
It is human nature to face these tests. We need to prepare people how to respond to them.
2
Richard:
Your reply to Brooks's thesis is spot on. My thoughts reading the 'love room' wandered off into the dark woods of the grim fairy tales of my childhood wherein girls in red cloaks who had the temerity to enter them deserved to be seduced and devoured by evil wolves who lurked in the shadows.
I grew up with brothers and never did completely grow out of my tomboy phase, so spent many happy years in the company of boys and men being privy to what they thought about girls, chicks, and later, women. I decided very early on, I did not want to be one of 'those' girls or chicks, but later on had a wonderful time being a woman who enjoyed every aspect of what that meant on equal footing with men who had learned the same thing about themselves.
Maybe we didn't always meet in the 'love room' as eulogized by Brooks, more like fellow 'prospectors' in his parlance. Actually, come to think of it, I don't like Brook's paternalistic take on this subject. There's not a single woman in his piece except as foil. That's not how it was for me and many others of my time.
5
"Narcissistically, they are unwilling to acknowledge what their victim is feeling. They have morally obliterated that person. . . . the harasser doesn’t see his victim at all. The men who have recently been exposed say they had no idea how much pain they were causing."
They know exactly what their victim is feeling. They know exactly the pain they are causing. They LIKE that. It is the pleasure, the proof of their power. They can do even that.
We know they understand their victims' feeling and the pain, because that is exactly how they manipulate their victims. They not only see it, they not only enjoy it, they use it to do the deed.
Of course when making their excuses they claim they did not know. We don't have to believe a liar just because an obvious scumbag offers the lie.
226
"They know exactly what their victim is feeling. They know exactly the pain they are causing. They LIKE that. It is the pleasure, the proof of their power. They can do even that.
We know they understand their victims' feeling and the pain, because that is exactly how they manipulate their victims. They not only see it, they not only enjoy it, they use it to do the deed."
How do you know these things? Can you refer me to a book, study, or link that supports these conclusions? Admittedly, they sound plausible, but are they true?
1
Since when does David Brooks know what most men do (of any of the genres he describes)?
It would certainly help our emerging national discussion about sexual behavior to know how many and what kinds of men (and women) fall into any of Brooks' categories or the additional ones mentioned in comments on this article. But how on earth could we get that information?
12
I think he's theorizing and taking some poetic license in essay form. However, having worked for a psychiatrist who treated, among other problems, sex offenders, I learned the condition is progressive. Most rapists don't start with rape. So, David Brooks has a point. The room metaphor is kinda strange but makes the point. I am glad that we are talking about men's behaviors because for so long harassment and rape have been described as something that "happens to" women, as if the cause was general and unmoored from a perpetrator.
213
I think he is also talking about the culture at large, and in some ways women contribute to the decline in relationships, as well. And I don't think anyone can deny that there IS a decline in relationships.
4
Did your practice ever deal with women "sex offenders"? I ask not to condemn women, but because so much condemnation of men is now flooding the media and social media -- with little, if any, discussion of women who may be sexual predators or sexual harassers,
women who in whatever ways aid and abet the notorious men whose behavior is criticized. While there seems little doubt that much sexual misconduct happens in the workplace, as a professional, do you question just how many of those now riding the tidal wave of allegations are either not telling the truth or who are exaggerating? Some human being crave attention, sympathy, fame. This is a much more complex issue than many would have us believe.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
2
We get Mr. Brook's sweet, sentimental and sensible side in one interesting article. But he leaves out a big factor that contributes to the cult of powerful men: patriarchy and religion.
639
Oh, please!
1
Thank you!
4
Maybe Mr. Brooks is writing for those of us who don't hate both men and religion?
1
"It is necessary but not enough to have a negative vision of what men should not do. It would also be nice if there were some positive vision of how sexuality fits into a rich life, how it flourishes in the private sphere as a (very fun) form of deep knowing. If we had a clearer concept of a beautiful relationship we’d also have a clearer concept of what predatory behavior looks like and what it takes to eradicate it. In a degraded environment, the predators, who are few and vicious, are more likely to be tolerated by the many, who are numb."
I appreciated this from David Brooks, and did not find it creepy. Yes, maybe a bit stilted. But God knows, men all seem to be predators nowadays as far as I can tell (that's where I take issue with him when he says "few"). I am 62 and I have never seen more disrespect for women in my entire adult life--from all quarters, socially, professionally, personally, culturally. I was better off in high school in the early 70's before so-called "women's liberation" ever got started than I am now, as far as respect from men goes.
I don't know what's gotten into men, but it sure ain't pretty.
109
Blaming women's liberation for male predation and disrespect is like blaming AA for alcoholics. You've drunk the patriarchal kool aid deeply, Jan.
7
Re "... men all seem to be predators nowadays as far as I can tell."
Really? This is the commenter's actual impression? That's quite a statement.
2
If that's what you think, you haven't met enough men. Perhaps you need to get out more.
2
You missed out the fundamental sex room: the pleasure room. Is this an innate blind spot in conservative viewpoints?
People who like and respect each other, and themselves, can engage in a range of sexual behaviors together without having to entertain, resort to or long for eternal commitment, or feel the need for procreation. In fact, in my book, I'd label this "love" too.
89
That's what he meant by the prospector room. A man that thinks that way is a prospector. I'd recommend listening to Lisa Wade about it.
http://www.npr.org/2017/02/14/514578429/hookup-culture-the-unspoken-rule...
2
I wouldn't.
It may or may not be, or do you think that sex and love are the same thing?
1
We had a great example of a beautiful relationship, the Obamas, in the White House for 8 years. Their love for one another was obvious, inspiring and a joy to behold. It's been replaced by a predator and his wife who so often stands behind him, as if he doesn't even know she's there. We can only hope to have something like the Obamas again. I wish Michelle would run!
872
Well, like the females feelings in David's essay, the Obama's mature adult relationship, apparently successful marriage, sober behavior and 2 seemingly well educated and humble daughters are discarded or ignored by 40% of America, including viewers of Fox news, listeners of Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart aficionados. Any guess why this is? I can give you a hint: It is often referred to as America's original sin and has to do with the amount of melatonin in their skin.
5
That woman has suffered enough. The hate-filled personal attacks she suffered at the fevered minds/hands of the haters in our country will last her a lifetime.
5
David: Boy, you really picked a many headed hydra to write about. It seems that every generation has its own codes of behavior but I think one certain area
where there is general agreement is when there is a power difference, like for example, when there is a job seeker and a job giver or a boss and his secretary
(where either party may be male or female.)
I am so happy this issue has exploded because it really addresses the power issue between people and I think fewer people will be fearful of exploitation because now people have been be warned by all the media coverage.
I, myself, went into a field where there was less chance of exploitation because I had heard too many stories of women being exploited. Even, in one case, a client being exploited by her therapist who was heading a movement against therapists exploiting their own patients. She refused to bring charges against him and since I got the info in a support group there was nothing I could do but, at least, I can use the info as an example to show how extensive the problem is.
12
A well-written book, 'Sex in the Forbidden Zone" by Dr. Rutter addresses his power differential and problems when people with authority and power (mostly men) abuse that power.
5
When I think about love, intimacy, true romance and the opposite sex, I often think back to what a wise Groper-In-Chief once said years ago when he saw a perfectly strange, attractive woman move into his field of vision and touch:
"Whoa! Whoa! I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything....... grab ’em by the pu$$y. You can do anything."
We need to follow the path that our Predator-In-Chief has carefully pioneered for the nation's next generation of serial predators.
407
Automatically being attracted to beautiful women: normal. Acting on it immediately: mentally disturbed. "I don't even wait"--to meet them?
2
C'mon Socrates, he was being "egg on" by others. In others words, not his fault.
1
Gemli and Socrates back to back. I always enjoy reading your insightful commentaries.
1
This is really weird, David Brooks talking to us like we"re children getting "the talk." "Love room," really? Next it will be McConnell, Ryan and Pence (not the Groper-in Chief) lecturing us, " When a purely heterosexual man loves a woman - not another man - but a purely heterosexual woman, then according to the Republican platform they should date and hold hands and after a good Christian wedding, and only after the wedding, they go to the "love room." Unless, of course, he's a Congressman like Denny Hastert, ex speaker of the House, or any of the myriad other Congressmen who use their positions of power to abuse women or men. And, by the way, it's worth noting that there are female sexual predators as well. A creep is a creep regardless of their sex.
The fact is, unfortunately, that the world is overpopulated with creeps, criminals really, who only feel important when they prey on others. Weinstein opened the floodgates, and it's good that public awareness has been raised. But this almost creepy analysis by Brooks makes me a little ill. When did he become Dr. Ruth?
349
Hastert needs to be called out for what he is - a child rapist, pedophile and convicted criminal. His crimes against children places him in a totally different category of those who use their power to abuse women and men.
4
Lovers, Prospectors and Predators. You missed the room where Partners dwell. Where relationships are shared experiences and everything from sex, vacations, vocations, schedules, habitats, friends and family choices are made with equal parts love, empathy and humor. I have known men in all the categories you named. I've been in two of them myself but I didn't know true fulfillment until my sexual wants were sublimated in favor of my partner's. And her's in mine.
45
The world may seem full of sexual predators these days, but there is no reason to trust that the lecherous have not been there all along. What's slowly changing is willingness to acknowledge having been exploited. That is a small silver lining in a dark phenomenon.
Society needs more comfort to dialogue bluntly about what is and is not acceptable interpersonal behavior. Great if parents can do it, but schools need the freedom to give explicit sex education, too. It is part of shaping future adults. College administrators and employers have to address this at an adult level, too.
Speaking of speaking candidly, David, you were doing something promising by addressing healthy vs. destructive sexuality, but the impact was watered down by the metaphors. There are no rooms of, respectively, love, the prospector, or the predator. Nor do all people stay neatly in one category, either.
This column is a start. If we can talk straightforwardly about positive sexual expressions, we can reduce the abusive ones.
55
So we got love when boys are pre-adolescent, but once past that stage we have sex as market transaction or predators? Hmm.
Kind of supports my theory that the culture than boys and men are steeped in is one that objectifies women (as market transactions, notches on belts) or preys upon them and seeks to punish them.
Sounds like pornography. Oh, I know, today it is so uncool and old-fashioned not to like pornography. It is unreal, crude, and objectifies women. It becomes a substitute for real relationships. Some learn about sex through it, and they fail at the real thing. It ruins relationships. It is ruining the culture because it is everywhere.
64
I don't think it's "cool" to like porn...I see it as a sensitivity numbing pastime for people who don't have real life relationships, basically wankers. It spoils real life sex too. If you want to experience great sex then learn to relate to the other person. I feel sorry for porn users....think about them sitting there viewing doing their thing and it seems so sad & pathetic. Nothing cool at all about paying people to perform sex acts on camera.....not special or real. At least a prostitute is a real person. I think porn users are unable to have real relations.....sad & pathetic when you think about it.....plus they support the porn industry that does exploit women & men...and also underage children. Real people are better then commercial illusions.
4
If I may push this article. Women and their bodies? Women are their bodies. Our body gives us pleasure. Our body gives the person we love pleasure. Our body carries at least one other person for nine months to birth, if all works well. Some men like to control women through their body by saying how and when and who should do this and that. A priest or a man with a slightly bent aspect of religious thought. Politicians with skewed ideas of power. Not that there is any magical meaning to it but, it is 2017. For millennia women have been manipulated and controlled by someone's else view of their bodies. How wonderful it would be when a woman has control of her body. When a woman is her body. Not a collection of anatomical bits. And no one, man or woman, may touch or grope or pat or make salacious remarks about women. This is from my wife. Jenny speaks
247
You missed the entire point of the column. Human beings have qualities beyond the physical. If all you want is a body, and today most people ONLY want a body, then why not buy a sex robot?
2
I am not my body. When I die it's not my body that leaves, I do. My body instead rots and decays. I am not my body.
2
Sexual predation is as old as man. We have new framework for it now, we say men have moved from one room to another. But men have been raping women and less powerful men since the dawn of time. And women have also been falsely accusing men since at least Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis.
I think we are becoming more conscious of the pain and damage which is wrought by sexual violation. It’s not ok anymore for powerful men to use their position to coerce unwilling persons into sexual acts. That’s an advance.
The fact is that most men can move rather freely from room to room. Nature does not care about the circumstancess of impregnation, just that it happens. The wise learn that the room of love is the only one that gives anything worth having.
But we live in a society which admires and glorifies the prospecting room. And a multi- billion dollar pornography industry inviting us to fantasize about being in it. So it’s not surprising that many slip easily from that room to the predatory room before they realize it.
36
Our culture is much more comfortable talking about sex than it is talking about love. We need to change that, because absolutely everyone wants and needs love. Sex is best and most fulfilling when it is within a loving, committed relationship. Why doesn't that get said more often?
279
Abuse takes many forms. Usually it's a narcissist who gets aroused by using his power to bend others to his will, while he makes them pay for their clueless trust. They often take advantage of women, cornering them, using their exalted presence to stun their prey, and then possibly groping them, while bragging and laughing about it later.
It's not always sexual, though. Sometimes it's about taking other things of value. They might set up a phony real estate school, and bleed them dry. Men and women both are left holding the bag. Sometimes they're caught, but frankly paying a few million every now and then to get out of trouble is just the cost of doing business.
It's a standard pattern in narcissistic abusers. They're not very smart in many ways, but they have keen instincts when it comes to intimidating regular folks. They'll align themselves with disreputable people, racists, skinheads, Nazi-sympathizers and other dangerous bullies. They see nothing wrong with it. These people use their lack of scruples and threat displays to make people fear them. They misinterpret fear as respect, and having never received any of the real thing, fear will have to do.
These people can go far in the world, because the weak-minded will sometimes feel empowered merely to be associated with them, and give them their support. Or even their vote.
It takes all kinds.
522
"It takes all kinds."
Including Bill Clinton and his enablers, Hillary, Hollywood, and the media.
10
How did Hillary enable Bill? Was it because she didn't leave him? He got a lot of heat in the media, too. Hollywood is a big place. Who in Hollywood? Names, dates and actions, please. If you have no clear details it is just bloviating and making you feel empowered to hang vague blame on a person and groups you don't like. It does not make it true.
96
steve - Hillary did not approve of her husband's dalliances and was a victim also, not an enabler. She valued her relationship with her husband and forgave him.
Well put, David. I wish there was more emphasis put on sex within a loving relationship. It does seem to have become rather an old fashioned concept, and that makes me feel sad, especially if men and women are growing up today not realizing the difference between love-inspired sex and mere conquest.
111
True. In our mediated, porn drenched and materialistic world it is difficult to believe that the Rolls Royce of sex is in a long term committed relationship, unless you have been there.
3
Excellent