Seduction - the persona inside capitalism

 I: INTRODUCTION

    What follows is another excerpt from my next book, "Intersubjectivity and its paradigms". It builds upon my previous work on the persona, in order to figure out its function inside capitalism, and how the persona can be used to gain and maintain power on a free market of competitors. I argue that inside capitalism, the primary form of power is a "soft power", achieved through a process that could be best called "seduction" - the attempt to change the other's desire. It is here that Zizek's joke about the two fathers becomes the most relevant:

    Zizek explains that you must imagine that you are a small kid and that your father wants you to visit your grandmother. The first „classic” type of authoritarian father would tell you „I don’t care about how you feel about it, but it is your duty to visit your grandmother, so I’m gonna make you visit your grandmother”. You have the freedom to protest, but you have no choice. The second „post-modern” type of totalitarian father may say something like „You know how much your grandmother loves you and how upset she would be if you wouldn’t visit her. Despite all this, I am not forcing you to visit her, you should only visit her if you want to”. Every child knows that the second father exhibits a much stronger pressure to visit their grandmother, despite the apparent freedom („I’m technically not forcing you to visit her”). Not only that, but the child is also less free to complain about visiting his grandma.

    The second father is how power works inside capitalism. It is not about "hard power", forcing someone to do something regardless of what they want, it is instead about making them want something.

II: SEDUCTION, CAPITALISM AND “SOFT POWER”

 

“Thousands of years ago, power was mostly gained through physical violence and maintained with brute strength. There was little need for subtlety—a king or emperor had to be merciless. Only a select few had power, but no one suffered under this scheme of things more than women. They had no way to compete, no weapon at their disposal that could make a man do what they wanted—politically, socially, or even in the home. Of course, men had one weakness: their insatiable desire for sex. A woman could always toy with this desire, but once she gave in to sex the man was back in control; and if she withheld sex, he could simply look elsewhere—or exert force. What good was a power that was so temporary and frail? Yet women had no choice but to submit to this condition. There were some, though, whose hunger for power was too great, and who, over the years, through much cleverness and creativity, invented a way of turning the dynamic around, creating a more lasting and effective form of power. These women invented seduction. First, they would draw a man in with an alluring appearance, designing their makeup and adornment to fashion the image of a goddess come to life. By showing only glimpses of flesh, they would tease a man's imagination, stimulating the desire not just for sex but for something greater: the chance to possess a fantasy figure. Once they had their victims' interest, these women would lure them away from the masculine world of war and politics and get them to spend time in the feminine world—a world of luxury, spectacle, and pleasure. They might also lead them astray literally, taking them on a journey. Men would grow hooked on these refined, sensual pleasures—they would fall in love. But then, invariably, the women would turn cold and indifferent, confusing their victims. Just when the men wanted more, they found their pleasures withdrawn. They would be forced into pursuit, trying anything to win back the favors they once had tasted and growing weak and emotional in the process. Men who had physical force and all the social power would find themselves becoming the slave of a woman.

(…)

With a few exceptions—the Latin poet Ovid, the medieval troubadours—men did not much concern themselves with such a frivolous art as seduction. Then, in the seventeenth century came a great change: men grew interested in seduction as a way to overcome a young woman's resistance to sex. History's first great male seducers began to adopt the methods traditionally employed by women. They learned to dazzle with their appearance (often androgynous in nature), to stimulate the imagination, to play the coquette. They also added a new, masculine element to the game: seductive language, for they had discovered a woman's weakness for soft words.

At the same time that men were developing their version of seduction, others began to adapt the art for social purposes. As Europe's feudal system of government faded into the past, courtiers needed to get their way in court without the use of force. They learned the power to be gained by seducing their superiors and competitors through psychological games, soft words, a little coquetry. As culture became democratized, actors, dandies, and artists came to use the tactics of seduction as a way to charm and win over their audience and social milieu. In the nineteenth century another great change occurred: politicians like Napoleon consciously saw themselves as seducers, on a grand scale. These men depended on the art of seductive oratory. By seducing the masses they could accumulate immense power without the use of force.

Today we have reached the ultimate point in the evolution of seduction. Now more than ever, force or brutality of any kind is discouraged. All areas of social life require the ability to persuade people in a way that does not offend or impose itself. Forms of seduction can be found everywhere, blending male and female strategies. Advertisements insinuate, the soft sell dominates. If we are to change people's opinions—and affecting opinion is basic to seduction—we must act in subtle, subliminal ways.”

(Robert Greene, “The Art Of Seduction”, Preface)

 

    If I were to revisit and rethink one section of my previous book, “Love, politics social norms and sex”, that I think is relevant to the topic I want to discuss in this chapter, it is chapter 7: “SURPLUS, DEFICIT AND THE DESIRE TO BE DESIRED”. I start that chapter by describing my observation that “encrypted speech” is to be found, most often, in four areas of life in our modern society:

 

“In trying to look for real-life examples where euphemistic language and “acting” is the most common in social transactions, I observed four cases where they are the most common:

1. Romance & relationships

2. Politics

3. Job interviews

4. Sales marketing

In looking at what each four of them have in common, I noticed two similarities:

1. There is a power or desire imbalance: there is a “chooser” and a “choose me” position, a deficit and a surplus position

2. The desire to be desired must be masked as unconditional desire (or there is a pressure to do so, usually, at least)”

(Ștefan “Lastrevio” Boros, “Love, politics, social norms and sex”, Chapter VII)

 

    We can now rethink this in terms of the persona’s function to seduce. What those four scenarios have in common is a (more or less) “free” market where you have to convince other people to choose you. The history of dating (like I often said in the respective book) coincides with the history of capitalism – we moved from arranged marriages (in feudalism) to a “free market of potential partners” where you can choose to marry anyone as long as you convince them to choose you as well. Politics is dominated less and less by authoritarian regimes and more and more by liberal democracies, where democracy itself is a sort of capitalism of politics: a free market of potential politicians where almost anyone can participate to try to hold a particular position as long as they convince everyone else to choose them. Sales marketing is a similar attempt at seduction.

    But why do I say seduction and not persuasion? Seduction is a particular case of persuasion, where you do not try to appeal to reason and logical arguments as much, instead focusing on the aesthetical function of communication. In seduction, your body, your clothing, your image, and most importantly, your words have more of an aesthetic function than a purely epistemological one. Regardless of whether we are speaking of commercials for products, political seduction or romantic seduction, it matters way less what you say and more how you say it – in other words, it’s only 15-20% about the meaning of your words, and over 80% about how good it sounds.

    This aesthetic function of communication is regulated by the persona. It should now make sense why a seduction on the “free market” (of products, of potential partners, of politicians, of potential employees, etc.) implies so much encrypted speech and “bullshitting” – because encrypted speech, as I’ve previously said, is a compromise-formation between the epistemological function of communication (the “cold” transfer of knowledge and information – what you say) and the aesthetic function of communication (what “sounds good to the ear”, the set of “nice words” – how you say it).

    The persona had a different function in feudalism, where the dominant form of man’s power was “hard power” – the other’s desire was irrelevant (“regardless of whether you want it or not, you will do as I say”). Seduction was purely a feminine game, and it was for women’s survival in the patriarchy. In capitalism, hard power no longer works, and you have to attempt to change the other’s desire. Hence, we can define seduction, equivalently, as the attempt to change the other’s desire.

III: SEDUCTION CAN BE ETHICAL, BUT NOT MORAL

 

    The seductive persona raises certain questions about its morality and ethics – where do we draw the line between a simple seduction/persuasion and straight-up unethical manipulation? Are the two one and the same? How do we judge the “gray zone” of borderline unethical seductive practices (for example: the use of Cambridge Analytica in the case of political seduction, stirring up jealousy and creating love-triangles in the case of romantic/sexual seduction, etc.).

    Indeed, it is no simple question, and others have already tried answering it and we still have no clear-cut simple distinction between the two, I will leave the reader to take a look at a summary of the other dozens of writers and philosophers who have already tried defining this difference: Noggle, Robert, "The Ethics of Manipulation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition).

    However, what I can contribute right now is the idea that we can only speak of an ethics of seduction, and not of a morality of seduction. Morality and seduction are completely antithetical – this does not mean that seduction is always immoral, it means that it does not make sense to speak of a morality of seduction, seduction transcends morality as such, it is never moral and never immoral.

    The difference between ethics and morality is their relationship to desire. Morality takes desire as an input. The ultimate moral rule, for example, is “do not do onto others what you wouldn’t wish was done upon you”. Moral judgments often start with “If you want X … then Y” or “If you wish X … then Y”. They may start with the other’s desire as well “Only do X if the other person wants it”. Moral judgments, as I define them here, are those value-judgments in which desire is an input, an independent variable.

    Seduction is the exact opposite, since for seduction, desire is the output, the dependent variable, exactly the thing you are trying to change. To seduce someone means to make someone want something when they previously did not want it. Therefore, it does not make sense to judge seductive practices from a moral perspective, since that would imply that morality is both the input and the output, it would be self-defeating, seduction and morality would simply “cancel each other out” – like two sound waves with opposite phases. To speak of a morality of seduction means to judge a seduction based on the “victim’s” desire, but it is exactly that desire which was changed in seduction, making the whole process retroactively useless. The result of a morality of seduction would be no more than pure nonsense.

    This is why the line between seduction and manipulation can only be done by ethics, not by morality. Ethics are code of behavior that are fundamentally based on rules that have nothing to do with desire. Ethics do not care about what you want or what the other person wants, the rule is the same regardless of whether you want X or you want Y. For example, the 10 commandments in the Bible form a set of 10 ethical rules – the Bible says “Do not kill”, it never said “Do not kill, unless the other person wants it or consents to it”, for instance. To make moral judgments implies submission to desire, to make ethical judgments implies making a set of rules that you follow fanatically, ignoring desire (“I don’t care what you want, you have to follow these rules, period.”). Hence, speaking of an ethics of seduction makes sense, since the changing of desire by seduction will not change the ethical rules that regulate it.

IV: VISUAL AND VERBAL SEDUCTION FOLLOW THE SAME RULES

 

    Remember that the persona is the image we project onto others, the way we would like to appear, and this is not limited to our words, it includes our body as well. The persona is the entirety of our aesthetics – it is primarily concerned with beauty, not with practical usefulness or knowledge-transfer. And what can be “beautiful” or “aesthetically pleasing” can be both our bodies as well as our words.

    Robert Greene, in his (in)famous work “The Art Of Seduction”, claims that the visual form of seduction (through the body) is an inherently feminine form of seduction, since women were always the “beautiful sex”, on average. That left men to use the latter form of seduction way more, the “verbal seduction”, through “nice-sounding words”, and Greene characterizes this form of seduction as masculine.

    Yet, without a doubt, any competitor who wants to have any chance of success on the capitalist free-market must use a combination of both of these forms of seduction. Commercials for products make use of both visual seduction (fast-food Hamburgers look better in pictures and commercials than in real-life, just like people on dating apps) and of verbal seduction (catchy slogans, etc.).

    What is more interesting to point out here, however, is that both verbal (“masculine”) seduction and visual (“feminine”) seduction follow the same rules – since they both rely on the persona. By drawing the similarities between the two, we can develop some general rules of the persona itself, and a general philosophy of aesthetics (since, after all, the entirety of the branch of philosophy known as “aesthetics”, the study of form and beauty, can be thought of as a study of the persona).

    In order to draw the similarities between metaphorical/encrypted speech and the visual seduction of our bodies, we must take a look at clothing. To speak in literal terms, without filter, to free associate, is the equivalent of being “psychologically naked”. The “mask” that we filter our words through in order to “tone them down” and make them sound a bit more “nice” or “gentle” is the equivalent of clothing. Political correctness in the workplace can be thought of as a “clothing of words” – how to insult someone in a nice way. Flirting is the clothing of verbal seduction – how to filter your sexual desires through a mask, in order to express them in a more “subtle” way, etc.

    The clothing we put over our bodies and the mask we filter our speech in follow the same rules. Here are some of the rules I observed:

    CONTINUITY: In verbal seduction, the continuity of our speech is known as “smoothness” – how to subtly bring a new topic into conversation, how to jump from one topic to another in a “smooth” way, making it sound “natural” or almost like a “coincidence”, to avoid the harsh randomness of switching from one topic to another in an “abrupt” or “discontinuous” way. When the topics of conversation flow “smoothly” from one to another, we can say that the person talks “smoothly”, regardless of whether they do it intentionally or unconsciously. A smooth conversation implies a natural flow of all the topics that were conversed, the “story of the conversation” is coherent and continuous. Similarly enough, our clothing has to follow a “continuous flow” as well, the articles need to “fit together” well. To wear a “random and crazy wardrobe” means to wear articles of clothing that feel like each was pulled from a different outfit. If your shirt matches with your jeans and your accessories, then the articles of clothing do not feel like separates pieces, but different parts of one whole outfit, they “flow together” well, just like the various topics of conversation need to have “something to do with each other”, so do your various articles of clothing. One golden rule of clothing, for instance, is to never wear more than two-three colors. Notice here, also, the persona of the psychotic individual: just like schizophrenics engage in “word salad” where they jump from one topic to the next in a “nonsensical” way, in the same way schizophrenic clothing is often random and “discontinuous” – wearing various articles of clothing from different outfits that do not match.

    SUBTLE NAKEDNESS: To be physically naked is equivalent to literally and explicitly expressing your sexual desires without filter – both will get you arrested for sexual harassment in today’s society. At longer psychological distances, sexual seduction works only if you gradually reveal your (physical or verbal) skin bit by bit. An attractive woman seduces not by taking all her clothes off instantly, but by being fully clothed and subtly showing bits and pieces of her skin, leaving the rest to imagination – so does the “masculine” or “verbal” seduction work, by gradually expressing sexual desire in words through subtle allusions, gradually decreasing their “encryption-level” through time, smoothly going from more indirect to more direct.

    EFFORTLESSNESS AND NATURALCY: The more effortless and “natural” a seduction appears to be, the more effective it is. The equivalent in visual (“feminine”) seduction this time is not clothing but make-up. A lot of men complain that women should stop wearing make-up because they look better without it, but those men almost always confuse “women without make-up” with “women who wear make-up well enough that you don’t realize they wear it”. In other words, make-up is most successful when you wear it so well that other people don’t even realize you’re wearing it. Similarly enough, in the verbal (or “masculine”) seduction, you are most effective when it retroactively seems “effortless” or “natural” – that you did it so effortlessly that you did not even try too hard. If you make it really obvious that you are trying to win a person’s attention, love (or votes, in the case of political seduction, or money, in the case of sales marketing…), then you risk looking needy and desperate. A successful political or romantic seduction gives the illusion of “being yourself”, that you were simply minding your own business doing whatever and by coincidence that happened to seduce someone in the process (even if internally you actually tried).

V: THE ETHICS OF THE PERSONA – ARISTOTELIAN VICE AND THE EGO-IDEAL

 

    In the article I cited above (Noggle, Robert, "The Ethics of Manipulation", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition)), the most successful take on the ethics of seduction, in my opinion, is the one that tries to frame it in terms of Aristotelian vice. Aristotle argued that certain spheres of actions or feelings need to be balanced, to we need to find the “golden mean” or “middle way” in order to turn them into a virtue. Aristotle argued that virtue turns into vice whenever we have too little or too much of that trait. For example, confidence turns into virtue when we have just enough of it that we can call it “courage”, when we have too much of it, it turns into the vice of “rashness”, too little and it turns into the vice of “cowardness”. When we speak of manipulation, then:

 

“Marcia Baron suggests treating manipulativeness as the vice of excess with regard to “to what extent—and how and when and to whom and for what sorts of ends—to seek to influence others’ conduct” (Baron 2003: 48). On her view, manipulativeness is at the opposite extreme from the vice of “refraining from offering potentially helpful counsel; or refraining from trying to stop someone from doing something very dangerous, for example, from driving home from one’s house while drunk”.

Perhaps, then, we can understand the underlying similarity between trickery- and pressure-based manipulation as manifestations of a common vice, as different ways of going wrong with regard to how and how much we should try to influence those around us.”

 

    Could the line between seduction and manipulation, then, be drawn whenever we have “excess seduction”, when seduction turns from virtue to vice? For example, one function of the persona is “politeness” – to mask our socially unacceptable desires through various euphemisms or “honest lies” and formalities. Then, politeness, one virtue of the persona, is the mean/perfect balance of this filter. If your “filter” is too thin, then you risk drowning in the vice of indecency, brutal honesty, insensibility, callousness, etc. If your “filter” is too thick, then you drown in the vice of manipulation, fakeness, bullshittery, ass-kissing, etc. Just enough politeness and you’re perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

    We could apply the same logic to the persona’s function to mask socially unacceptable desires (ex: sexual desires) with people at large psychological distances (strangers, etc.). Should you be transparent about your sexual desires and intensions with strangers? Too transparent and explicit and it’s sexual harassment, not transparent enough and it’s manipulative and fake.

    The question that naturally follows from all this then is – how do we find that mean “perfect balance”? How do we know when we should tone it down with the persona, or when we should “thicken” it? The answer is context. This naturally follows from one of the previous chapters of this book, where I argued that the persona is always embedded in a social context. Your persona is ethical at that moment where it conforms to the average “thickness” of other’s personas in that social context. For example: is it deceptive and manipulative to use photoshop in order to make your social media profile pictures look better? The answer is: you should use just as much photoshop as the average person, in order to remain ethical – too much photoshop and you are deceptive, too little and you are an idiot.

    Any social context has a certain “threshold” or “zero-point” that you are always compared to, that threshold is known in familiar language as expectations and in Lacanian psychoanalysis as the ego-ideal. The ego-ideal is that point from which you are always compared to – anything above the ego-ideal is “more”, anything below the ego-ideal is “less”, the ego-ideal is the origin or “zero-point”. For example, if your mother, as a kid, always compared you to your deskmate, then your deskmate is your ego-ideal: if your grades are higher than your deskmate, you are good, if your grades are lower than your deskmate, you are not good enough, if you have the same grade as your deskmate then you are neutral. Similarly enough, the ego-ideal of a social context contains the expectations of others in regards to the “thickness” of your persona. In the last example, the thickness of your online persona includes “the amount of photoshop” you use in your profile pictures. One possible ethical rule we can make about the persona is that your persona should always stay as close as possible to the ego-ideal of the social context you are in.

    We can apply the same logic to sexual seduction and sexual harassment. The line between flirting and sexual harassment, that is widely debated today by movements like #MeToo, is dictated by the ego-ideal of the context you are in, not only by psychological distance. At work or at church, you need a “thicker” mask, you need to conceal your sexual desires way more, therefore, to seduce someone in such a context, the “threshold” for your comments is way lower – you need to be way more subtle. If you’re in the club, you can permit yourself to be less inhibited and more explicit. Are you on Grindr? You can be even more explicit. In all those three contexts we are dealing with strangers, but the ego-ideal of each context is different.

    You can view drug addiction as one particular example of the “ego-ideal of the body”, so to speak. The more you consume one drug, the more you develop a tolerance for it, so you need more of the same drug in order to experience the same high. The ego-ideal is the quantity of the drug you need to consume in order to feel “normal” or “sober” – anything below that and you experience withdrawal symptoms, anything above that and you experience highness. This makes sense since Jacques Lacan often made a point that the ego-ideal is inherently related to repetition and the death drive – the more you repeat an activity, the more you develop a “tolerance” for it. The tolerance-threshold is dictated by the ego-ideal (in Freudian terms, anything above that threshold goes “beyond the pleasure principle”, producing what Lacan called “jouissance”).

    The internet is designed in such a way such as to gradually increase the threshold of the “average thickness of your (online) persona” in almost any context. Almost any website or forum will start out with a low threshold of what constitutes a “thick enough” persona and then will gradually increase (for example, the photoshopping of profile pictures).

    Speaking of the persona’s aesthetic function – in art, there is a third form of seduction that is neither visual nor verbal, but auditory: music. The music industry faces the exact same problem right now in regards to its ego-ideal for what constitutes “loud enough” music – the loudness war. If your music is not loud enough, you are lagging behind. If it’s too loud, you are compressing it and it sounds horrible. But gradually, over the years, this threshold increased more and more, until most mainstream music sounds over-compressed and “crushed” – we can view this “loudness war” in the same way that we can view the “Photoshop war” of the visual persona.

VI: DATING APPS AND FEMININE SEDUCTION: THE VOICE VS. THE GAZE

 

    Dating apps like Tinder have a high threshold of the ego-ideal in regards to verbal seduction (flirting, what Greene would’ve called “masculine” seduction: “nice-sounding words”). The ego-ideal is equivalent to expectations – since everyone is there for the same reason, then the expectations are higher, and thus the threshold is also higher and you permit yourself to be more explicit and direct (even if you’re doing it unconsciously – your persona will automatically change). In other words, the “thickness” of your verbal persona will lower.

    This naturally came with a compensation in terms of the visual persona. While the threshold of the ego-ideal in terms of verbal seduction is lower than in real-life, the threshold of the ego-ideal in terms of visual seduction is higher. In other words, the expectations to “filter” your speech are lower, but the expectations to “filter” your face/body are higher.

    Hence, the “honest fakeness” of the persona shifted from the verbal to the visual (in Lacanian terms, from the invocatory drive/the voice to the scopic drive/the gaze). Whereas in real-life seduction we pretend more in regards to what we feel and desire, on dating apps we pretend more in regards to how we look like in real-life.

    This is why men have a much harder time on those apps than in real-life. Dating apps are designed in such a way such as to benefit the desired instead of the one who desires (that is, the physically attractive, most women and a tiny minority of men). Visual seduction is the tool of the physically attractive, in most case women, whereas verbal seduction is what is left by the person trying to seduce (“I don’t look nice, but I can say nice-sounding words”).

    Notice here how, if the persona is a “mask” we wear in public, then the process of “unmasking” and of finally revealing “what is behind the mask” also changes from real-life to online dating. In real-life seduction, that gives more power to men, the “unmasking” is of the persona of the voice, not of the gaze (for example: the moment of confession). It is when the seducer (usually a man) stops pretending to not be attracted to the person they are trying to seduce (usually a woman), and their true desires are “unmasked”. Dating apps like Tinder moved this “unmasking” from the voice to the gaze: now the true moment of “unmasking” is whether the person looks in real-life the same as in their pictures.

    In other words, dating apps took away a man’s oldest trick in the book that gave them power in the process of seduction: concealing their desire in order to be given a chance. In real-life, they can pretend to be friends with a woman, or to want her for another reason, and only after this opportunity they can apply whatever process of seduction they want – without this, they would have been instantly “filtered out” based on their looks or first-impression, just like they are filtered out right now on dating apps. By pretending to not desire the woman they are trying to seduce, they can indirectly force her to give them a second chance and to attempt to change her mind through whatever means they think of. This is the persona of the voice – the one who desires. The “mask” of the persona, here, conceals desire (like Freud often said, the only libido is male libido, since women are naturally put in society not in the position of “the one who desires” but “the one who is being desired”, the object-of-desire).

    Dating apps dialectically reverse this power-imbalance between men and women. They give you less flexibility in concealing what is desired, but instead give you more flexibility in concealing what is being desired (the face, the body, etc.). In heterosexual relationships, this gives less power to men and more power to women, since women are more often put in the position of “the object of desire” – men find it harder to conceal what they want on dating apps, but women find it easier to conceal what is being wanted (editing pictures, etc.). Phrasing this in the terminology of Robert Greene – online seduction is more visual and less verbal, and therefore, more feminine. In Lacanian terminology, the gaze has more flexibility than the voice in being masked.

EDIT - I added one more chapter to this article, here you go:

VII: DATING IS POLITICAL – PROGRESSIVE VS. CONSERVATIVE POWER

 

    Progressive vs. conservative attitudes in regards to dating and relationships can be summarized as follows:

    Progressives are very lax when it comes to the visual/physical persona (you can do whatever you want with your body) while wanting to have tight-control over the voice (what you are allowed to say, speech is policed). This naturally gives way more power to women than to men, since the form of seduction that you have more freedom in using is the feminine one (body, visual).

    Conservatives are very lax when it comes to the voice (you are allowed to say mostly whatever you want) while wanting to have tight-control over the gaze (control over what you can do with your body). This naturally gives way more power to men than to women, since the form of seduction that you have more freedom in using is the masculine one (voice, verbal).

    Progressives care about policing speech when it comes to sexuality – too direct at the wrong time and you are accused of verbal sexual harassment (cat-calling, etc.), too indirect and non-verbal in the actual sexual intercourse and you are accused of physical rape. They idolize the contradictions in the intersection between speech and sex - progressives are in conflict with the voice. They are the promoters of explicit, enthusiastic consent, while at the same time being the most sensitive to explicit sexual demands, ready to categorize them as sexual harassment. In most cases, this puts men at a disadvantage, the behavior of men is policed, nothing they do is right. When it comes to the body, however, you can do pretty much anything you want, show more skin or show less skin.

    Conservatives care about policing the body when it comes to sexuality – how decent your clothing is, how much skin you show, etc. If she shows too much skin, the woman may be accused of being a whore, easy-to-get, or even asking to be raped. If she doesn’t show enough skin, she will be less desired by men. Hence, just like nothing you say can satisfy progressives, nothing you do with your body can satisfy conservatives. In most cases, this now puts women at a disadvantage, the body of women is policed and controlled. When it comes to speech, however, you can pretty much say whatever you want – from “cat-calling” and explicit sexual demands to strangers to implicit and non-verbal communication (“implicit consent” during sexual intercourse, etc.). So while progressives are in conflict with the voice (of the invocatory drive, in Lacanian psychoanalysis), conservatives are in conflict with the gaze (of the scopic drive, in Lacanian psychoanalysis).

    The conclusion is that regardless of whether you are taking the progressive-feminine or the conservative-masculine stance in regards to the norms and ethics of dating and seduction, you are inevitably ending up in an ideological game of power, unintentionally answering the question about who should have the power in a relationship? As always, Lacan was way ahead of his times when discussing this tight-control over sexuality, for that, one should only need to take a look at his (in)famous essay in the Ecrits: “Kant with Sade”, where he associates De Sade’s libertine sexuality with Kant’s fundamentalist ethical maxims.