I definitely have the time and inclination to respond to your comment! It’s kind of you to share your thoughts with me. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want to engage with such a well thought out message. I only hope I have the strength to give a good response. I broke some ribs shortly after writing that last article and today is the first day I’ve been able to sit at my desk. (Tellingly, my girlfriend did not interpret my weakness as a lack of genetic fitness and abandon me for someone with a more fully evolved rib-cage.)

The only thing in your comment I’d ask you to re-examine is your statement that “harassment isn’t about sexual interest”. Saying that “ harassment isn’t about sexual interest” to a male audience is very close to telling a female audience that they “want to mate upward in the dominance hierarchy”. All a woman has to do is look inside herself and say “that’s wrong” and suddenly all the credibility attached to the surrounding argument is damaged.

As I write this, I am close enough to touch several books on feminist legal theory, including Catherine Mackinnon’s “sexual harassment of working women”. I know that in a certain technical sense, we can define sexual harassment in a particular way, and say axiomatically “its about power”. Thinking about the problem in these terms is useful for drafting legislation or explaining the legal basis for financial recovery for sexual harassment.

By the time you abstract sexual harassment into a mechanism of oppression which exist independently of natural sexual urges, you have reached a technical matter which has nothing to do with the subjective experience of any particular man. If we speak to people as if they “should” feel differently than they do, we’ll never win them over because everyone is an authority on how they actually feel.

This brings me to the lipstick matter. One of the ways that men harm women’s productivity is by giving them “unwanted attention”. There is biological mechanism which causes men’s attention to be attracted to women. Resisting the attraction requires a mental effort, similar to ignoring a sharp noise or the pain of a broken rib. Women can alter their appearance in ways that increase the amount of mental effort required to avoid paying attention to them. If I said this wasn’t true, and Jordan Peterson said that it was. Every man would believe Jordan (even if they verbally sided with me) because they would know it was true.

I do not know the reason why the majority of women across all cultures, expend effort to make themselves beautiful. If the answer is ever discovered it will probably be fairly complicated. I think that women have a right to do it. I also think that it is incumbent on civilization to find a way to let them do it in safety.

We must not turn a blind eye to the tension between a woman wearing lipstick and the message that men should not to make idle conversation with her while she’s trying to work. Making idle conversation with women is a reflex triggered by visual cues, including smiling. I’m disappointed in the way he expressed himself, but Jordan is right that peaceful coexistence between men an women in large organizations presents unsolved problems, many of which are rooted in biology.

The lipstick paradox is real, this doesn’t negate anything in title IX, or justify violent, coercive, or illegal behavior. We need to face the effect that men, women, and children have on each other’s nervous systems and we can’t do it by scolding or re-education.

I think there’s more agreement between the sides of this debate than we realize. Progress will come when we find a vocabulary that both sides can understand. I say all this with the knowledge that some of what I say will make people angry. I only wrote as I did because I really appreciated your thoughtful comment and wanted to give a sincere response.