by Sara Pascoe
Maybe this was the first test. If you applied for a gig and got a reply about your knicknoks you might feel unsettled and you might cancel. Or you might push on through because you need the money and £150 is a lot for one night’s work and it’ll probably be fine. So you arrived at the Dorchester at 4 p.m. There were make-up artists and hairdressers provided. You were given a five-page non-disclosure agreement to sign, but no time to read it. Legally you are now prevented from talking about what happens at the Presidents Club, so I’ll take it from here.
The hostesses were presented in a ceremony, walking in twos across the ballroom stage and down to their allocated tables, like the animals entering the Ark but with high heels and a Little Mix soundtrack.† The women had been (black) briefed to keep their allocated men happy. They were to drink with guests, which is … unorthodox. They were all given a glass of wine before heading out. ‘Why are they trying to get me drunk?’ they may have wondered. I hope it puts your mind at rest to know that the event’s brochure warned guests against ‘harassment and unwanted conduct’.
One of the interesting things about being a human being is that we are so utterly subjective. We define things like harassment very differently. Unwanted conduct could include so many things, we’re not mind readers – how are we supposed to know who’s enjoying a lovely flirt with us and who doesn’t want our groin rubbed against them? For this reason, I can’t tell you that some of the oligarchs, chief executives and film directors attending the Presidents Club ignored the brochurial request. Perhaps they did not define groping as harassment? Some of these business owners may’ve believed that hands up skirts was wanted conduct. The Financial Times reported lewd comments such as ‘rip off your knickers and dance on that table’, requests for prostitution (their word), cocaine in the toilets, a man exposing his penis, as well as hostesses being ‘repeatedly fondled’ on bottoms, hips and legs.
There was also lots of completely willing hand-holding, lap-sitting and dancing. I interviewed someone who worked at the ball in 2017. She doesn’t want to be quoted because of the non-disclosure agreement she signed, but what she made clear is that some of the women working did enjoy themselves. Some hostesses drank and flirted and caught their taxis home. Some of them smoked and took drugs and got paid for sexual favours – and if that was their choice, I don’t care, I’m not the police. But other women were mauled, insulted and badly treated. Some women thought the job was a paid, debauched night out and would be keen to do it all again. Others did not know what they were signing up for when they agreed to do it and found the experience traumatic. The woman I interviewed said that she had been told it would be ‘fun’ but that it wasn’t.
I thought that was interesting, because it brings us back to how subjectively we define things, without sarcasm this time. My idea of ‘fun’ is daytime drinking, then having a hangover and some soup by 8 p.m. My idea of ‘fun’ is hiding your wallet, and then you can’t go home and you’re annoyed with me and I’m really laughing. My sister Cheryl’s hen do was a surprise arranged by her friend Lyndsey. ‘It’s gonna be so fun,’ she assured me. It cost £46 for front-row seats to see the Dream Boys. There was a very sad buffet and I had to watch my sister being lapdanced by a six-foot-eight muscle man. He laid her on the floor so he could do ‘the worm’ on her, Cheryl tried to get up and accidentally head-butted him. That was the only fun bit. I left early, feeling lonely. I think we can accept that some people’s idea of fun can be someone else’s nightmare.
But there’s a difference between a night out and a job. If you’re at a party and someone keeps groping you, you can complain, tell them to leave you alone, move away. You have the same rights as Gropey – you’re both guests, you’re equal. If you’ve had enough and want to escape, you can call your mum or a cab. You can flick the bird and walk away because you’re not financially obligated to be at this party. You are free.
The expectations that underwrite employment restrict behaviour. There are financial consequences for disobedience. You are not free. If you are at work and your boss says something that could be a little suggestive, you laugh it off. You pretend to think they’re joking and try hard to be polite and seem unbothered. ‘Haha, yeah right,’ you say, smiling and walking away. People who do not ease the tension of a superior’s boundary-crossing become known as difficult. People who complain are told they are misreading the situation or can’t take a joke or are accused of lying. Employment creates a power imbalance, and inferiority enables predators. The American comedian Louis CK targeted newer, younger comics. Kevin Spacey didn’t manipulate and abuse his co-stars, but youthful drama-school students and aspirants. Harvey Weinstein assaulted, molested and propositioned actresses auditioning for him, because the only person more vulnerable to their boss than a current employee is a potential one.
I WILL NOW DECLARE THAT EVERYTHING IS ALLEGED SO THAT FABER & FABER DO NOT GET SUED BY SEX OFFENDERS‡ WHO CAN AFFORD EXPENSIVE LAWYERS TO KEEP EVERYBODY QUIET.
It is the imbalance of power that makes the groped person’s position difficult. If an inferior puts their hand down your trousers, you get them fired. The workplace demands subservience of workers; to be successfully waged involves compliance. The workplace puts some people in authority over others. To be paid is to be subjugated.
Alright, Karl Marx.
You have no idea how horrible working in Tesco’s was. It doesn’t always feel bad, we don’t always even notice. When you’ve agreed to work a shift, when you need the money, when your clothes to go home in are locked in a changing room with your phone and debit card and you can’t leave … though I have to say that Tesco’s never sent me any instructions regarding my underpants.
The Grid Girls have not reported allegations like those described at the Presidents Club. They are such different situations. In one of them attractive, thin women got paid a wage for being thin and attractive, saw some race cars, then went home. In the other, thin, attractive women were employed because they were thin and attractive and were then imposed upon, put into a situation where some of them were depersonalised, objectified and vulnerable.
The Grid Girls wanted to work and have been involuntarily deprived of that option because some people feel that if we live in a society where it is acceptable to lustily objectify women, then women will remain vulnerable to predatory males. One group of women are blamed for another group’s experience, barely acknowledging the misbehaving rapist men in between. The problem with the Presidents Club as I understand it – and you may of course disagree – isn’t that the women sold their evening, agreed to wear short dresses and serve men drinks, it is their treatment while they were there.
Maybe the men were confused as well?
Maybe they were. I think that is the quandary with erotic capital: if some women choose to sell theirs and others don’t, can we trust men to be alert enough to the difference? In Leeds there is an area called Holbeck which has a ‘legal’ red light district, and many women who have nothing to do with the sex trade complain of being propositioned there, men calling at them from cars, following them. Girls on the way home from school have to put up with it, and this isn’t the sex workers’ fault – it’s the Geoffs’.
The behaviour of the men at the Presidents Club, like the men I saw on stag dos in Amsterdam, appears animalistic to me. Is that because men in groups become tribal again? Something awful and ancient happens to them when they’re together? There have been studies that found being in all-male groups alters testosterone levels, and especially if groups of men are then joined by one or two women – this creates a competitive environment. However, there was a recent experiment where men on stag dos were separated from the group and asked about their night. The majority of men individually said they weren’t enjoying themselves but were doing it for the others! Male pack behaviour relies on complicity from all the males involved, and male safety means going along with the crowd.
If men look to each other for social cues and what is appropriate, and they all see
each other leering and groping and saying bawdy things, they are all reassured that their behaviour is correct, so this is a vicious circle. It’s also difficult to admonish men for their behaviour at the Presidents Club when the President of the United States has already behaved much worse and been rewarded.
Samantha from Sex and the City said, ‘Sex is power,’ but I would submit that sex is only power because it can be exchanged for money. It remains money that is power. Sex is exchangeable for money, so it is powerful if you’re swapping erotic capital in an environment you control OR where there are exact, stable conditions and a communication of explicit consent and informed agreement.
There is a reason strip clubs have bouncers, big men to protect women from other men, and rules. A whole heap of rules.
* The source for this information was a Financial Times journalist who went undercover after hearing reports about the previous year’s debauchery. You can find the full article online, along with the rest of the internet.
† Please remind me to rewrite the Bible for millennials. With a Little Mix soundtrack.
‡ Alleged sex offenders. The lawyer wants me to remind you that, at the time of publication, Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein are yet to go to trial and states that they are not guilty.
Men Should Pay
‘Sex is a resource that men desire and women possess’ is not my opinion, nor Samantha from Sex and the City’s. It’s from the 2002 study ‘Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality’ by American psychologists Roy Baumeister and Jean Twenge. They continue: ‘To obtain sex, men must offer women other denied resources in return, such as money, commitment, security, attention or respect … The harder it is for men to obtain sex, the more they will be willing to offer women in return.’ They conclude, ‘Sexual scarcity improves women’s bargaining position … suppression of female sexuality reduces the risk that each woman will lose her male lover to another woman.’
Or as ‘meninist’ Peter Lloyd puts it, ‘Life’s a marketplace where women are the sellers and men are the buyers. Like eBay but played out in restaurants and nightclubs.’
I don’t think that paying for someone’s dinner is explicitly transactional – buying a homeless person a sandwich doesn’t mean you’re expecting a hand job in the park later. Your manager pays for lunch at a meeting without expecting you to drop your trousers, your mum cooks you a roast every Sunday with no sexual undertones whatsoever – it’s clear people can provide sustenance for each other without tensions and obligations. But where dating is concerned, expectations and implications could be different for the people either side of the table. Alex might believe that Stevie offered to pay because he earns more and was feeling generous, but Stevie might have paid thinking Alex is more likely to sleep with him if he does. That’s quite worrying, isn’t it?
I have to wonder how men feel about this. How many men feel the sting of financial outlay privately? Does that lead to misogynist anger? I think women who expect men to pay for them are wrong – there we go, I’ve said it. There is a BBC online article this week where a woman says she lets men pay because of the wage gap, and that is not a sensible way to counteract the undervaluation of women, is it? A middle-class woman necking Chablis while the cleaners, the nurses, the childcare assistants are rinsed by our economic structure. Ditto women taking their husbands’ money after divorce – I think it’s terrible. Sorry, but if we are not living in Pride and Prejudice any more, why this antiquated stealing of income? Sure, if it is for children, childcare, the house they live in, that stuff. But ‘keeping her in the lifestyle to which she is accustomed’, no way. I am not a meninist. But some of the stuff they bring up is very valid. There are women who use our courts to punish men – oh God, I’ve read too many incel forums.
If we take gender out of the equation – imbalance isn’t there. I asked my friend Suzi what happens with lesbian couples. Is there an unwritten rule, is it the elder of you? The taller? The one who earns the most? She said usually the person who asked the other out will pay, but both will take turns to treat the other. She said when someone pays the response is always ‘Thank you, I’ll get the next one.’ SEE HOW SENSIBLE LESBIANS ARE? And they reliably make each other orgasm.
As I mentioned near the beginning, studies demonstrate that women do care about wealth and income. They find it attractive, it’s been scientifically proven, which really pisses me off. Heterosexual men value youth and attractiveness as signals of fertility, and heterosexual women value signs that a man can provide, and it all makes me want to puke.
Psychologists Michael Dunn and Robert Searle at Cardiff University conducted a study where women rated the attractiveness of pictures of men. They found that if they put a man next to an expensive car he was judged more handsome. GROSS. For another study they dressed the same men in either expensive designer clothes or cheap logo-less ones, and again female participants all preferred the richer-looking men. This explains David’s worries that Diana prefers Gage – he is aware that wealth might mean something to her on a deeper biological level—
None of those people are real.
They are to me. This clarifies why men feel the pressure to splurge on creamy coolers and champagne as a way of signalling ‘I can look out for you, I can provide.’ The eHarmony website has a pseudoscientific article telling women that whether a man pays or not is a way to see how invested he is in you. It claims that a man who asks you to go halves isn’t interested. ‘Saves me so much time waiting for him to text me,’ says Linda, an idiot. I find this state of affairs farcical, but it has echoes of evolutionary programming. And it makes sense of how a woman’s refusal to let a man pay can be viewed as emasculating. If masculinity is built on social displays of ability to provide, then denying a man the opportunity to ‘display’ is reducing him. Why does that matter, if we all know masculinity is a construct? Constructs are ideas, concepts, floaty invisible things to be discussed at university and rejected in real life. Western women have legally protected autonomy; do we go through a charade of men paying for us because being taken care of turns us on?
I would equate a man paying for dinner with a woman shaving her legs.
Masculinity is a construct, sí señor. It is constructed to convey elements of male behaviour that were of evolutionary benefit. All humans are a mixture of attractive qualities. Some men are muscly and strong, some men are sneaky and clever; both are equally useful in finding food, escaping enemies, providing for their family and tribe. Some straight women will be attracted to bigger men, others to very intelligent men and some greedy ladies to guys that are both. Our species reflects a great range of physical attributes and personalities because it was our variance that allowed us to adapt to every habitat on earth while constantly competing with each other.
Traits considered ‘masculine’ are varied – strength, protectiveness, being a good provider – but all of them convey status. In turn, status has always allowed men access to resources and made them attractive to mates. Status is also vital to the safety of a male. In evolutionary terms, low status makes you extremely vulnerable – to aggression, attack, not just from strangers and enemies but from your own tribe. The reason modern men freak out when disrespected or disregarded is that the brain chemistry which controls their emotional response is trained by evolution to know that a fall in status is dangerous for them.
So if paying for a meal is a gesture of generosity, wealth, ability to provide; if it is a social demonstration – ‘I’m a strong boy who is healthy and successful and everyone should respect and/or fancy me’; if it’s the human equivalent of a peacock spreading his sexy blue-green tail … then to deny that gesture, to shut it down, is like running in with garden shears and chopping the poor peacock’s feathers off.
If reducing a man’s masculinity lowers his status, then a rejection of masculine display will bother him. It may feel to him like diminishment. Even if we intellectually understand that there is no reason for a man to pay for a woman’s dinner, it may still feel good
for him to do it. And hurtful if it’s refused. This is like women shaving their legs, because while we know that it is a silly, pointless thing to remove leg hair – it takes hours of our week, costs money – even when we know our partner doesn’t care, or when we’re single and our legs entwine only with each other nightly, there is something about stubbly or hairy legs that feels unattractive. It can make us feel unfeminine. Not everyone, of course; some women don’t feel like this and I admire them with all I have. I imagine these women using the time saved to write poetry that hits the heart like lightning. I imagine them being able to meditate for hours without getting bored. I imagine them being friends with Lena Dunham. They are the female equivalent of men who don’t care if their wives earn more than them and they are better at equality than the rest of us.
While notions of femininity are culturally constructed in the same way masculinity has been, they are similarly built upon ingrained insecurities. There is this yucky, illogical longing in me to be small, smooth and beautiful because to generations of my ancestors, a woman’s youth and fertility were her access to resources, her social safety. Youth and fertility were a woman’s strength and status.
These are underlying, animal things for us to consider. I don’t think men have to pay for dinner, I don’t think women have to shave their legs, but KNOWING that some of us still feel the pull THAT. WE. SHOULD, I’m trying to comprehend why that might be, why it’s difficult to throw off. It seems like housework is culturally influenced, men are getting better at doing their own dusting – but it is still men who propose marriage. When women earn more than their husbands, the divorce rate is higher. And while that is seen as a male reaction to emasculation, I think maybe that is freedom. Money allows us choices. Leaving is the biggest choice and only women with independent incomes can easily make it.