What Do Women Want

For John, BLUF:  Broad culture or narrow?  I say go with a little broader.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

Monday Law Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds had a column in USA Today, talking about a recent video of men making catcalls to women on the streets of New York City:  "Catcalling a two-way street:  Video of 'street harassment' shows white feminist values, but societal values are broader."

Here is the lede, with a link to the video:

Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle over a video of a woman walking the streets of New York and being catcalled by guys.  Most of the catcalls were comparatively tame, though not all were, and the result was a predictable storm of attention on the Internet via Twitter and other social media, exactly as the video's producers — an outfit called ihollaback.org — intended.  But then some things departed from the script.

Ah, departure from the script.  That could be a problem.  The guys doing the catcalling were Black and Latino and working class.  A notable absence of Caucasians (what Professor Reynolds should have meant to say when he said "white").

And whether or not it deserves the charges of outright racism and classism, or even comparisons to The Birth of a Nation, that it got from some minority critics, that's indisputably what it is.

I have always believed that becoming an American has always meant moving toward the WASP model.  Not that everyone should become an Episcopalians or Presbyterian, but that a certain rectitude and sense of responsibility, a certain belief in free enterprise and striving to be the best was expected.♠  It WASP seems narrow, I go with Gene Autry.

But, back to the video, and the newspaper column.  The thing is if we are going to have an inclusive culture we can't be slapping back at those whose culture is a little different.  And we definitely can't be criminalizing those cultural differences.

Read the whole column.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Well, maybe it isn't about being a WASP, but about being a cowboy.  Gene Autry says it here, along with Hopalong Cassidy and a couple of others.