And How the News and Social Media is to Blame
Before the age of snarky man and woman-shaming and chronic celebrity and clerical rapists, men and women once interacted in a way that is completely foreign to the cynical 21st century brand of flirtation. Flirting, used to be an innocuous gesture that was never so roundly ignored or associated with hostility or sexual abuse as it is today. It was necessary lingua franca for men and women to occasionally find common ground in romantically charged endeavors.
IRL (in real life) flirting used to be far more tolerated than it is today. Cheeky, in its 16th century manifestations, by the 18th century it evolved into something more playful. In the present day, more often than not, it is suspected and unwelcome as presumed borderline sexism or sexual abuse by women who have experienced that sort of treatment, and even those that have not. In blacklisting all IRL flirtation people throw out the baby with the bath water, because not every flirtation is driven by malevolence.
“Virtual dating shrinks a single person’s dating prospects down to a micro-universe.
When Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre says “Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice,” all of the old male stereotypes and expectations that came with them permeated…
