During the #MeToo phase of “The Great Stupid” and even before, the Woke and Wonderful were lecturing men that to take any pro-active romantic action that involved touching required express consent, otherwise a mere impulsive kiss would constitute sexual assault. So now Clark Gable, Richard Gere, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and the rest are sexual predators because they didn’t say “please.”
I am watching the (excellent) series “The Madison,” and, as I had noticed in another Taylor Sheridan vehicle “Landman,” in an awkward moment of sexual tension between a man and a woman who were virtual strangers, it was the woman who instigated the surprise, passionate kiss.
That’s all right, see. If a man kisses the woman, it’s assault and battery, but the other way around it’s exciting, romantic and natural.
Got it.
Assholes.
Ethics Alarms 
Praise Allah the Duke stuck mostly to westerns. God, he looks and sounds cumbersome trying to play an ordinary person. Anyone who cast him as anyone other than John Wayne made a terrible mistake.
He’s not exactly a normal person in “The Quite Man”—he’s an ex -pro boxer who killed a man in the ring, and he engages in arguably the best fist fight in film history with Victor McGlaglen, who had been a real boxer. The Duke made a lot of war movies, many of which are considered among his best, and “The Quiet Man” is also on his “best of..” list. He never was much good at kissing, in my opinion, but that kiss in TQM is one of the most famous kisses of all.
Women make rules for betas that they break for alphas. A women would appreciate a kiss (and more) from a man who she deems to be highly desirable. But if a man is not desirable to her, a glance that is one second too long may have him labelled as a creep today, with sometimes adverse social consequences (social media shaming, job loss).
In Hollywood movie classics the male lead is almost without an exception an alpha, and his sexual attention is almost always wanted. The alpha male was expected to pursue his love interest, and she was expected to be coy and sometimes she is required to resist his advances for moral reasons. The John Wayne clip in the post is an example of this dynamic.
The double standard has always existed, and is rooted in biology. Male sexuality and female sexuality are different, resulting in different behavior by the two sexes. There is nothing wrong with that, as moral standards have to recognize the reality of evolved human nature. The traditional expectation was that men took the initiative in signaling romantic and sexual interest.
The morals of today are vastly different than in the 1950s. Boys are shamed at school for normal masculine behavior as such is deemed an expression of toxic masculinity. The negative messaging towards men is one of a number of reason why a lot of man are giving up on dating, with a significant percentage still a virgin at age 30. This is a problem, and many books have been written about it (e.g. by Scott Galloway, Richard Reeves, Rollo Tomassi).
Having double standards in law (enforcement) is always bad, e.g. sentencing women lighter than men for similar crimes such as sexual relations involving minors.
Hence the attempt to cancel the spontaneous VJ Day kiss in Times Square.
The double standard is why it’s taken so long to raise awareness of the wrongness of female teachers seducing male students.
A propos of nothing to this post, my wife and I are watching “The Man in the High Castle” on Netflix. It is very well done, produced by Ridley Scott, based on Frank Spotniz’s novel portraying a dystopian future where the Allies lose WWII, and Germany and Japan divide up the world, each side promoting their separate ideas of racial, ethnic, and cultural superiority over the worthless Americans. Germans are presented as ruthless, racist maniacs, and Japanese are presented as honorable but ruthless, racist maniacs (but only in a slightly less evil sense – they seem bow more than boot-click-one-arm salute). We rommend it.
It is so well done and acted that you actually feel empathy for the main German (Joseph Smith) and Japanese (Chief Inspector Kido) characters. That is until you remember that they are ruthless, ambitious, ethically and morally bankrupt crazed, murderous maniacs.
jvb
Very well produced series.
The horse racing out of the barn door that is MAID, to me, is portrayed well with the Nazi required euthanasia of the congenitally ill.
It is pretty good, but the TV series is by Spotniz, and the Novel by Philip K. Dick ….Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Minority Report, Total Recall (We Can Remember it For You Wholesale) …..
Seems sexual assault and You Go GRRL! are defined by the Y and X chromosomal divide.
PWS