A pornographer (and atheist) explains why the science guy’s shirt crash-landed

[Ravenna44]

106. Disagree with your theory

...that men's sexual fantasies make me feel powerless due to some instinctive Darwin thing, and that men think sexy women are powerful, also due to some instinctive Darwin thing. I am not sure where you derived that theory - I mean it's interesting and I could think if examples that fit it (a sexy woman can make a man fall at her feet, I guess?) but one can find plenty of examples that dont. Veering into the territory of TMI, i can assure you that plenty of male sexual fantasies (read: porn) are a huge turn-on for me - some because they make me feel powerful and others because they make me feel dominated. That's my brain; other women's mileage may vary! People are complicated and all a bit different - though I concede that there are some general patterns MOST men or MOST women fall into.

Your statement that - if I got you right - "men wouldn't be bothered if a woman wore the opposite number, so they can't be expected to understand what the fuss is about" is commonly heard and I think, not worthy of you. Plenty of men do understand already, just as plenty of women are capable of understanding the male side; neither sex is a monolithic bloc of homogenous thought, slaving stupidly in its Darwinian traces. Empathy and reasoning-by-analogy are wonderful things our advanced simian brains have given us.

I am curious that in a previous post, you said the shirt was inappropriate for work because it was about sex, and sex distracts from comets. The original pornographer's opinion piece didn't speak of distraction but of the tacit message of the shirt and how many women interpret it. So, so far we haven't met on a basic proposition which I will now put before you: the shirt is a mistake not because it is sexually distracting, but because a big chunk of the population interprets it as the pictorial equivalent of a "Chicks suck" sign posted on the workplace door, and the chicks in question should not be subjected to that. In other words, it's a "treat all people with respect" issue, not a "sex fantasies don't belong in the workplace" issue.