Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

I would like this podcast to start a conversation with women of all ages, convictions and styles of life – wherever situated on the gamut of experience. In principle, there is no bar to men joining in, since how one defines women has a lot to do with what it means to be a man. But it is women I invite to pull up a chair at this virtual café table and put their questions and views into the conversation. Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor Emerita of Philosophy, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York. She is the author of A Good Look at Evil, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, now appearing in an expanded second edition and as audiobooks. Dr. Rosenthal writes a weekly column for “Dear Abbie: The Non-Advice Column,” (www.dearabbie-nonadvice.com) where she explores the situation of women. She thinks women’s lives are highly interesting. She’s the editor of The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes’s Secret; Spinoza’s Way by her father, Henry M. Rosenthal. She’s written numerous articles that can be accessed at Academia.edu .

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Dear Abbie - The Non-Advice Podcast

Seduction

December 17, 2021 • Abigail L. Rosenthal • Season 1 • Episode 22

0:00 | 6:49

There are worlds in each of us that can’t be discovered if we are too wary.

Thanks to the “most interesting man in the world,” pictured in the ad for Mexican beer, I don’t have to explain what I mean by “seduction.” Look deeply and fixedly into his eyes, ladies, and tell me nothing is getting through.

What’s afoot here? Isn’t it a promise that won’t be kept, an invite to intimacy that will recede as one goes toward it, an intimation that one has been profoundly understood, followed by the payoff: there are other fish to fry?

A woman, a girl, needs to keep herself sufficiently open so that a friend, lover or suitor who deserves her trust can get it. There are worlds in each of us that can’t be discovered if we are too wary.

But it’s more complicated than the conventional story will allow. Women have vulnerabilities that they need to manage, by alluding to them gracefully rather than in the manner of unedited self-exposure. So we hint at our vulnerabilities sidewise, in a laughing way or a brisk, no-nonsense way. We do this all the time, without thinking about it. It’s an appeal for gallantry, in the unconscious shorthand of coquetry. Which means that, in some very odd sense, the seducer pictured above is a species of colleague. We recognize what he is up to, we can empathize with him, want to “help” him – all features he will play on.

What’s the upshot? To be deliberately anti-seductive can mean buckling on the armor that will keep the good guys away as well as the bad. To be luxuriantly coquettish, on the other hand, leaves one open to the predators and their intentionally false promises.

One can learn not to make the same mistake twice. But does that prevent making different mistakes the next time round?

Two thousand years ago, in classical antiquity, a Roman matron asked a well-regarded rabbi, “What has your God been doing since the creation?”

“Making marriages,” replied the rabbi.

“Oh, that’s no big deal,” said the Roman matron. “I can do that whenever I please.” That night she went home to her villa, paired off her slaves one with the other, and conducted a mass marriage ceremony. Seemed simple enough, but by morning they all came back to her, pouring out complaints, bruised from quarreling and begging her to divorce them.

When next she met the rabbi, she was obliged to grant that, when it comes to pairing off human beings, it goes better when the Creator takes a hand.