Part 2 of my reply:

One way to harness and channel is to set up compensating systems that counterbalance these instincts with equally powerful ones such as greed (or economic self-interest if you prefer something more palatable). Free markets have an amazing ability to counterbalance harmful human instincts and to channel them in ways that benefit society. Since markets have been freed with the fall of communism and other totalitarian governments and capitalists have been free to greedily “exploit” the poor with abandon, world hunger and world poverty have dropped by more than 80 percent (in just a few decades!). Life expectancies across the world have soared!

Economists almost universally agree that slavery in the US would have ended on its own, even without the Civil War, due to purely economic reasons (as it did in other countries). With the advent of the cotton gin and industrialization, even free human labor couldn’t compete. If the profit motive is sufficient to overcome human tribalism that results in institutionalized slavery, it’s certainly sufficient to overcome sexism.

Also, it was only Jim Crow laws that violently enforced segregation and prevented businesses from hiring blacks that kept Southern blacks down for so long. These explicitly racists laws were eventually struck down, but they were quickly replaced by minimum wage laws. The original explicit intent of minimum wage laws was to favor the hiring of whites over blacks and immigrants by preventing the latter from competing for jobs based on prices.

As a Libertarian and Voluntarist you know how free markets work so positively in so many other instances. You probably even understand and agree how freeing and developing markets in even morally repugnant things (such as human organs or hard drugs) would actually have a very large net societal benefit. Sure, such a system could and probably would be abused by assholes in North Korea who will harvest the organs of political prisoners for resale, but those assholes are ALREADY abusing the system and, as a voluntarist, you know that legal markets would find ways of countering the problem of illegal harvesting (for instance, by using immutable blockchains to track the complete chain of custody so as to make sure that the organs are ethically sourced).

And we already know from experience that legalizing and dropping the shame associated with drugs didn’t increase drug use above preexisting Nash Equilimbrium levels. In Colorado, teen use of weed had actually DECLINED since legalization. In countries where drug use is legal and there’s little societal stigma associated with it, rates of use and addictions are generally no higher than in countries where its banned, often lower.

My proposal is simply to free the market for feminine services from thousands of years of suppression for the same reasons that it makes sense to have free markets in drugs and organs. The “invisible hand” then channels otherwise harmful human instincts in ways that provide a large net societal benefit.

Instead of women being forced to offer up their sex appeal mostly for free on terms favorable to men, let’s make men actually EARN it. Yes, like a market for organs there would be opportunities for abuse, but again, legal markets would find ways of curtailing that abuse so as to achieve a very large net positive benefit.

To address the Hive account@errigankerrigan concern that freeing women in this way would undermine meritocracies by advancing women based on sex appeal rather than ability, I ask...would it really? I contend that women are ALREADY secretly being promoted for these reasons at essentially Nash Equilibrium levels, at least to the extent that the profit motive will tolerate it. As with slavery, the profit motive (greed) works as a very strong counterbalance to this. Any manager promoting based on anything other than merit is likely to underperform other managers whom don’t and will soon be replaced. Since male bosses would be more inclined to promote based on sex appeal than female ones, female one’s would actually experience BETTER economic outcomes resulting in more female bosses and less male ones! Just like legalizing markets in drugs doesn’t increase drug use, legalizing markets in sex appeal won’t necessarily increase undeserving promotions or undermine meritocracy. Perhaps the opposite.

Regarding your girls, I challenge you to ponder why you value their brains or their athleticism or their work ethic or their “abilities” any more than you value their beauty. Or, said another way, why don’t you count their beauty among their “abilities”? I challenge you to make a principled argument as to why you (and society) values these other things more than beauty. Isn’t it just a hold over from the religious-based shaming of old? And isn’t THAT (denying the true value of beauty and sex appeal) the real “patriarchy”? What could be more patriarchal than artificially devaluing one of women’s greatest natural assets and instead emphasizes things that males can more easily replicate? Isn’t that the equivalent of shaming the three point shot while artificially romanticizing the dunk?

I disagree COMPLETELY that women who market their sexuality are “playing by men’s rules”. In fact that is the crux of your and my disagreement and my disagreement with feminists. Women (on average) are programmed by evolution to exploit their sexual desirability every bit as much as men are programmed to pursue it. It’s only thousands of years of societal shaming, moralizing and harsh laws that have disturbed that natural inclination of women by forcing women to cover up and to give it away only on men’s terms. By doing so, by shaming the three point shot (beauty and sex appeal) and romanticizing the dunk (intelligence, strength, athleticism, competitiveness, etc.) society has forced women to compete on men’s terms. Again, THAT’S the real patriarchy. THAT is forcing women to play by men’s rules. Freeing women to use what nature gave them however they see fit is the opposite of forcing them to play by man’s rules.

So, a man at work touches a woman’s rear. How should she respond, you ask? Well, first, I would encourage her to try to distinguish between her instinctual response and her societally-conditioned one. This requires a good amount of introspection and self awareness. Immediately after being touch she’ll probably experience a range of emotions—perhaps outrage, shock, shame or fear. But are these instinctual and innate reactions? Or are they instead a result of societal conditioning? The answer may vary from person to person.

But that same woman may at the same time also experience a variety of positive emotions—flattery from attention, confidence and maybe even arousal. If so, then just like before, I would encourage her to ponder whether these responses are instinctual and innate or conditioned.

Once she has distinguished the instinctual responses from the conditioned ones, I would suggest that she initially place a little more faith in her instincts while subjecting the conditioned responses to a little more scrutiny. For instance, did she experience some conditioned shame? If so, then ponder its source. What’s shameful about a man being interested in her rear, after all? Does the shame originate with lessons taught to her by mother? Or her father? Or her church? Or...what? Again, the answers will vary from person to person.

Or, perhaps she experienced some conditioned outrage. Again...why? What’s so outrageous about a man expressing his genuine affection for her rear. I mean, even if she doesn’t really appreciate it and isn’t interested in reciprocating, is it really worth her OUTRAGE? Is her outrage perhaps anchored in something deeper? For instance, maybe the outrage is actually a false bravado masking an underlying fear. If so, fear of what? Fear of men? Fear of reliving prior traumas? Fear of being raped? Fear that she’ll be forced to do things that she doesn’t want to do? Fear that she’ll lose control?

Once she’s worked through these emotions, I’d then encourage her to focus on whether or not any harm was actually done. We can’t just assume (IMHO) that a man touching a woman’s rear is de facto harmful to the woman. I don’t think its right to just assume, as you seem to, that its automatically a violation of her bodily sovereignty or a denial of her personhood. Again, if the man had zero interest in her and the touch just happened accidentally on a crowded subway, she wouldn’t think twice about it. She might not even notice it! But if the man actually admires and appreciates her rear and reacts accordingly with a little pat, now suddenly that exact same exact touch becomes HARMFUL? A violation of her sovereignty? If so, how and why? If not, then maybe its not really harmful after all. Maybe that feeling of harm was just conditioned. Maybe his touch was just a harmless casual flirt or...something else fairly innocuous? If so, what else? And how might she use it to her advantage?

On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t harmless at all. Maybe it was done by a guy who is an asshole and did it to scare, harass or intimidate her, to make her feel like he has control over her, that he can touch her body with impunity and there’s nothing she can do about it. In that case, maybe the guy really is a threat.

My point is that her reaction shouldn’t be automatic conditioned outrage or fear or offense but rather should ultimately depend upon how she resolves all of the above questions (and probably lots of others). If the touch isn’t actually harmful, then acting as if it is (by being outraged or terrified or by running to HR, etc.) disempowers the woman and causes her to overlook ways in which she could exploit these instances of harmless attention.

How could she exploit such instances? There are innumerable ways. Perhaps the guy is a wicked computer programmer and could teach her a thing or two. In that case, stringing him along and letting him pat her harmlessly on the ass on occasion as his reward for teaching her programming skills could be a huge win/win.

Or, if the guy is her boss, then she could easily redirect his interest in her bodily assets to her intellectual and business assets. For instance, one of the most difficult things for an underling to get is the boss’s attention. How many underlings would give their right arm for an hour long lunch with the boss during which they could make their pitch for their latest great idea? Well, if she plays it right, the fact that the boss admires her physically means that she’s more likely to get that lunch, right? And she should exploit the hell out of that! Does doing so mean that meritocracy is being undermined? No! Her idea may be the most meritorious in history, but it will never see the light of day if she can’t get the boss’s attention. If her physical beauty and sex appeal help bring the necessary attention for her idea by getting her that lunch, then she, the business and all of society wins as a result.