Hive account@lukestokes asked me (in another forum) how I think women could respond to male sexual intimidation in ways that are more empowering. Here was my response (FWIW):

My purpose in raising this issue is to try to balance the “uneven power dynamic” that you mention, and the point of my post is to describe how traditional feminists responses to male sexual intimidation actually do the opposite—they exacerbate the uneven power dynamic.

As for how I think women “should” respond to sexual intimidation...well...I would simply suggest that women should exploit all the innate sexual power that they have, which is actually tremendous, to its fullest extent. An example: Men (and feminist) have convinced women that flirting with a co-worker to get ahead is demeaning and exploitative. Well, if it is demeaning and exploitative at all, it’s demeaning and exploitative of MEN, not women. When women use their sexuality to gain an advantage over men, it’s MEN who are being played, not women. That so many believe the opposite is evidence of just how successful men, religious institutions and traditional feminists have been at shaming women into abandoning this innate evolutionary advantage.

By embracing and owning their sexuality fully in this way and others, women can no longer be sex shamed. This makes sexual intimidation by men much more difficult, maybe even impossible. It’s only their shame over sexuality that makes them subject to sexual intimidation, and traditional feminist responses only exacerbate that shame (while pretending the opposite with an abundance of false bravado). When women become shameless, shaming is impossible.

Second, I think women shouldn’t hesitate to expose men who try to exploit them (as the #metoo movement has done). But rather than running to HR or accusing the men of misogynistic practices, discrimination, slut shaming, mainsplaining, etc. (which are all examples of playing the victim), women should just out these men in ways that are empowering to the women. For instance, a tweet saying something like “Hive account@harveyweinstein, thanks for the offer to screw last night, but I prefer my men to look more like Brad Pitt. PS—Your threat to black ball me won’t work.” Yes, such a tweet comes with significant risk, but it does keep the female in the psychological power position (and besides, nobody said that battles of psychological intimidation are easy or risk free).

And lastly, women should exploit their growing economic power as Gal Gadot recently did. When she agreed to play Wonder Women, the studio refused to offer her a multi-picture contract because she was relatively unknown and they feared the move would be a flop. Instead, it was a great hit, and now the studio’s back is against the wall. Basically, they must sign her to make more movies in the series or potentially lose hundreds of millions of future dollars. Not only can Gal demand a huge amount of money, but when she learned that one of the companies associated with the Wonder Women franchise was run by a guy accused by many women of sexual intimidation, she supposedly refused to sign for more movies unless and until the guy was removed from his position. She did this quietly and never personally went public with it (instead having others leak thew news). This was a brilliant move on her part. She kept total control and wielded her power wisely. She no doubt earned much respect in Hollywood. I doubt anyone will screw with her again, and I bet she’ll get multi-picture offers next go around.