Hold that door, you sexy thing, you.

The Shill is apparently trying to kill me off by sending me a link to this article at CNN.com which asks the ever-pressing question "Does It Pay to Be a Flirt?" and sends me into an uncontrollable rage. The article raises more questions than it answers. Here are the questions I have. Did all of the respondents work at the same place? If not, how can we be sure that we're actually seeing cause and effect? What I mean is that I'd like to know how the study concludes that women who flirt are paid less because they flirt, and not that they are flirting because they're in a situation where they see no other way to get ahead. Let's look at this in a hypothetical. Suppose I worked in a really great office where my contributions were acknowledged, appreciated, and rewarded. If I wanted to advance in my career, I would know what was expected of me and work hard to do it. I wouldn't ever need to flirt or even consider flirting in order to get noticed, because I'd know my ingenuity was prized, not my body. But say I worked at an office where I worked hard and well, but didn't seem to be getting ahead as quickly as my male colleagues. Say I tried working longer hours and drawing attention to my accomplishments and still nothing, that the corporate culture was just such that I felt like it was already sexist-ly stacked against me. If I feel like my legitimate accomplishments can't be recognized just because I'm a woman, might I eventually feel that exerting my sexuality might give me some control over the situation? I think a lot of women, especially pretty women, feel a lot of power in their own sexuality. It therefore would not surprise me to learn that, when faced with a power structure that seems inhospitable to them, that they would attempt to change the paradigm in which they're operating back to one they feel more in control of. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying that it seems to me that this phenomenon is much more complex than the simple "See, sluts get punished in all sorts of ways, even economically, so don't be a slut" message of this article. Plus, don't even get me started on the difference between sending flirty emails and wearing revealing clothing and letting someone open a door for you. Okay, I am started, so I'm just going to point out that it's a subtle but effective rhetorical strategy to start out blaming women for the necessity of punishing their slutty behavior and then to shift to blaming women for failing to control the behavior of the men around them. Tulane professor Arthur Brief says that "the study suggest that women should be careful about letting men open doors or lift boxes that aren't particularly heavy, because chivalry is 'benevolent sexism.'" Brief, excuse me, but what the fuck? No, we actually don't know what the fuck your study suggests because it's unclear what type of workplaces these women are in. But even if we concede that it might show some correlation between women's slutty behavior and the amount of money they earn, I don't believe that has much to do at all with suggesting that women stop "letting" men do shit for them. Plus, if the whole corporate culture is one where men open doors for women, lift their boxes, and women repay them with provocative behavior and less of a drain on the payroll budget, I don't really see anything "benevolent" about it at all.