The majority of Mab Treeby’s known Bulletin cartoons, were drawn in the 1920s-early 1930s after she had moved to Sydney. They continued to feature smart society women making vapid wisecracks, eg ‘Kitty: “I’d hate it to ...

Read more: https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/1482621?c=people

You’re an octogenarian cartoonist. A twenty-two year old Miss World comes and sits on your knees. What do you do? What is happening?

— your name is Donald Trumpotsky. or...

— it’s Christmas, or...

— you are recognised by your missus despite your Father Christmas disguise at the local mall. You are going to cop it.

— you are woken up for the third time that night to go for a pee.

— a 22 year old Miss World is flirting with you!...

— your sciatica is killing you but you would not move for all the Bitcoins in the world...

— your bad eyesight betrayed you. It’s only the 250 pounds 63 year old widow living next door...

— you did not have time to remove your walking stick poking up between your knees....

         a) she’s happy to see you...

         b) you spend the rest of your short life in prison for sexual abuse...

         c) you need two new titanium replacement knees...

— you already are in the local lalaland-retirement village and have no clue about anything.

Flirting... It has been my loony observation from my half-deck that it’s more women engendering the flirting than men. Men try to go to base as quickly as possible. Flirting has many layers of meaning and appearances. Women can indulge in teasing — testing their own value while competing against other women. Men indulge in hormonal power-play and, apart from very few Adonises (many of them are gay), when seeing themselves in the mirror — that is when they really look at themselves apart from shaving — men see a flabby train wreck about to happen unless they have a lot of cash in the bank. Thus men can be dangerous when teased because they smell a rat after their cash, or spot an easy quickie pushover. More often than not, non-fortunate men are shy and perplexed on why they are the one being “picked” (on) by flirty women. Do these men look honest and charmingly faulty, rather than “attractive”? Give the men a beer or some red ned and their brains go “pop”. The mini-skirts are disturbing their neurones. All good.

“Men will do what they think they can get away with.” ? to a point. Not all men despite what Mona Charen tells us from her female point of view: 

Somewhere in our lizard brains, we admire the strongmen, and yes, that means you ladies. Every woman who is drawn to the “bad boy” or the “leader of the pack” is expressing a primitive preference that has never been quite squelched. So, when it comes to oafs like Al Franken and (insert your favorite reprobate here) and people ask, “How could he behave that way?” The answer has to begin with — men will do what they think they can get away with. 

And for the last several decades, in matters of sex, it has been more or less anything goes. 

Meanwhile, clamouring for the end of flirting could be seen as clipping one of the tools towards developing “love”. There needs to be some delicate interaction of understanding — otherwise may as well go the full religious hog and get "our parents to choose a bride for us". Actors are at a disadvantage here because most of them have learnt to act “the situation” and play acting could be perceived as real play acting. Many romantic movies are designed to awkwardly or otherwise stimulate “the situation”. Mona continues:

Others are worried that flirting and office romances may be considered out of bounds in the current climate. Cathy Young notes that a tweet by the singer-songwriter Marian Call telling men “how happy women would be if strangers & co-workers never ‘flirted’ with us again” became an Internet sensation for a day or two. I don’t speak for Call or the thousands who retweeted her, but it sure seems like the quotation marks around the word flirt were key. 

But then:

The men who are receiving much-deserved comeuppance right now were not flirting. Showing a woman pornography is not a come on. Grabbing her by the hair and force kissing her is caveman stuff, not a hint of admiration. These high-profile slobs were doing what they thought they could get away with. 

Most men, I hope (and I bet most women hope) still know how to flirt without being offensive. Because if we’re going to embark on building some sort of counter counterculture, it’s going to have to target grossness, not romance.

Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. 

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454447/sexual-harassment-allegatio...

So where to now?... I have this little nest-egg...