“Social contracts are often contradictory,” she continues. “A lot of them are designed to only benefit the people already in power. So, for example, if a man tells a woman she’s pretty, one set of contracts insists she say thank you, while another insists she modestly demur. Neither allows for the possibility that she’s uncomfortable or busy or at work. Neither allows for the attention being unwanted. ‘Thank you’ or ‘Who, me?’ Those are the acceptable answers, and there’s absolutely no way to know which contract the man is invoking, so either one you choose, you could still be punished for it.
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