passivity. It is too embarrassing, too unsafe, to blow apart social norms, to ask a guy out and be told no, to be mocked and derided for apparent desperation. Instead, we back-channel our desires, or dump them into diaries with flimsy locks, and then wait until we are picked—a process where our worth is then confirmed. This passivity is problematic. According to gender studies professor and psychologist Deborah Tolman, “Society’s dominant cultural construction of femininity encourages girls and women to be desirable but not desiring.”
