this could only be considered "empowering" if the subjects of the groping were the masterminds behind the idea but since it another form of male-coercion for their own benefit, then it's not.
it's a male idea, suggested to the women, and like most things they go along with it for the most part because on some level they think it will benefit them (validation? acceptance?).
it's not like you've magically given them the right to do something they couldn't do themselves without your input.

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How do you gender an idea?

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you don't.
but with every idea, especially when it comes to "what women are allowed to do" and "what men are allowed to do", it is generally the men telling the women what they are allowed to do not the women stating what they are going to do for themselves without without first having procured permission from the men to do so.

women may have fought for the right to vote, but who, ultimately gave that to them?
the men.

if women really wanted to be groped, they wouldn't have waited fro some dude to come around pass out buttons and tell them it's ok. the women are just following the male idea lead.

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I hear a battalion of suffragettes spinning in their graves. Men did not 'give' women the right to vote. Women DEMANDED the right to vote and got it.

The point I'm making is that radical ideas can come from anywhere and shouldn't be rejected because of the naughty bit status of the originator.

As for women wanting to be groped, I have no particular doubt that the majority of women, the majority of the time, emphatically do NOT want to be groped and have a right protected in law and custom to be free from such groping.

That is a far cry from a world in which no man would dare grope a woman, even if so inclined, because every other person in eyeshot would rip his hand off and feed it to him on a stick with mustard. We're not there yet.

In that world, I suspect that a woman would feel much more free to participate in an experiment such as the one conducted. I think the men would be a bit more concerned about safety precautions, however.b

>> the women are just following the male idea lead

Again, how do we engender an idea? Does it have an X or Y chromosome?

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Men did not 'give' women the right to vote. Women DEMANDED the right to vote and got it.

Yes, but that's like saying you demanded a raise at work. Your boss, *not you*, was still the person who decided you would get the raise.

And in an ideal world, no man would dare grope a woman because *that woman* would rip his hand off and feed it to him on a stick with mustard. And we're DEFINITELY not there yet.

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Um, they were? First, half of them were women. Second, the men also wore pins.

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yeah but it was a guy who was like, "holy krap! let's do this! let's spread this idea around like the plague and get all the womens to agree that it's a good idea and do it too!"

it may have been a woman who said, "sure, tough my breasts" but it was a guy who took that idea and ran it into a brick wall.

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