What Men think of Women

It's certainly become plain by now that women really don't know what they want; they may think they want one thing, but if you watch you'll see that if they get it they complain even louder--and what they really respond to is usually something quite different. Thus do feminists dream of stevedores. And this is the answer to Devvy Kidd's question about why women buy billions of "romance" novels--even as they demand that their own men behave like doormats.

It's not that they really want their men to be doormats; it's that they need their men to be strong, and how do you determine how strong something is without testing it? They do this instinctively, not consciously; naturally they think they want to win, but when they win, they lose. And don't know why they're unhappy. Being a woman is not easy; they can't figure themselves out either, because, in the short run, they don't make sense. For a woman, a straight line is not the shortest distance. Because in the natural order, her man is supposed to be breaking the trail, while she follows his lead.

I remember once in my hippie days, out in the California mountains, watching a young woman follow a young man on a trail in the forest. It was an archetypal scene, like Sita following Rama, the Last of the Mohicans: everywoman following everyman.

I had another girl friend once who wanted to arm-wrestle. She was a tough girl, but when I beat her, she was satisfied. I could see it: I'd passed the test, and right away she started fitting herself to me. (In fact, before I knew it it seemed we were planning to move in together, which was more than I'd bargained for. I really wasn't thinking ahead--which is the man's job. Took some contortions to get out of that one, and I haven't seen her since.) This is the fundamental, archetypal relationship of the female to the male. "He chases her until she catches him."


Philalethes