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Another Feminist Rant |
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I’m sorry to do this to you
again, but I’ve just seen something that bugs me. Yes, this happens a
lot. I’m not an angry person and I don’t do hate (probably my
most-used phrase) but righteous indignation I have plenty of, and I’m
not afraid to make a fuss about it. On one of my many visits to
Witchvox and its quite frankly fabulous collection of news articles, I
stumbled across one with a feminist tilt to it. There aren’t many of
those nowadays, you understand. Some lovely person has coined the term
“Feminazis” and the public just aren’t interested, we’re told.
But I’ll get into that later. This particular article came
with the title “Powerful Men Don’t Want Equals At Home.” Powerful
men want to marry their secretaries, you see. They want to marry women
who have to call them “sir” and run about after them. Well, sure
they do. You work a lot, you devote most of your life to a job, you want
to go home and still feel like you’re at the top. And you still want
someone else to do all those little things you’ve probably forgotten
to do by now. Of course powerful men don’t want equals. If he’s
really powerful, it’s all he does with his life. Men are insecure
(women are insecure, kids are insecure, dogs are insecure, I know. I
wish I’d been a cat). Where’s the fun in a wife with the same power
as you? Then what have you got? I know all this stuff and I really
don’t care about it. I don’t plan to be a career widow. I need
attention and I don’t plan on sacrificing that for expensive jewellery
or what have you. Then this woman started
referencing films as an example of ‘unequal love’. Love Actually,
for example. Prime Minister falls for tea girl. Man falls for sexy (and
bloody frightening, in my opinion) secretary. Man falls for
Portuguese-speaking maid. This bugged me. Is this an anti-feminist
thing? Is Hugh Grant an anti-feminist icon, encouraging men to fall in
love with Martine McCutcheon? Argh. I’m sorry, but Hugh Grant? Your
principal argument is a film starring Hugh Grant? And you don’t see
the problem with this? You’re dooming intelligent women (a woman
without a man is a failure, darling, and don’t we just know it) on the
basis of a Hugh Grant film? Guess what her back-up was. Adam Sandler.
Yeah. Not only is the continued presence of these two one of the reasons
I have become a devotee of European cinema (them and Tom Cruise. Throw
rotten tomatoes if you like, I really cannot stand the bugger),
but if they’ve become what it takes to make an argument stick, then we
are all in serious trouble. And so am I, apparently. I’m
told men don’t like to marry intelligent women. In fact for every
16-point increase in her IQ her prospects of marriage drop by 40%.
Considering the pointless IQ tests I’ve been known to take out of
boredom rate me as either ‘genius’ or ‘extraordinary genius’
I’d probably better start my cat collection and mad old spinster
ramblings. What bugs me more than anything
is: “So
was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women
achieve, the less desirable they are?” Argh!
What is the matter with the world? Is feminism a man-bagging strategy?
Where did she read that? What are these bloody self-help books saying
now? As
with my previous feminist rant, I am going to be optimistic. I am going
to assume this woman is on severely limited research. I am going to do
this firstly because my boy seems to appreciate the brains in my head,
and secondly because of my father, who was sat in the room whilst I was
reading the article. When I read out the delightful IQ/marriage
statistics, he responded calmly, “That’s because they have better
taste.” He then told me he found articles like this extremely
offensive. Some
men like to date women less intelligent than they are, or at least women
they think are less intelligent than they are. I played gooseberry on a
night out with a friend and her bloke. Every so often she’d say or do
something and he’d look at me, roll his eyes and grin in an
exasperated fashion. “God, she’s stupid. But ain’t she cute?” He
didn’t say that, but he could have done. They’re still together.
They seem happy. Maybe he’s her idea of a powerful man. Maybe we’re
all after a powerful man. One
of the replies to this odd little piece of feminist tiltage included the
phrase: “A more telling statistic might be: Which Men Women Actually
Find Powerful.” Absolutely. A man with a lot of money, in my personal
opinion, is far less powerful than a man who is secure enough to accept
and celebrate my intelligence. You would, incidentally, be surprised how
many of the female responses recommended nerdy types as the ideal
partner. The Nerd Revolution. You heard it here first. The frightening
thing is, it’s probably true. Except for the ones who are deathly
scared of women and therefore incredibly rude. When
I get married, get a house, a job, a family and all that jazz (which
will happen, despite or perhaps because of my IQ), as long as we have
enough money, I don’t see why I should care if the majority of it is
his or mine. I don’t see why ‘equal’ should mean that we both have
to do everything. I’m happy to cook for him, I like doing it and he
says his cooking burns down buildings. He’s working, I’m an
extraordinarily poor student, so he tends to pay. I don’t see why I
should be considered ‘below’ him for that. I don’t see why I
should be placed lower because his next goal is to get a pay rise and
mine is to learn basic Portuguese. We both do what makes us happy.
That’s what makes us equal. That was pointless, I know, but I read it and I got bugged. Ugh. |