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The Feminist Rant |
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About Me Diaries Photos
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Rant Number One. Are women
becoming more and more pathetic, or is society just assuming that women
are becoming more and more pathetic? There have always been
books/articles etc. on how to find love, how to find the perfect guy,
how to know if he’s the perfect guy, which is fair enough. Ask most
people what they want out of life, and what they’ll want is the
perfect partner (unless, of course, you were one of the people who
variously told me a better car/a new set of golf clubs/something shiny/a
really nice bacon and cheese sandwich). I’ve never understood the
point of articles that tell you if he’s the perfect guy (because it
seems to be pretty obvious whether he is or he isn’t, but perhaps
that’s just me), but if some people need to be told that’s none of
my business. What bugs me is this recent
influx of books written by women about “how to hold on to your man”.
Whether said man is worth holding on to is never called into question.
The point seems to be not to have the perfect man, but to have a man of
any description. Especially according to this woman – who has a site
dedicated to wiping her off the face of the earth – in whose opinion
men don’t seem to be people at all. The Proper Care and Feeding of
Husbands, she calls her book. Replace ‘husbands’ with
‘hamsters’ and you’ll see what I’m getting at. Relationships,
apparently, are not equal and shouldn’t be. A woman must do what she
can to “hold on” to whatever man she has. She finds it appalling
that women may go to bed wearing pyjamas and thereby failing to sexually
excite their husbands. The idea that a woman would refuse her partner
sex is, apparently, deplorable. You don’t have to be in the mood, do
you? The scariest thing that jumped out at me was her opinion of marital
rape. She doesn’t see why it exists. A husband is entitled to sex when
he wants it. To this woman, feminism is a “disease.” She is not the only one who
holds with the “never have a headache” strategy. The Surrendered
Wife and The Surrendered Single both work on this rule. On
top of this, a woman must let the man control everything. This
particular woman believes that “communication as a road to a better
marriage is overrated.” I worry about these people. First of all, to
go to these measures to keep a husband they must be somewhat lacking in
the way of personality. (What I find rather hilarious about the second
girlie is her advice that a woman may not ask a man out. What she must
do instead is ask the man to ask her out. One must flirt with every man
one sees, but “nobody respects a flirtatious girl”. Snort.)
Secondly, I pity the women who latch on to these ideas as a way of
getting/keeping a man. I find it extremely frightening that there are
women out there who have to do this sort of thing. In my experience, when a woman
relinquishes control over a relationship, doesn’t criticise, remains
feminine, sweet, etc., the man takes advantage. Not because he’s
necessarily an enormous bastard (although I’m not saying he isn’t an
enormous bastard), rather because it’s the only thing to do in the
situation. Very few men will respond in kind to this sort of behaviour,
and to be quite frank who’d want that sort of man? Generally speaking,
a man that wants one of these “surrendered” women is likely to be a
cheating wankfox, and most men that end up with one will get what they
can out of it for a while before leaving for someone with an actual
personality. And if this “surrendered” woman has been following Dr.
Laura, he’ll be after a woman who treats him like a person rather than
a one-dimensional character who does not have the capacity to be
satisfied by anything apart from regular sex. Yes, I see the debate in
this point too, but I optimistically choose to believe that most men
have a personality and not just a sex drive. Brief case studies. Dr. Laura
advocates giving him sex on tap. She’s divorced. If I’m not in the
mood for something I don’t do it, and as consequence I have a fiancé
who gets upset when I tell him to stop buying me so much jewellery. And consider the other factor.
For these women, in order to get and keep a man, they advise pretending
to be something you’re not. “Your
surrendered self is your best self, and it is that self that will walk
down the aisle.” And this is one of the most
frightening bits. Following this advice condemns you to live a lie. It
condemns you to act a part your whole life. This man that you marry will
never really know you. You may (if this advice works in any
circumstances) spend the rest of your lives together, with you
pretending all the while, afraid that if you stop pretending and admit
who you really are, your marriage will be over. And you can bet he
isn’t making any such effort. Self-help books aimed at men don’t
sell. Nobody writes to tell a man how to hold on to a woman. Because
these things take care of themselves, don’t they? (Besides, when a
self-help book is given to a man it can be construed as criticism, and
you’re never going to get a man if you criticise him.) It works out or
it doesn’t. So returning to my original
question, are women getting more pathetic? Why do we constantly take
surveys to see how likely he is to cheat, or whether he’s marriage
material (I can clear this up – if you’re in love, he makes you
happy and he treats you well, he’s marriage material, if he doesn’t
make you happy and he treats you like shit, he’s a tosser. It’s
pretty simple)? We read articles on how to get this kind of man, or that
kind of man, or what his ears reveal about his personality. I wish I’d
made that last one up, but sadly, I did not. “Don’t
worry about your self-esteem. Worry more about your character. Virtue is
its own reward.” Right. Personally, if I’m not being
all but worshipped, I get out of there. I don’t want to be with
somebody who I have to “hang on to” by following a bunch of stupid
rules. With a lot of the men I know, a “surrendered” woman would do
nothing but get on their nerves. The opposite end to this is Why
Men Love A Bitch, and the several books you can get on man-training.
Which is only a slight improvement, and still involves a lot of
play-acting. Allowing your man complete control over you and treating
him like shit are both going to result in you feeling a bit rubbish.
Worryingly, they all seem to involve treating men like pets rather than
people. The message seems to be that us nasty women have to stop finding
fault with men and start admiring them (oh, their poor little fragile
egos), but at the same time they are a lower order of life. It’s
exactly how you treat a cat. When it demands food or affection you give
it what it wants to keep it happy. You may be very fond of it, and
it’s important for the pet to be content, but at the end of the day,
it’s a cat. Very simple, feed it, pet it and let it out when it wants
to be let out. If anybody wants to email me and take issue with this, please do so. I’d love to expand on everything a little. |