I want to go back to that Cracked article I posted
earlier:
David Wong makes a lot of good points, and there is
room to expand on the reasons, but what is missing is the female perspective.
This makes sense based on the article, its purpose,
and conception. When he acknowledges what he once thought women thought, it is
clear he is not saying that we think like that. It would probably be overly
presumptuous for him to speculate now, but I am still struck by the difference
between the perception and the reality.
This is what the author wrote that he would have
said at 20, which should have been around the mid-90s if I am understanding
correctly:
"In this modern
world, the quality of a woman's life is overwhelmingly dependent on what kind
of man she can attract -- a woman married to a capable man is simply going to
have a higher standard of living, period. Her self-worth is thus based largely
on how desirable she is to men, and on how many men are pursuing her at any
given moment. The need for more suitors is due to the law of supply and demand.
It is to her advantage to create competition by tempting as many men as
possible, then making it difficult for any single one to gain her attention.
Thus, women gain power
through rejecting men, and those rejections have nothing to do with how they
truly feel."
The first sentence has more truth than it should.
Woman do not receive the same level of compensation as men, regardless of their
skills, abilities, and labor.
That should be an indictment of society, but it ends
up being something that makes a woman more likely to be a trophy. Just that her
financial worth is seen as less supports the belief system that women don't
deserve as much. Prejudices are good at self-enforcing cycles.
" Her self-worth is thus based largely on how
desirable she is to men..."
Yeah, that has been pretty true, though not
necessarily the way he thought. I grew up feeling like it was practically a
duty for a women to be attractive. I'm not sure that it even occurred to me
that it was for the purpose of attracting men - it was just something you
needed to do, and I couldn't do it.
It took a while to begin to see it, but over time I
found it really hard to find any women who felt like they were pretty enough.
Some of the most beautiful women I have seen have never felt it. Okay, tastes
vary, and maybe there would be others that would be more generally regarded as
beautiful, but it is amazing how aware of their flaws they are. Girls who
seemed so popular and confident worried about things that never would have
occurred to me about them. Advertising certainly knows that there is always
something else that you need.
Many women do work very hard at being attractive,
but it is not so much scheming to attract more men as it is giving in to
pressures to look a certain way and be a certain way just to be good enough to
avoid mockery. Present the right style to be worth something!
There may be a potential power rush in rejecting
men, but a lot of women find it terrifying. They have good reason for that.
Women get verbally abused and beaten and killed for that. There are always moments when you realize how vulnerable you are, and how
little your desires matter to the other person.
I did not get asked out a lot, so there weren't a
lot of opportunities to reject, but I can look back now and see times when what
I thought of as teasing could have been flirting. For example, one guy once
made a polygamy joke: I could be his third wife but he would have to be my
first husband - stupid joke, or also an expression of interest?
If someone was interested and I stayed closed off, I
suppose that could have felt like rejection. If so, I guarantee it was never
about power. I never saw myself as desirable and it was too humiliating to risk
any openness or vulnerability.
So when the author says that he never forced himself
on a girl because he would have to lose weight or make the football team to do
that, well, you can and should note the problems with that mindset, but I can
also take a moment to appreciate that in this toxic culture it is not just the
girls and women who are made to feel like they are less. It's not good for
anyone.
I do have one story about being hit on. I met Chris
through a good friend, from whom he got my number. He called and was asking me
questions that were leading to sex, which I explained was something that I felt
belonged inside of marriage, thus killing all of his interest in me. The next
day I asked my friend about this creep, and what I had not realized the day
before was that they were going steady, but now they weren't. She had similar
views on chastity, so he clearly started off in the wrong area, but he just
kept asking girl after girl until he found a girlfriend, and they stayed
together at least through the year.
I don't necessarily think of this as a happy story,
because I have to wonder about the self-esteem of the girl who chose that
pimple-faced horn dog and the presumed teen sex that resulted. Despite that,
when you told Chris "no" he backed off. He didn't stalk you, he
didn't try and wear you down or make you feel guilty, and he didn't try and use
physical force - he just moved on to the next girl.
His hitting on me while dating my friend does not
seem like the act of a respectful person, and his preoccupation with sex
certainly seems like he might be the objectifying type, but at least he was
capable of hearing and believing "No".
Bless him for that.
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