A friend posted this article in a private Facebook group and I was vaguely amused at the idea that only men try to hide their feelings or can lack a support network. Vaguely amused because it seemed to me that the woman writing this got her idea of women from sitcoms.
I was vaguely amused also by the idea that the world we live in was built for men and that we only remember men’s achievements. More on that later.
But it was this that brought me to a standstill before I lowered my head and pinched the bridge of my nose in what a friend of mine has nicknamed “the sinal salute.”
Men have inherited more freedom than women. This is not a personal opinion. It is not up for debate.
First of all, there is the “this is not a personal opinion and it is not up for debate” thing. Pro tip from someone who has a graduate degree in the liberal arts, and who is a veteran of political argument. Whenever you see those words, the matter in question is very much up for debate and it is very much a personal opinion. The writer is just trying to sell you something she knows you won’t want to buy, and is hoping you’ll let her roll you.
In the next sentence she explains what she means by “freedom” and yep, it is exactly what I expected:
No Red Piller forum or episode of Broad City can undo the fact that we’re still living in a world where adult women do not have full control over their own bodies.
You know, she is absolutely right. All those women in Islamic countries, whipped by the morality police if a little bit of ankle shows. All the women who can be divorced by saying “I divorce you” three times, and have their kids pulled away from them. All the women who can’t control their own money or even drive a car because it’s haram for them to do so.
But that’s not what she means, of course. What she means is that women should be able to be skank hos and never get pregnant, because you and I and the American taxpayer should pay for their contraception, and their abortion if they get one.
But you know what? There is a reason women have more trouble being skank hos than men, no matter how many “benevolent” governments stand ready to pay for the consequences of their “freedom.” And no, it’s not even because human endocrine systems are built differently for the two sexes and women secrete hormones that promote greater attachment to their sexual partner. No, it’s because no matter how much you protest, cry, demonstrate, get government subsidies or are willing to pay someone to put a pair of scissors through the brain of an otherwise viable baby, the fundamental difference remains: women can get pregnant, and men can’t.
Yes, that means men have more ability to be skank hos. It strikes me as vaguely disquieting that this is the “freedom” most valued by these pseudo feminists. “We want to show men how liberated we are by sleeping around with no strings attached.” Honestly, I don’t see anything in that statement that would have disquieted Hugh Hefner. “I put out for him and never called him again.” Uh… you sure showed him, sistah. Grrrl power. Or something.
Then there is the other bit of nonsense I passed over first:
Any claim that women will “never understand” X, Y, and Z about being a man must come with the caveat that women, by nature of existing in a world built by and for men, still have a pretty good understanding of X, Y, and Z about being a man—at least a better understanding than most men have of X, Y, and Z about being a woman. The male experience has been all of our experience, in the sense that it has long been regarded as the most important one. The institutions in which we operate, and much of the art we consume, have been produced from or tailored to the male psyche.
So, I’m taking bets. Is the author very young, or very maleducated?
First of all, she claims that women, of course, have a pretty good understanding of what being a man is, and then she goes on to talk about how the “male experience” is the most important one and our institutions and art are designed and tailored to the male psyche.
Really, woman? You’re going to go with that?
At least since the onset of the Industrial Age there have been entire professions, fields, and modes of endeavor that are inherently feminine, and not just those that relate to looking after children. Those too, but not only those.
In art, particularly, entire fields of expression seem to have been innately female, particularly textile arts, but also music (as far as everyday performers). And you know, entire literary fields nowadays, like, say romance, are obviously tailored to the male psyche.
What we’re seeing here is a failure to understand that what she was told in college and what she reads in women’s magazines are not necessarily so, combined with the fact that, like most leftists, she’s been taught to value only the modes of endeavor that the state recognizes. And since the state views humans as units of production, except for giving birth, it mostly values male work that it can measure and monetize.
But life is not, nor has it ever been, except in some limited places and rather dark times, a leftist organization. Humans don’t exist only to work in offices and fit into the male hierarchy of the working world.
Where I grew up – a Latin country – was genuinely sexist, and women were restricted to certain fields of endeavor. Still, if a man tried to enter one of those fields he’d find himself very decisively balked. From nursing to teaching through secondary education, to clothes design, the country I grew up in had vast areas where men could not go.
In the America of today, the roles are more fluid. Women can devote themselves to a corporate career and get ulcers, just like men. And men can and have penetrated some fields that were women only, such as nursing.
But the fundamental differences pretty much remain because they’re biologically rooted. Men still can’t get pregnant, and can, therefore, sleep around a lot more than even a government subsidized female ho. But on the other hand, married women can and do take time to develop, say, artistic skills with no one looking down on them. Because women are not expected to support the family.
You see, our back brains know that if you’re a married man, and staying home to raise kids and work on your writing, your art or your music, your circle is going to judge you a bum, living at your wife’s expenses. This is worse if there are no children.
This is as unfair as “slut shaming” a woman when we don’t slut shame men. And it’s just as predictable because it’s rooted in instinct and things that aren’t quite rational.
Worse, a man who does that runs the risk of being left by his wife, because women are hypergamic and will leave a man for one who earns better… or at all. No matter how talented the man is, and no matter how much the woman thinks he’ll succeed.
If you think men have all the freedom and women none, you might think that men’s experience is the only valid one, and what you want for women is exactly what men have.
Which seems to be what this woman thinks.
But just because you think it, it doesn’t make it true.
Facts and reason seem to indicate that men and women have different areas of freedom and restriction, and that wisdom lies in learning to work either in or around those limitations, instead of berating the world for not being as you’d wish it to be.
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