Sure, if you're a sexist, feminism has ruined your love life

One of my homies over at Feministing posted an article by Dr. Wendy Walsh, "How Feminism Hurt Our Love Lives". Oy. There's so much wrong with this article, but before I go into that, I had to do a little research on Dr. Wendy Walsh.

It turns out she's actually got a Ph.D in clinical psychology -- which means she's a therapist, well, actually, she's just overqualified to write self-help books because her undergraduate degree is in journalism. Although, I shouldn't criticize her credentials because I'm sure someday someone is going to criticize me for having my undergrad degree in art rather than something related to law. Bygones. Dr. Walsh has written two books The Girlfriend Test: A Quiz for Women who want to be a Better Date and a Better Mate and The Boyfriend Test: How to Evaluate his Potential Before You Lose Your Heart. I'm not going to go into these books, but suffice it to say, Dr. Walsh writes from a perspective of maintaining heteronormative dating standards, especially the ones that say you're not worth anything, as a woman, if you don't have a man. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but in my opinion anyone who asks "are you girlfriend material?" is going to place a value judgment on the answer.

Now, getting to why feminism ruins people's love lives. At the beginning of the article, Dr. Walsh makes it clear that she is indebted to feminism and she knows it. Good. Perhaps she should have done a little research about feminism, however, rather than just spouting off all of the misconceptions about feminism like...

"I think the whole feminist movement is a bit of a misnomer anyway -- feminism didn't liberate femininity. Feminism liberated masculine energy in women. It was a masculinist movement. This is a good thing. Because of masculism, er, I mean feminism, we can now procure income in the male dominated marketplace and buy ourselves any kind of life we want."

Feminism didn't liberate femininity. Funny, that. Before I go into how wrong she is on this point, let's look at the fallacy that is "we can... buy ourselves any kind of life we want", which in her mind does not include the so-called traditional lives that many, many women still live, even in a so-called liberated society. That's not to say that a great deal of the feminist movement hasn't disappointed women who prefer to be housewives, but "any kind of life we want" does not happen to preclude being a wife and mother -- you can even ask Gloria Steinem. But that's just a semantics argument, the real issue here is her insistence that feminism only liberated masculinity in women, but did nothing for femininity.

Let's go back to the femininity thing, in fact, let's go all the way back to sexism.

"Remember the chick you once broke down in tears in the office? How embarrassing, you thought. You vowed then, to never, ever act like a "girl" at work, right? By the way, I was that girl and made an even stronger vow that day. I swore that no one would ever see me as weak again. And, so I trashed my authentic self -- the girl who used to be vulnerable, honest, and aware of my feelings -- and I even began to distrust my own intuition. Intuition, a primal gift to women, now somehow seemed illogical in the workplace."

Feminism tells that woman that she's not weak because she cries. Feminism attacks this sexist principal (that women are weak and illogical because they are emotional) and attempts to slit its throat, but people like Dr. Walsh here keep applying first aid to the idea that woman=emotional=illogical=weak. Moreover, it applies the opposite standard to men: that masculinity is anything but these things, ergo the stigma around emotionality as a feminine trait persists to the detriment of individuals and relationships. This is exactly the opposite of what Dr. Walsh claims, that women becoming feminists, becoming strong, ruins relationships because now no one is crying, emotional, illogical, and weak.

Weakness is a sexual epithet. If you are weak, either physically or emotionally -- that is, if you show any sort of discomfort at physical or emotional trials -- then you are weak, no matter your gender. That is a societal stigma that feminism strives to defeat. Feminists like myself want to erase the idea that being emotional is a sign of weakness and thereby a sign of being less-than. Weakness leads to vulnerability, and while being vulnerable in the arms of one's lover is a good thing, while meeting new lovers it can be very dangerous. What feminism has done in dating is level the playing field (although, not wholly because women do tend toward showing vulnerability before men do), and taught women to be on their guard because some men are abusive assholes who will take advantage of you. Never forget, of course, that anti-feminism has done the opposite and taught men that any woman is to be taken advantage of because they're all going to use you for your money, trick you into getting married, and blah blah blah. While this could be considered a backlash, it's just misogyny making an attempt to take feminism down with it.

"Finally, feminism did a disservice to many women who weren't (and aren't) unhappy with traditional gender roles."

Really? Is that why all the sexism in the media has disappeared in the last 30 years? Is that why there are no dating websites dedicated to "traditional gender roles"? Is that why the population has gone down so dramatically, and the rate of reproduction since the Women's Lib movement of the 70s has decreased so much? Is that enough sarcasm?

"Feminism robbed them of their identities by devaluing their job description. Millions of women whose self esteem was derived from their role as a great mother or supportive wife were suddenly left with a low-ranking title. There are still many women, (indeed, the backbone of our country) who cringe at a cocktail party when that inevitable small-talk query pops up, "And, what do you do?"

Somehow it seems awkward to say, "I take pride in my soufflé, kiss plenty of boo boos, find joy in my garden, and I spend a lot of time helping my family with their emotional struggles." No, instead, the woman who does those very things everyday is forced, in public, to extol the merits of the part-time office job that brings her income and not much more."

No dear, that was unfettered, unregulated Freidmanite Free Market Capitalism^TM. Because while many women seek to be more than just wombs and caregivers, there are a lot of women who enjoy being mothers and wives, but their families can't be supported on a single income like they could during the golden age of the middle class in the 50s. It wasn't feminism that destroyed this, it was deregulation of markets, outsourcing of jobs, and wages not keeping up with the cost of living. For centuries lower class women, who didn't have the luxury to remain housewives worked to support their families, and feminism allowed them to demand equal wages and equal opportunities. One of my heros, Mary Kay Ash, began her own feminism movement by starting the Mary Kay Cosmetics company, not because she wanted to be more than a housewife, but because she had worked all her life to support her family and saw men she had trained advancing far and ahead of her.

Mary Kay couldn't, even if she had wanted to, just resigned herself to being a middle class housewife, and by claiming that feminism has ruined it for middle class housewives is completely bogus because the majority of feminism's history has been all about the straight, white, middle class, housewife. Up until recently feminism has all but ignored women who didn't fit this mould, so don't tell me that feminism ruined everything for the wife and mother because she is now uncomfortable with the knowledge she has the privilege to be a stay at home mom.

"And, if you think that a married woman who is in touch with her femininity is a pariah in public, imagine a single woman who is developing hers: "Well, I read a lot of parenting and self-help books. I'm currently dating and hoping to encourage emotional intimacy in a man so that we can form a warm union and grow together." That statement just wouldn't fly, would it? Yet, I think this is what many of us are secreting hoping for."

If feminism has taught me anything it's that, as a woman, I should never be ashamed to ask for what I want. If I wanted to be a middle class housewife who takes care of children and is taken care of by my husband, I would have gone to a dating site that caters to people who desire those things. I would have had to marry rich, however, because like most American women, I wasn't born into privilege and I still have to work for a living, just like my boyfriend does. Women who are "secretly hoping" for someone to take care of us, who long for the Cinderella story, basically ignore the fact that in our capitalist society you don't just get a living wage because you have a 40-hour a week job. Middle class is miles away for many of us and that's what you have to be to have the luxury to be a stay-at-home mom. Your beef isn't with feminism, Doc, it's with unfettered capitalism which has destroyed a family's ability to survive on one income.

"It seemed with all the effort to conform and succeed in a male world we unknowingly threw out a crucial, feminine skill -- the ability to be the emotional conduit for a logic-locked man. For centuries, women have held the keys to the emotional locker in relationships."

If I wasn't certain Dr. Walsh was absolutely serious about this, I would be laughing my ass off right now. The notion that all men are logical is another of sexism's core principals. Let me offer a little anecdote here: my boyfriend is not logical unless he's programming. He's extremely emotional, and in the right company he's not afraid to let you know that. I, on the other hand, operating under the assumption that all women are emotional messes, am the opposite. My nature is to be very logical, his nature is to be very emotional. This particular gender-role is reversed, and it's not a detriment to our relationship. What would be detrimental to both our individual and relational well-beings would be to pretend that I am not logical and that he isn't emotional.

The detriment to relationships and the sacred love-life is not that feminism has allowed women to display their logical sides, it's that sexism and misogyny continue to force the idea on us that women are only emotional and "hold the keys to the emotional locker" and that men are not allowed to do this for themselves. So, yeah, I guess if you're a sexist, feminism has ruined your love life.

"In relationships, our retreat from any behavior that might be deemed submissive has caused us to throw out the baby with the bath water. We are so afraid of submission that we have forgotten how to be supportive."

Submission=!=support, for the record. I'm plenty supportive (and in some private instances submissive) in my relationship, but I'm not dumb enough to confuse or be afraid of either of them. My nurturing of the Mister is not subverting my will, and any emotionally mature adult knows the same.

"Indeed many of our Mothers, so inspired by the feminist ideal, deliberately forgot to teach us about love, relationships, nurturing, or -- God forbid! -- the power and creativity derived from running a loving household."

Once again, Doc, your beef isn't with feminism, it's with capitalism. Wanna know why my mom didn't have the opportunity to teach me about running a loving household? Cause she was working. She had to work, and she worked her ass off just to keep a roof over my head. It wasn't that she was inspired by the feminist ideal, it was that she didn't have the luxury of being born into privilege and therefore not having to focus all of her energy on paying the bills. She didn't forget: she was busy making sure I had food. I suspect that that is the case for most of these "Mothers" who "deliberately forgot". They didn't forget dick, working for a living sucks.

"Martha Stewart reminds us of what's missing in our lives, as we manage our hectic schedules, eating from take-out boxes, in our immaculate granite kitchens, wearing our own purchases, and juggling would-be suitors who don't happen to suit us this week."

Martha fucking Stewart. One of the most successful women in America. A woman so successful that she was punished for her success under the guise of "insider trading" and sent to jail. A woman so successful that her prison sentence was minimized when the federal facility was called "Camp Cupcake". Martha Stewart is not someone whose visage you want to conjure while demonizing feminism. Martha Stewart is a pioneer for feminists, even if she does support her empire doing traditionally feminine things, like crafts and baked goods. Good! She's doing what she loves and making a fantastic living at it! She's a perfect role model for capitalists and feminists! By the way, Martha is a divorced single mother. She doesn't exactly have the luxury not to be a brilliant business woman.

"In short, love has become a mystery. Relationships have an arcane quality that puzzles both genders. I personally think that most single men keep hoping that the right woman will come along with the keys to his emotional locker."

In which case he needs to grow up. Being in a relationship is not about replacing your opposite-sex parental figure with a spouse -- that's creepy. I'm not my boyfriend's mother, he's not my father. It's not my job to unlock his "emotional locker" (what the hell is that, by the way?), that's his job. Feminism, and more generally, pluralism, has taught us that we are all individuals (we are all individuals) and the life of each person is that person's responsibility. Having a pluralistic, and specifically feminist, view of the world and the self enhances one's ability to be a good mate. You can't be in an emotionally mature and satisfying relationship if all you're doing is parroting the gender roles that were prescribed to you upon your birth and classification as male or female. It's not possible.

There are a lot of people who find these prescribed gender roles comfortable, but the will do nothing but benefit from the self-searching that questioning gender roles provides. Why do I cook dinner for my boyfriend? Because I'm a good cook. Because I like it. Because he gets home later than I do, and feeding him is just as easy as feeding myself. Why do I do other domestic chores? Because they need to be done, and I have the opportunity. Asking ourselves why we do certain things helps us to be mature, better people. If you're doing something because society tells you to, not because you want or need to do it for your own personal reasons, you're going to be unhappy.

Feminism teaches women and men to question societal gender roles. Do I have to lift weights? Do I have to knit? Do I have to do these things that are prescribed for my gender in order to be happy? No. You don't. You can do things that aren't prescribed for your gender, and no matter which gender stereotypes you conform to, you're no less of a person for it. That's the point. Feminism doesn't just make women more masculine, it also makes men more feminine -- if they WANT to be. I mean, hey, just look at Martha Stewart.

What do women want?

Originally posted June 20, 2008.

Abbey O'Reilly at The F Word wrote Do you love a bad boy? in response to an article in the Daily Mail about why women love so-called bad boys. She begins with a hypothetical situation: you walk into a bar. At one end, sitting alone doing a crossword puzzle (so he appears interesting and smart, rather than a boring loner), who seems polite but isn't exactly going to spark up any conversations in order to prove that one way or the other. At the other end of the bar is your typical James Bond type, with his arm around one girl and his eyes around another, but as soon as any other female comes near him it is his prerogative to rape her with his eyes. He's a schmuck, but completely surrounded by women because they feel special around him, flattered, and don't mind that he's going to try to "fuck and chuck" each and every one of them, all in the same night if he can.

After giving this hypothetical, O'Reilly asks, "If you had to, which one would you choose?"

Uh. Neither. Professors of psychology, experts in all fields, any given heterosexual man, and just about everyone on earth likes to hypothesize about what (heterosexual) women want -- because lesbians are no mystery: lesbians want other lesbians, mystery solved; but straight girls are to be analyzed and tested to see to which stereotype of the heterosexual man they react to the strongest. Nevermind that the author of the study cited in the Daily Mail article did this by asking 200 male college students how many women they had slept with. (Because obviously the best way to assess what kind of straight guy women like is to ask the straight guys. I guarantee you almost every single one of those guys said "women love me, just look how many I've fucked". That is air-tight logic right there.)

Let me tell you "what women want". Speaking as a woman who is more human than stereotype: I like a man who is more human than stereotype. Sure, the guy at the asshole end of the Straight Guy Archetype Spectrum may be pretty, but he's an asshole, and I guarantee you that assholes are resistible. Meanwhile, the guy at the emo-loner end of the Straight Guy Archetype Spectrum (hereafter to be known as the SGAS), is equally as resistible, because all told: he's an asshole too.

The emo-loner archetype is constantly underestimated for his asshattery, because women fail to understand that this guy sees you as an object too: the fulfiller of his every childish need until you become the breaker of his poor widdle hearwt. If he writes a song about you, it'll be more about him. He is just as self-centered as the guy who will try to take your clothes off the minute the two of you are alone: that's why he's sitting ALONE in a bar doing a fucking crossword puzzle. He doesn't have a friends because the degree of his self-centeredness is fucking annoying and no one wants to be around him.

The kind of guy who always wins the dating game is the kind who doesn't fit comfortably into any one archetype because he's mature enough to understand that there are many aspects of the self, and neither he, nor you, is an archetype or stereotype, but a person. What a concept! That's the kind of man women want! The funny thing is that any guy who fits an archetype from Prince Charming (riding to save the day and protect you from everything, because you're a precious object not a person), to James Bond (you're fucking gorgeous, wants to shag you all night and then never call you because you're a trophy not a person), to Emo-Loner (loves you so much, you're his everything, not a person; will write sad poetry about how you broke his heart and trampled all over him because now you're an evil bitch, not a person, but that poetry can get him laid cause it makes him seem "sensitive"), to Mr. Big (rich and independent, terrified of commitment, but knows that you can save him because you're a savior not a person), to any other archetype you might be able to think of; any of these archetypal guys can fake their way into the kind of guy who is more human than stereotype, but after a while it's really easy to see through his bullshit. (These things can go for all people, all genders, and all sexual orientations -- we're all disaffected to some degree and all have different ways of coping. People aren't stereotypes though, they're people. It's just that some of them are a lot more comfortable in their stereotypes.)

The point of all of this is two fold. First of all, if you want to know what a woman wants in a man: fucking ask her! Don't go ask all the guys she's slept with what kind of guy they are and then assume that if you act like those guys she'll want to be with you. There's a reason people break up. There's a reason for one-night-stands. People are as flawed as they are diverse, and just because I have a history of dating assholes doesn't mean I want my current boyfriend to become one!

Secondly, the kind of person a genuine person wants to be with is another genuine person. We don't force ourselves into societal archetypes because we're not comfortable with them, and so the kind of person who does force him or herself into an archetype is not the kind of person we want to be with. Maybe the James Bond guy does get a lot of ass, but I am willing to bet that the kinds of guys who exhibit this type of behavior have never had a truly emotionally fulfilling relationship. I'm also willing to put money on the guy who worships his girlfriend so hard she eventually feels like he's stalking her, never having had an emotionally fulfilling relationship either -- that's why all his songs are about pain and agony and how he cuts himself he's so destroyed over the elusive her.

So, back to the bar analogy. There's a third guy in the bar. He's talking and laughing with his friends, and doesn't appear to be there with anyone. He sees you at the same time the guy mobbed by Barbie dolls is trying to master telekinesis in order to take your clothes off, and crossword puzzle guy tries to look really interested in his puzzle while secretly hoping you'll be the next person to break his heart. Assuming you came to this bar to meet someone new, possible to get a date or get laid, which of these three guys are you going to talk to, offer to buy a drink for, or accept a drink from?

I know my answer. I know that if I wasn't already nailing the third guy, I would totally want to.

Affectionately,
Rachel