Women – not just feminists – though for the purposes of this essay we’ll get back to that “extra-special” category of women known as feminists a bit further down – where was I?
Ah yes, women, spend an awful lot of time thinking about, talking about, and writing about what they deserve. Great jobs or “careers” as we must now call them – job is just so pedestrian, great homes, great clothes, great bodies, and on and on and on – all these great things, that women believe, not feel, but believe they deserve.
There are some other things that an awful lot of women believe they deserve – great husbands or partners, and children, but not just any type of child or children, great children, whenever they decide to have them and at a time that suits them.
The last category of things that women believe they deserve, are respect, consideration, loyalty, and universal endorsement for anything they do.
Now if I was writing this for a woman’s magazine or website dedicated to all things females my readers would be nodding their heads, perhaps being overcome with a bit of emotion, or if there were more than two or three of them, the remarks would be something like this; –
“Oh, that is soooooooo true, every word of that just says perfectly what every woman deserves, she really really understands what women are about – we do, we really DO deserve all those things.”
There might even then ensue a discussion about how short-changed our putative reader and her gal pals are, how life is soooooooooooo unfair, how they weep into their pillows at night, about how the things that they deserve are just not manifesting themselves. On schedule.
Let’s just call our imaginary gal pals Susie, Megan and Lauren, shall we?
On one level, Susie, Megan and Lauren would be right, that women believe they deserve all of things I mentioned; they genuinely believe that they deserve EVERYTHING on the list.
But, they would be WRONG – they don’t – deserve ANYTHING on that list, they could work for them, strive for them, even in some instances make themselves worthy to have some of those things, but they absolutely do NOT deserve any of them.
Shocking isn’t it? Well Susie, Megan and Lauren are shocked now, aghast, maybe even getting a bit snarky, a tad grouchy – they are looking at one another, wide eyed, puzzled and getting ready to get the claws out and bitch slap me back into line. If I was standing in front of them they’d be scanning me for flaws, for weaknesses, for something that they could use as a weapon to hurt me with, undermine my sense of “self-worth” and shake my confidence in myself – AS A WOMAN!
Am I a bit overweight? Nope – not really, and anyway I don’t care. Am I, what my mother diplomatically used to call “a bit plain”? Apparently not, according to independent sources – and nope, again I don’t care. Am I childless? Nope. Unloved? Nope. Touchy about some aspect of my physical appearance at all? Nope.
You may have noticed that all of the examples I gave as potential weapons were based on some external factor, apart from the “childless” one, though unless I can claim several miraculous conceptions then I obviously didn’t achieve that on my own.
Susie, Megan and Lauren met in college, and became fast friends – of the “friends forever” type.
Susie eventually ended up as an administrative assistant to some higher level executive in some vast multinational company, one of many higher level executives in this monolithic company. She dated Brad in college and when they both graduated, they got married about 2 years after college, they both come from traditional families, and getting married has always been one of Susie’s life goals. No kids, yet, because they’re building their careers. They’re going to start trying next year, when Susie is 30 – it’s the last item on the Life Goals list. Susie’s. Life. Goals. List.
Megan, works for a Women’s Charity – that helps women start their own business, not married, not dating anyone, thinking about getting herself some of that donor sperm next year – when she’s 30, before it’s too late, and IVF is so expensive.
Lauren is the high achiever – works in a small but prestigious law firm, mostly real estate and wills, has her eye on a corner office, gives talks at her feminist group “Empowering Women with the Law” – belongs to another feminist group that does pro bono (she got that out of her law firm by threatening to sue them) for women accused of assaulting their husbands or partners, and women accused of neglecting or abusing their kids. Not interested in having kids – yet – plenty of time – anyway – she has her eye on the senior partner, wife passed away some years ago and….he has a house in Tuscany, Lauren loves all things Italian
They ALL believe that they deserve ALL of the things I mentioned in the first part, not want, not are prepared to work for, not even things they would be willing to sacrifice anything for – nope – they DESERVE them.
The reason they believe they DESERVE any and all these things?
Because they are WOMEN.
Time to mention the feminists. All of our gal pals took some women’s studies classes in college, and they were told that as women, they DESERVED anything and everything their little ole hearts desired, without working for it really, because as women, they join a long line of other women who have historically been deprived of all those things. They were also told that nothing they did was ever wrong, or their fault, because they live in a world where men dominate them, oppress them and stand in the way of their empowerment. That life was a constant struggle, as women, to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be allowed to reach their potential.
Oddly at the same time, they were told they could DO anything, BE anything, HAVE anything they wanted, in fact they DESERVED all this, as payback for the terrible things done to woman since Adam was a boy, the most important thing they took away with them into their “adult” lives was this, in direct opposition to the first part, that each and every one of them was a special and unique creature of incomparable beauty, ability, intelligence and accomplishment. In fact, that were awesome.
Because they were WOMEN.
Let’s catch up on our gal pals shall we?
Susie is unhappy, she doesn’t really know why, she knows that Megan and Lauren thought she was mad to get married straight out of college, and are always putting Brad down, she does too, Brad doesn’t seem to have any ambition, or not the kind Susie thinks he should have – he likes being outdoors, and has his own landscaping company, which he inherited from his father, and works with his two brothers. She hates her job, in her heart of hearts she knows she’s just a glorified secretary. She hates her house, it’s just an ordinary house, needs some work, and has been trying to get Brad to agree to move, get a huge mortgage to finance a bigger house in a more upscale neighbourhood.
She’s in a bit of a dilemma, she wants kids, but she wants that big house, first, even if she does have kids she’ll have to keep working. It’s all Brad’s fault for being so irritatingly easy going, and not giving her EVERYTHING she wants. His niceness really really irritates her. Why does she have to share the profits of the business with Brad’s brothers, and Brad’s annoying and boring stay at home mom, sisters – in law. God they’re so boring.
Megan is also in a dilemma, no matter what she does with her “Women in Business” groups, the vast majority of them fail, and the women keep coming back for more and more micro finance, with more (don’t let anyone hear me say this) daft ideas for businesses that just won’t work. The last relationship she had was a disaster, he didn’t want “to commit” and expected her to PAY HER WAY, on dates. He made fun of her job and the women she worked with – and then – Oh my God – try to “mansplain” to her the mechanics of business, so what if he was a business major in college – he just didn’t understand women. That only lasted 3 months. Good riddance.
No way was she going to tolerate some man “mansplaining” to HER. She’s going to check out this sperm donor thing over the next few weeks. What Megan doesn’t know is that that dose of Chlamydia she caught in college, what with all the – exploring her sexuality – she did in college, has damaged her fallopian tubes. Irreversibly.
She is worried about coming off the pill, on it since she was a teenager – acne – what if her acne comes back? Though it was cool being on the pill in college, never ever forgot to take it, so even on that one occasion, or was it two or three? when she got a bit drunk at that party and hopped into bed, condomless, with …………what was his name again? Anyway, it didn’t matter. Yep – come off the pill, wait 3 months, get some sperm, then aim to have this child around March next year, will give her time to get herself organised. Hope it’s a girl, boys are so noisy, and grubby and icky, hmmmm, can always terminate and try again if it’s a boy.
Lauren is oblivious to anything but her own ambitions – she has been working on her five year plan since leaving college – she does the pro bono work for her “Empowering Women With Law” group because of what happened in college. The incident. That party. That creep. The police didn’t believe HER! So what if she was drunk, so what, that everyone at the party saw her sticking her tongue down that creep’s throat and dragging him by his tie into the bedroom, heard her laughing and shouting “do it to me” do it to me” Bastards. They recorded it.
Time to make her move on Mark Darcy, the senior partner, she’s tired of living in her one bed apartment, she wants a house in upscale Poshville, and that villa in Tuscany, she heard he had. Of course it never occurred to her to find out anything at all about Mark Darcy. That he has been seeing a very nice widow from his bridge club, that he signed over the villa in Tuscany to his children, (less a villa and more his grandparents old family home) that he and the nice widow are planning a summer wedding, just a small family wedding, with all her extended family and his extended family.
That he is not renewing Laurens contract because he and the rest of the senior partners are sick to death of all the harassment accusations, the constant demands for special conditions, the way Lauren treats the juniors and paralegals. Nope. Everyone in the firm is sick of her. She has to go. Her contract is up for renewal in 3 months, and the firm DOES need to downsize.
What all three have in common is that they are completely oblivious to anyone else’s needs, anyone else’s interests, anyone else’s anything – they DESERVE whatever it is that they want, be it a job, a house, a man, respect, loyalty, career advancement, children – ANYTHING.
Because they are WOMEN.
© Anja Eriud 2014
NB. For the hard of thinking – I made these women up – they are fictional, a conglomeration of innumerable women I have known and observed over a long period of time. So, for any women who happen to be called Susie, Megan or Lauren and think this is about you – GROW UP! And grow a brain.
Not A Feminist 
Jan 12, 2014 @ 14:29:48
you said it! and when a male speaks up… it’s “another man constantly having a typical man whinge” …. this is worse than when you are rowing with someone in a blog and they call you a “keyboard warrior” !!!!
I have also seen a lot of people attack MRA’s and saying stop the bickering and can’t we just co exist!!!!! Yesterday a woman attacked a fellow MRA saying he had put up another dumb post, that that one was the third in fact… then went on to tell him not to fight a negative with a negative!!!
The mind boggles, really. People would think this is a dig, but it is not. I consider feminism either a serious mental disorder, or the cause or result of a serious mental disorder. THey are totally detached from what is real.
This is largely why debating with or discussing with them is futile, besides the point that they believe society is run by men who oppress women for the benefit of men… they don’t want to talk.
The reason is obvious, if they believe this farcical version of patriarchy, men oppressing women for the benefit of men. They cannot concede examples of where this is not the case. Men losing their children in family could is because of a system that oppresses women to benefit men, lesbian couple have a higher rate of domestic violence because society makes one of them be “the man”!
But people still say we should try and talk with them…”you have a lot in common you want to achieve”. Maybe we do, but they don’t want to just achieve, they want to blame… to blame is as important, more important than achieving. Look how they knowingly fabricate the pay gap! There is none, the ones they give don’t compare like with like, they don’t even factor in men working 40 hour a week where women work 35!!
Then MRA’s are again told to stop whinging, by the biggest whinge group in history! At least if we do whinge, which we don’t, we don’t make up things to whinge about. We don’t make people feel as victims over a false injustice!!!
Sorry, went off on one there…. you know yourself.
This is Ireland, we are a small country and most people know others from almost every walk of life. One of my best friends has suffered terribly at the hands of men, and likewise she knows me and my experience with the justice system and with my son’s mother. We all know people who have been fucked over. We are real people. Feminism is a religion, a cult of delusion, it has nothing to do with real people. MRA’s deal with rights, not perceived imbalances from half a picture. Our goals are clear, quantifiable and achievable.
Once they are achieved, we will no longer exist….. unlike feminism. In a society of equality “between genders” some have become more equal than others. Well done feminists, but you had to keep pushing. Now, your house of cards is swaying in the breeze. I’d like to thank you for you greed and spite, like the alcoholic thanks that last drink that makes the alcoholic hit rock bottom and finally see the harm it has done him, will continue to and quits it forever.
Jan 12, 2014 @ 15:17:57
Reblogged this on Los españoles se merecen saberlo, por la Paz y la verdadera Igualdad en España!.
Jan 12, 2014 @ 16:29:54
Great article. These types of women exist in droves. Women who feel entitled to everything and anything just because they’re women. Feminism feeds their egos perfectly.
Jan 12, 2014 @ 16:49:23
I agree that these “types” and I use the word types deliberately, rather than pointing to individual women, exist, and as you said in droves.
I blame feminism. Totally. Make absolutely no apology for that and will even go further, have zero tolerance for the “but in the beginning feminism had some good motives”
Nope. All due respect to Christina Hoff Sommers, Camille Paglia (my personal favourite of the “why the hell are you still calling yourselves feminists” and Wendy McElroy.
I have no problem with women’s rights activists – ones that focus on human rights abuses that happen to be perpetrated against women as long as they do NOT assume they have a more righteous cause than men’s rights activists. We’re cool.
Feminism hijacked the language, hijacked ethics, and hijacked……………….everything.
Turned selfishness into “empowerment” turned ambition into “entitlement” turned men and women into adversaries and fired the starting pistol on the victim Olympics that we have now descended into, turned petty grievances into epic whinge fests of the perpetually petulant, and called it.
Feminism.
Jan 12, 2014 @ 18:14:09
You’re absolutely right. I can’t help but chuckle when I hear people say feminism is about equality. It definitely isn’t. If it was we wouldn’t have prominent feminists advocating abused women should be allowed to kill their husbands (Sheehy). We would have feminists protesting for women to get equal sentences as men in criminal cases, instead of defending the obviously guilty woman to the end even trying to get women’s prisons closed.
Where are the feminists demanding that fathers be given the same rights as the mother in family court? They’re campaigning for even stricter laws in the mother’s favour. Where are they in admonishing false rape accusers? Nowhere to be seen. They protect false rape accusers saying that if we punish them, real rape victims will be more reluctant to come forward. That’s not the law’s concern. False rape accusers should be looked down upon just as much as rapists are. In my opinion a false rape accuser should get the same sentence the accused would’ve gotten, because let’s be real. The stain of a rape accusation doesn’t wash off. Even after being proven innocent, the accused is still presumed guilty by most of the public. They’re ostracized.
Feminism has done much more to harm women than it ever has to help them. By teaching women that they’re entitled to things, they minimize their potential. You shouldn’t have to work hard to get that job, you should get it just because you’re a woman in a field dominated by men. We should put women on the boards of companies just because it looks good to have them there, it doesn’t matter if those women are qualified or not.
Feminism is not about equality. It’s about female supremacy. Making sure that women get all the “perks” of being a man, but none of the responsibility/accountability. I’ve been a man for almost 30 years now, and I have no idea what the perks of being a man are. There’s no such thing. Everybody has to work for everything they have.
Jan 12, 2014 @ 23:56:53
I ran into an old girlfriend recently. She was unmarried and childless. She was also quite indignant that she wasn’t living a life of luxury and leisure in a big house with a husband to pay for it all. The reason for her indignation: “other women have that”.
Her favourite TV show was ‘Dr Phil’ whom she admired because he had the courage to be politically incorrect enough to insist that men should be out working to support women. I pointed out that Dr Phil’s target audience were stay at home women who consume a daytime TV diet of male-bashing.
Jan 13, 2014 @ 02:00:22
Dr. Phil… politically incorrect??? she should see a psychologist.
Jan 13, 2014 @ 07:31:20
Dr Phil is such an ass kisser. He could never be objective about women because his show is produced by Oprah iirc. Daytime TV is disgusting to watch.
Jan 13, 2014 @ 14:24:20
Hi Russell
You have touched on something that I didn’t explore in this post, with our lovely threesome, that even within female friendships, of the friends forever type is an underlying and very subtle (though in some cases not so subtle) pecking order – women police one another, they are always comparing themselves to one another – it’s tedious, juvenile and it’s tiresome, but it does have the effect of keeping everyone within that circle constantly on edge in case they don’t “measure up”
Take our example of Susie – she has what she wanted – she got married – when she wanted to get married – but – like a lot of women in her situation – she bases the quality or measure of success of not just her marriage but the circumstances of her marriage on what OTHER women think.
Need I even say that for a vast majority of women – especially for those with the gynocentric gene, allied to a steady diet of the likes of Dr. Phil, they not only have unrealistic expectations, but a totally unrealistic and distorted view of THEMSELVES.
It never ever occurs to these types of women, that THEY are the ones who need to “measure up” that THEY are the ones with the flaws, the faults, it would collapse in an instant the fragile and false paradigm that feminism has succeeded in convincing women is true.
That by the mere fact of being born female – you are special. Feminism merely harnessed the innate gynocentrism – the self obsession with being women in competition with other women that is as old as the hills. Women are innately morally and ethically lazy – I make no apology for that – they are – all roads emanate from “what is good for me?”
It takes work – self awareness, self reflection and honesty with yourself to become a fully functioning ethical human being – most women are just too damn lazy to do that. Everything they do is for themselves and for their own benefit, even if at some point these things have the unintended consequences of benefiting someone else – it is almost always never deliberate.
Jan 14, 2014 @ 20:13:10
I liked a touch about “the vast majority of them fail, and the women keep coming back for more and more micro finance, with more (don’t let anyone hear me say this) daft ideas for businesses that just won’t work.”
I don’t know whether you just know that or simply got it right but that’s, in fact, literally the case. In developing countries a majority of microfinance institutions provide loans to women only. However, when the compare the performance of loans given to men and women “Remarkably, the evidence suggests that their [female] profits did not go up at all, while that of their male counterparts went up by a lot.” and that’s after controlling for household consumption. Studies are: de Mel et al, 2008 and 2009, Fafchamps et al. (2009). And yet the idea that microfinance should stop focusing on women is discarded. Not to stop giving loans to women but just stop focusing on women! And it is the same people who write papers on “why is the impact of microcredit so limited?”
Jan 14, 2014 @ 20:37:37
Hi independentshock
In a former life, I attended a few “what about the women” meetings – sigh – always the same shoite – buckets of concern over the poor poor women who needed sooooooooo much help (money) any attempt to point out the bleedin obvious, “have you not noticed that the same women keep coming back every year, with the same bloody whines?” met with blank stares and then a tedious recitation of aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the problems that women have, and how difficult it is for them – sigh.
Thanks for the citations to the studies – I shall make good use of them. 🙂