Life is hard for men too. Deal with it.
Image from Claudio_Scott on Pixabay
North American women do love to complain. It’s a privilege of living in one of the two most advanced, modern cultures in the world, where they’ve got it immeasurably easier compared to women in days of yore, including the world I was born into.
“It’s so haaaaaaaaard to be a woman today! It’s just exhausting!”
I think the worst, the very worst part of being a woman in North America is having to listen to educated women of all types whine like little girls about how haaaaaaarrrd it is to be a woman.
Oh please.
Shelly Fabares had it right in Bye Bye Birdie.
If it’s that hard to be a woman in 2022, you’re doing it wrong.
When there was still a patriarchy thing
Okay, I’m a lot more experienced at being a woman than most. I’ve been at it a lot longer.
When I was born in the Mad Men era, women couldn’t own credit cards without a co-signer, had a harder time getting an apartment of their own (because she might Have Sex), couldn’t get a legal abortion in most places nor could she get birth control (See: Punishment. Having Sex. Nice Girls Don’t.) She also couldn’t attend certain exclusive schools.
When people asked me that dumbass question they love to ask six-year-olds, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I said I wanted to be a nurse. I didn’t see a lot of career options. Like, also, mommy, secretary, teacher.
“You could be a doctor,” my feminist-in-denial mother said. (She hated ‘those damn women’s libbers!’)
“I can’t be a doctor!” I protested. “I’m not a boy!”
“Girls can be doctors,” Mom said. “No one’s stopping them.”
“Whoever heard of a woman doctor?” I asked, drawing on my vast experience with the only doctor I’d ever known.
“There are women doctors,” Mom told me. “They’re just not very common.”
Who knew there weren’t laws against this sort of thing?
Victory for women? Move along, nothing to see here!
When I entered university the Computer Revolution was underway.
It was a little chickie-boo who liberated the (male) masses by smashing the patriarchy (literally)
Feminism had a harder edge now, and young women like myself took it for granted we could be whatever we wanted. We had big-ass shoulder pads to prove it, too.
Somewhere along the way, though, everything went — if you’ll pardon the expression — tits up.
Women lost their edge, sort of pretended to be empowered, but their message became just — weak.
They talked about this patriarchy thing as though it was the source of all evil.
Patriarchy exists in regressive, retro parts of the world, but here in North America it’s more of a geriatric Fox News-addled old crank.
Hey, great news! Harvey Weinstein just got sentenced to 23 years in prison for being a mass rapist! Not long after Bill Cosby got sentenced! Time to celebrate, right?
Well, at least women didn’t *vote* for Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby…
Dude’s 67. He’s going to die before he serves his sentence. What did she want, the Braveheart treatment?
Let’s note: For once, the white rapist got a longer prison sentence than the black rapist.
I mean c’mon, Weinstein’s been getting away with this for years. And Cosby even longer. Almost as long as I’ve been alive, when Sunni Welles became his first alleged drug rape victim.
Honest question: Do women not report sexual assault more because they won’t be believed, or because feminists keep telling them they won’t be believed?
Instead of celebrating a second big win, women downplay it and claim there’s no justice for women. Because Trump, or something. Victim feminists have a major phobia against ever admitting women are making progress every damn day. Naomi Wolf wrote a whole book about it.
No matter how good things get, no matter how much better women have it, no matter how privileged we all are, no matter how much justice we do see, no matter how much the rape rate has gone down (63%) since the early ’90s, (and maybe a few extra percentage points since Weinstein got arrested) all too many feminists can do is complain about niggling details instead of tackling real problems facing women, like how we can make it safer and less stigmatizing to report sexual abuse immediately.
Some see a victim of patriarchal exploitation that only values women for their sexual release value; others see an empowered woman unafraid of her own sexuality or what others think. What do *you* see? Creative Commons Zero — CC0 on Pxfuel
Men have it hard too
Of all the stupid mental junk food modern feminists gorge on, the most ridiculous is the notion that men have it so much easier.
You’d think life was just a cakewalk in the park for men compared to how haaaaard women have it in 2022.
To be sure, men still possess an unequal amount of power, and let’s stop colorizing it, because in many parts of the world where women live with genuine patriarchy, their oppressors often aren’t white.
‘White privilege’ didn’t protect dozens of women from Bill Cosby, either.
Men find existence pretty damn difficult too, and they’re dealing with a lot of the same problems women have.
It’s no picnic being a man, either.
I read a lot of articles about all the things women claim they aren’t ‘allowed’ to do. I’m not sure where that comes from. I see an awful lot of the very same messages to men, too, of all the things they’re not ‘allowed’ to do. Those forbidden things may be different from what women aren’t ‘permitted’, but men still receive numerous negative messages about how they’re supposed to be and act.
They can’t have feelings, they can’t cry, they have to define themselves by work, they have to be strong and stoic at all times, real men don’t ask for help.
They can’t complain if they get beaten by a woman. Or raped. Yes, it happens, and not always by another man, either.
It’s difficult to ‘be a man’ when you have to be on constant guard against the Homo Police. Sociologist Michael Kimmel writes about it in Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men.
“Homophobia — the fear that people might misperceive you as gay — is the animating fear of American guys’ masculinity.”
Teenage boys in particular police each other for signs of ‘gayness. It sounds exhausting.
“It’s not like I want to stay in that box,” says Jeff, a college student. “But as soon as you step outside it, even for a second, all the other guys are like, ‘what are you, dude, a fag?’ It’s not very safe out there on your own….But now, in my fraternity, on this campus, man, I’d lose everything.”
Men buy into society’s toxic lessons, as do women.
Just type “women aren’t allowed to” in the Medium search bar, look at the articles it retrieves, and ask just who’s holding all these women back. Is The Patriarchy holding guns to their heads, or are they blaming men for their own lack of labia?
It’s time for all of us to examine toxic social messages and ask, “Do I have to mentally consume this garbage?”
Life is hard. For everyone.
One thing that hasn’t changed for humanity since we first crawled out of the ocean 400 million years ago is that life is pretty damn difficult no matter who you are.
Although we live longer and richer lives, we still torture people for fun like they did in the Middle Ages, although now it takes the form of bullying and abuse — gay-shaming for boys, slut-shaming for girls, fat-shaming for everyone.
We are still tribal. The worst punishment is social ostracism, and we always find ways to push others to the outside. It’s universal.
Life is hard no matter what historical time period you live in. It’s hard for everyone; all colors, all genders, all preferences, all religions, all cultures. While there are countless competitors in the Victimhood Olympics, I’m not sure there are any clear winners. How much one ultimately suffers is correlated to their degree of mental health, and how much they’re willing to torture themselves.
How to make it easier to be a woman
What makes our suffering worse is when our egos feed us narratives that make it all about ourselves.
This is why I roll my eyes at feminitwits who are always droning on about how ‘misogyny’ and ‘patriarchy’ are everywhere. They invented much of it.
Seriously, these obsessions are piling misery on Western women in an already miserable world. These ideas have their place, but mostly in textbooks, not between one’s ears.
It’s painful to watch women mentally stab themselves over and over again with toxic interpretations positioning themselves, or women in general, as victims.
Girls just want to have fun, but perma-victims live to suffer.
11 Instances of Everyday Sexism lists a few, to my eyes, miniscule misogynies women have to live with:
‘Shaming’ for having our period. Um, maybe in cultures where it’s still taboo, but in North America? What, because feminine hygiene products are still taxed in some places? Because trans women had to put up with the indignity of the Venus symbol on their sanitary napkins?
(Is it just me, or do trans women activists seem even more entitled than born women?)
Being told to smile. Maybe there’s only so much resting-bitch-face people can put up with on the train in the morning. Men should smile more too. Congenial faces might help to reduce some of the misogyny and misandry in the world. Can someone send Greta Thunberg a memo?
Getting ignored by co-workers. Yeah, because that never happens to men.
Missing out on networking opportunities. What, does LinkedIn have a virtual ‘pink office’ somewhere?
‘Mom shaming’ for not being a good enough mother. Do men have anything to do with this??? Has there ever been a mom-shaming on social media that didn’t involve a gaggle of self-righteous, supermommier-than-thou stroller tank jockeys?
Being expected to have orgasms from intercourse. Okay, no one needs that kind of sexual pressure but I’d like to point out: When I was born, feminists themselves could barely find the clitoris, much less men. Be glad he even knows what a female orgasm is!
Can You Find All 15 Signs Of The Patriarchy In This Picture Of A Tugboat? (Warning: Satire!)
I want to scream, “Stop telling yourself such nasty stories! They’re not true! You’re poisoning yourself, and women!”
People have it hard in a toxic society that grows ever more toxic every day. Suicides are at record rates, up 33% for Americans since 1999. Stress is up too. Teens rival adults. Racism is linked to faster aging in blacks, but white men still kill themselves at far higher rates than black men.
So much for how hard it is to be a woman.
It sucks for all of us, kids. It’s not a competition.
Deal with it.
Did you like this post? Would you like to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far over my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a post!
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