Women Who Run With The Teacup Yorkies -- And How I Became The Other Kind Of Woman
In case you're 22, the headline is a crack about a Clarissa Pinkola Estés book, "Women Who Run with the Wolves," subtitled, "Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype."
These days, wild women, real and archetypical, are in short supply -- at least in public conversation.
There are a few of us over at Quillette. A bit from my piece -- about how and why I'm a woman who's not a victim:
"Because I don't identify as a victim, I can laugh, take a joke, and tell somebody who's bothering me to cut the crap--instead of tattling to an authority figure."
Of course, many women are very quiet these days with any statements that go against the victim feminist status quo.
However, in The New York Times, Daphne Merkin writes that some women are grumbling about #metoo:
Publicly, they say the right things, expressing approval and joining in the chorus of voices that applaud the takedown of maleficent characters who prey on vulnerable women in the workplace.In private it's a different story. "Grow up, this is real life," I hear these same feminist friends say. "What ever happened to flirting?" and "What about the women who are the predators?" Some women, including random people I talk to in supermarket lines, have gone so far as to call it an outright witch hunt.
Merkin wonders:
What happened to women's agency? That's what I find myself wondering as I hear story after story of adult women who helplessly acquiesce to sexual demands. I find it especially curious given that a majority of women I know have been in situations in which men have come on to them -- at work or otherwise. They have routinely said, "I'm not interested" or "Get your hands off me right now." And they've taken the risk that comes with it.The fact that such unwelcome advances persist, and often in the office, is, yes, evidence of sexism and the abusive power of the patriarchy. But I don't believe that scattershot, life-destroying denunciations are the way to upend it. In our current climate, to be accused is to be convicted. Due process is nowhere to be found.
And what exactly are men being accused of? What is the difference between harassment and assault and "inappropriate conduct"? There is a disturbing lack of clarity about the terms being thrown around and a lack of distinction regarding what the spectrum of objectionable behavior really is. Shouldn't sexual harassment, for instance, imply a degree of hostility? Is kissing someone in affection, however inappropriately, or showing someone a photo of a nude male torso necessarily predatory behavior?
I think this confusion reflects a deeper ambivalence about how we want and expect people to behave. Expressing sexual interest is inherently messy and, frankly, nonconsensual -- one person, typically the man, bites the bullet by expressing interest in the other, typically the woman -- whether it happens at work or at a bar. Some are now suggesting that come-ons need to be constricted to a repressive degree. Asking for oral consent before proceeding with a sexual advance seems both innately clumsy and retrograde, like going back to the childhood game of "Mother, May I?" We are witnessing the re-moralization of sex, not via the Judeo-Christian ethos but via a legalistic, corporate consensus.
Stripping sex of eros isn't the solution. Nor is calling out individual offenders, one by one. We need a broader and more thoroughgoing overhaul, one that begins with the way we bring up our sons and daughters.
If your daughter is unable to say no to things she doesn't want to do, you have failed on an important level as a parent.
This isn't to say children are little robots that parents can control.
Research by Nancy Segal and others on identical twins separated at birth shows stunning behavioral similarities between them, despite sometimes vastly different environments they're brought up in.
So, some children will be naturally more timid or more bold.
But if your child has a learning disability, you don't just say, "Oh, well -- I guess you'll never read."
You give your kid extra help.
Some kids will need that extra help in saying no -- I, personally, was Jell-O-spined into my mid 20s, the story behind my upcoming, science-based book, Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence.
But I worked really hard to transform, to be a different person -- one who can stand up and say no, even to a mob of hundreds upon hundreds of assholes on Twitter.
Consistently choosing to say no -- even when it was a scary thing to do -- is a commitment to living with self-respect.
Here's a cool thing: You don't have to respect yourself to do this -- you just need to feel that you deserve respecting.
Or, if you can't even muster that, not to worry. Tell yourself that you'd like to go on a little tour -- see what it feels like to live with self-respect; see whether you like it.
Remember, you can always recede back into wormhood.
But the more I've stood up, the more I've felt like standing up. And I think that others who try this -- and admittedly, it's terrifying at first -- will find themselves in a similar place.
If your daughter is unable to say no to things she doesn't want to do, you have failed on an important level as a parent.
Agreed. I realize that criticizing another person's "parenting" is the third rail of modern American life, but you're absolutely right.
When I was a child, it was my custom to go into the liquor department and read comic books while my mother did the grocery shopping. When she went through the checkout, she'd call to me and I'd know it was time to wrap it up.
One day a man approached me while I was looking at comic books and said hello. I didn't acknowledge him. I was five. He said, "Don't you recognize me? I'm your uncle."
"No, you're not," I told him, and went off to find my mother.
"No" isn't a scary thing to say if you have parents who teach you how to do it, without scaring the living daylights out of you when it comes to everyday situations. It's never too early — or too late — to learn.
Kevin at January 5, 2018 10:34 PM
Agreed. I realize that criticizing another person's "parenting" is the third rail of modern American life, but you're absolutely right.
I've got a mob of fundamentalist cyclists coming after me for just that.
They are outraged that I would say things like these:
ME: "People should not unnecessarily expose children to risk. Giving kids independence is a good thing. Taking them out on a bike next to speeding traffic bc it suits your cycling fundamentalism is terrible parenting."
And in response to someone trying for an argument they thought was really brilliant - something like "So, pregnant women shouldn't drive?"
My response: "Pregnant women must get around sprawling LA. In a car, they have protective caged pocket + airbag. Let's say crash on Venice Blvd. Same car, same speed, hits pregnant woman in car vs. pregnant woman on bike. Which would you want to be?"
Exactly right, Kevin, on being taught to deal with life. You were better for it, I'm sure, and were given the independence you could handle.
Amy Alkon at January 6, 2018 4:43 AM
Damn well said.
kenmce at January 6, 2018 5:20 AM
Thank you!
Amy Alkon at January 6, 2018 6:24 AM
When in doubt...
https://youtu.be/pzVkJwcodYM
I R A Darth Aggie at January 6, 2018 6:55 AM
You're fond of saying that feminists don't want to be treated as equals, but as eggshells.
Ironically, there was a time when such deference was extended to women. Men stood up when a lady entered the room, in case she wanted his chair. Men held the doors open for them, carried their books in school, and otherwise protected them.
I've often wondered if this special treatment that feminists demand is not a harken back to the days when women were, essentially, treated as eggshells.
Patrick at January 6, 2018 8:26 AM
God, I am so sick of the #metoo movement. One, because it's slacktivism, and two, because women need to start standing up for themselves.
I was raised Catholic, so you can imagine what a people pleaser I was trained to be. I got over it. I have generally had jobs working with mostly men, and I have no problem telling them to knock it off if they get out of line. It's not hard, and 99.9% of the time they will, indeed, knock it off. It's rare anything has to go beyond that. Men are not mind readers, and if you giggle or ignore something you don't like, they are going to take that as a green light to keep going.
Daghain at January 6, 2018 8:36 AM
In one case, a woman went to a hollywood orgy (known to be such), took some drug maybe E, and then later complained about being "used" etc. Really--why are you going to an orgy if you aren't sure about it? And if you aren't sure and go anyway, it is on you. Many of these cases, especially the campus cases, involve regrets for choices made. Of course the boy is trying to convince you--without boys being a little pushy we would be extinct by now. But you still have agency always except under threat of violence. Thinking you will lose the boy if you don't have sex is not "violence" or "threat". It is a situation where you need to make a choice.
And the stuff about guys asking you out at work as "harassment" is only true if he persists and persists. Many many people have married someone they met at work but have also been rebuffed.
There are indeed arguments in favor of nurturing and protecting women. I find that women are put under much more stress by a full-time job than men are, cannot handle extreme heat and cold like men can, and obviously cannot lift heavy things like men can (I know, sue me). You cannot simultaneously claim men and women are identical and that women need special treatment--but here we are.
cc at January 6, 2018 8:56 AM
I went through puberty in the 60's in a time when "good girls" didn't have sex. We learned to distinguish between when No meant NO! and No meant "You'll have to work a little harder so I can convince myself that I was talked into it and I'm still a good girl.
It's pretty easy to tell when a woman is interested. The problem is whether or not she will still feel the same the next day and you will have committed a retroactive offence.
I'm really glad to be married and not have to put up with the crap going on now.
Steamer at January 6, 2018 10:08 AM
Patrick: "I've often wondered if this special treatment that feminists demand is not a harken back to the days when women were, essentially, treated as eggshells." cc: "You cannot simultaneously claim men and women are identical and that women need special treatment--but here we are."
It's what I call "have it both ways" feminism, and it seems to be part and parcel with the Third Wave. It's "I want equal rights, but I also want the privilege of getting back on the pedestal when it suits me."
Cousin Dave at January 8, 2018 7:37 AM
Yorkie Lives Matter!
Ben David at January 9, 2018 2:50 AM
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