here I go on another misandrist rant

The Ballerina Farm, Nara Smith, and every other family influencer divide us young women into two: a part that fantasizes a picket-fence house-wife future, baking muffins from scratch and montessori education for all the babies they pop out; and the others who fear it… terrified of unwanted pregnancy, traumatized by watching marriage and divorce, scared of submission.

We’re at a funny age where the split slowly starts to be revealed; what just a few years ago would have been seen as scandalous accidental pregnancies are now conveniently branded as passionate young lovers eager to skip a few chapters, and the quiet annulments shortly thereafter remain unmentioned. Especially through the bible belt we hear ‘ring by spring’ or ‘graduating with an MRS degree’ . That was exaaaaactly what they went to college for. 

And for the rest of us, we struggle as we walk the fine line between socially acceptable experimental dating, or going off the deep end: 

The Madonna-Whore Complex.

As Sigmund Freud sees it, it means women can be only one of two things: the Madonna saint too pure to touch or the lowly whore men desire sexually, but could never respect.

 “Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love” 

––Sigmund Freud 

As they write from a “feminist perspective” (take that with a grain of salt, published in 1986), William Simon and John Gagnon’s paper “Sexual Scripts” explains that a patriarchal, male-forward culture upholds control over women’s sexual autonomy because the social narrative is scripted to portray the sexual preference of men as favoring casual sex, whilst women favor relational sex.

In layman’s terms, men will fuck whoever they want, whenever they want, have allll their fun, until they finally decide to get their shit together, build their careers, and prepare for the future. 

And once they’ve got that locked in, and only once they’ve absolutely decided they’re absolutely ready to leave the playboy life behind…

The woman they want to lock down is the eversacred Madonna; the pure woman they wouldn’t dare to touch before, regardless of how many good Madonna girls they “turned into whores” through their evolutionary-bachelor process.

Holy fuck is that not genuinely batshit crazy????????

I assume most of the girls here are avid Sex and the City viewers, and honestly men, if any of you made it this far… I would genuinely recommend you watch Sex and the City . Yes, it’s a “girl show”, but for me and many other young women who both feel like the timer just started but the clock is already running out, it truly does ease some of that anxiety. Watching the glamorous lives of women in their 30’s and 40’s navigating friendship, love, and self-exploration (without the negative nudge of life telling them they’re ruining themselves) helps us girls feel less alone every single time a relationship we thought could have been the one comes to an end. I have a love-hate relationship with Carrie, but then I start to wonder if I'm doing the same exact thing. Which in a way, I most definitely am. (I’m way less cool though). 

Sex and the City gives us young women hope, with our ever so slightly (or not so subtly) misandrist views, giving us just one glimmer of hope that the modern woman can someday truly enjoy pure, unadulterated womanhood. I love Samantha for this reason exactly, we have representation on our screen of “women in male fields” but she’s so goddamn elegant and magnetically confident that not a slimmer of skepticism can slide unless you're a jealous hater bitch. For good reason, IMO she’s the best character in the show, the best friend to the other three, and overall has the best storyline. Minus points for Smith Jerrod not being end game. oh my god is that man sexy.

With all that being said, I think women need to stop taking the high road all the damn time to appease the imbeciles that think with their dicks. We’re so used to the emotional labor of needing to make men feel masculine and correct all the time. Instead of making decisions for the benefit of ourselves, we worry so much about making things awkward or being disliked. When we see this as contributing with care, they simply relish in the convenience. Men do not read it as a heartfelt sentiment; it goes straight to their egos. I’d even go as far as saying that when a man says a woman is “easy”, they entirely neglect to realize they are acting the same damn way!!! Has the thought never penetrated their coconut heads to think “hmmm… maybe just she wanted me too?” I’d argue this connects to consent as well. Do men really need a woman to be disinterested and unwelcoming at first in order to feel a sense of accomplishment after they persuade them enough…..?

Having the constant need to bite our tongues when irritated to maintain a feminine image is truly a skill. Even male friends see a woman being assertive as nothing more than a liability. They are so used to the convenience of autonomy that men are completely ignorant to all the hoops we have to jump through just to manage to regurgitate our feelings in a palatable way. And no matter how friendly they are, it truly won’t ever click. I’ve been the close friend to many dudes through college, many of which I’m still very close with. But I’ve learned that they’re not completely inept, in many ways they’re strategic. They go to their women friends when they need compassion and understanding and kindness and patience. When they need someone to listen, to do them a favor, to be there for them. But the second that girl has a cheeky little crashout at the bar and happens to storm out and turn her phone off and angrily smoke cigarettes on the beach ( guilty ;) ) they abandon ship entirely. When push comes to shove, men always move to save face first. 

I'm on this corner of Substack entirely surrounding self-improvement and lifestyle, and every so often I accidentally or purposefully find myself in the romance department. I saw something so interesting; that honestly made me realize why all my relationships go to shit. When a woman does an act of service for a man she cares about, in an effort to show how much she cares, it doesn't register in boy world. They wouldn't do that as a form of expression for eachother, therefore, it doesn't matter if someone does it for them. But for you, the kind caring compassionate thoughtful gift giver or project maker or action doer or cook or baker, your action of kindness actually makes you fall deeper in love with them.

That's horrendous right?

People subconsciously like to help people. Not in the way you'd expect of buying the coffee ordered by the person behind them or helping Jimmy's grandma carry her groceries to her car. No, we, humankind, most of us, are just not that nice. But when someone asks something of us, help me paint this sign, can you help me build an IKEA dresser that has instructions for dummies but somehow they're so fucking difficult to build, or asked to chop the potatoes and tomatoes for dinner, those things make us feel good.

We simply enjoy being needed. We enjoy when our friends come to us to help with homework or choose us to give boy advice. It makes us feel needed, important, valued. Your being needed validates your ego and makes you feel powerful. You're given a choice; and whilst most choices in life don't generally have the instant gratification ability to make you feel warm inside, these choices to help the people we care about do, they benefit us.

I've been binge watching the show "The Good Place" on Peacock the past few months, it's kinda shitty and honestly so repetitive but I havent been able to find a good new show to binge. But in this show one of the character's main personal flaws is obsession over moral and ethical dilemmas. And so I started to wonder, (ahhh i did it again see?) how much does being needed truly impact relationships?

I'm personally a know-it-all and I'm stubborn as shit and I hate to ask for help. I'd rather figure shit out on my own even to my own detriment than to inconvenience someone else. And in my personal experience, not needing emotional help benefitted my romantic relationships, but negatively impacted my friendships. Physical help, like going to Home Depot or installing a giant sunshade over my bedroom at midnight because I was going to do it alone regardless and it was very difficult, or struggling over lack of joint coordination trying to put a privacy film over my three 10 ft tall windows.

Men need it in plain text: when there's a rewarding, tangible success at the end, they can finally feel good about being needed.

Women simply have the it takes a village mindset, where the tether of community stems from an ability to have accessible help where help is needed. I think this is why we enjoy going to the bathroom in pairs, even if it means cramming into a gross stall, or running mundane errands like picking up meds or going to get gas. So I noticed when I stopped going to my friends about boy or school problems, they stopped coming to me too. The existence of emotional need doesn't impede on the strength of the relationship, it tightens it.

......And they say a woman can't run the world?

Sexual script theory: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3718206/