Why Women Are Confusing (And How To Understand Them)
Men are pretty confused at the moment. The good / equalizing news is that women are too. What it means to be a woman has changed dramatically in the last 50 years, and by default, what it means to be a man has changed as well. Just what is the state of play?
Ostensibly, men are in control. They tend to hold more positions of power in politics and industry, lending support to the theory that a patriarchy is ruling the world. Is this really the case? I doubt it. Men also make up the bulk of the prison population. It seems to be that men make up a greater proportion of the outliers in any population, meaning they are more likely than women to be at the very top and at the very bottom
Make no mistake though, we are in the midst of a gender revolution that is no longer considered newsworthy. Women cracked the glass ceilings in the 1980's, everyone made a big deal of the fact that they could now be train drivers, plumbers or prime ministers, and we kind of left it there.
It's not that simple though. There has been fallout from this revolution, and for the most part, the fallout has resulted in widespread confusion for women and men who don't know what to make of others or themselves.
Yes, women gained liberation, but the vast majority of them don't know what the heck to do with it. A few strong, alpha female types are taking leading roles in areas that previously would have been difficult for them to break into. This is a positive effect of the women's liberation movement, and something to be celebrated.
Of course, not all women are alpha female types. There's a strata under the alpha female types who shriek, cackle and try to follow traditional male behavior patterns. They might be caked in make up and be decked out in short skirts, but they act out of a desire to treat men like meat and take pride in carnal conquests. Sometimes they achieve their goal of acting in an archetypal male 'stud' fashion, quite often they cave when they realize that their feelings don't quite match up to the alleged reality.
Then there is another group of women, who, quite frankly, don't want to be liberated. The idea of a strong man taking care of them and directing their lives holds a deep and abiding appeal. These women have a hard time finding suitable male mates because most men have been taught that women like this actually don't exist and so try to be nice and egalitarian instead. Frustrated, these women who seek a dominant male partner often end up in relationships with abusive males whose displays of strength and jealously are mistaken for strength.
As with most pigeonholing, the above falls short of describing all women. Most women posses elements of all three categories, some identify strongly with specific categories. Men have similar issues.
The problem isn't the nature of women or the nature of men, the problem is the nature of the individual. Because it's not accepted for a woman to want to take a submissive role, or for a man to want to take a dominant role, or for that matter, for a man to take a submissive role, or a woman to take a dominant role, people dance around their preferences, denying them to themselves, denying them to their partners and causing everyone a great deal of heart break in the process.
The point of feminism and the woman's liberation movement wasn't to make women the rulers of men, it was to equalize the sexes, even if that equality meant inequality in practice. A man should be free to be a cave man or a sissy in a dress. A woman should be free to rule with a fist of iron, or to play home maker. People find fulfilment in different ways and no two people are the same. One woman might be happy at home, another woman might be scaling the walls within weeks. It's much easier to understand a woman when you look at her as a person, rather than as a cliche. The same rule applies to men too, of course. It is when we start seeing people, and not genders that we really begin to move forward.
