A long way to go November 11, 2008
Posted by alysette in Uncategorized.Tags: bitch, gay marriage, marriage, Women
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In the midst of all the hurrah’s about Obama being elected, you may have missed that California passed Prop 8, which would constitutionally limit marriage to being between one man and one woman.
You may think, hey, I don’t live in California and I’m not planning to marry someone of my gender anyhow, so why should I care?
Oh, if you’re a woman, you should care. You should care deeply, and you should care passionately.
Why? Because how society treats homosexuals is often a mirror of how it treats women. Why are those related? Women are regarded as the submissive sex, men as the dominant. A common perception of homosexuality is that “nature” is turned on its ear – a male is made submissive, a female dominate. Just look at the stereotypes of the ‘swishy’ gay guy who sews and the aggressive lesbian who is an auto mechanic. Jokes about straight men going to prison sum it all up – they don’t want to be someone’s bitch.
No matter where you stand on the marriage debate – or the homosexuality debate – you should look at the passage of Prop 8 and go, shit. We may have come a long way, baby, but we still have a hell of a long way to go. Women still earn less than men. The discrepancy between pay can average 5%, when compared job-to-job, or as much as 23% when considering a wide range of positions. Some of that is because women do go into lower paying fields – but some of that is because what women do isn’t valued as much as what men do.
I’m not sure where I stand on marriage – I find its current inception a very patriarchal construct. The work load (laundry, kids, dinner, cleaning) is still not evenly split: women do most of it. I know people who would never get married again, and I do have gay and lesbian friends who are committed to their partners, and would love the chance to celebrate and cement that commitment.
Marriage has been a business proposition up until the last hundred years or so, not a romantic one: that’s why so many legal rights are tied into it. A friend recently shared that a straight couple who had been together a long time just recently got married for that very reason – she got sick and he wasn’t family, so he wasn’t allowed to see her.
Personally, I think there ought to be a state-sanctioned marriage which would confer legal rights. Religion, of course, is a whole different matter. It always cracks me up when I see people screaming about the religious sanctity of marriage. Why? Up until the 1300s, the Catholic Church was against it. (That’s why Chaucer’s Wife of Bath says she took “five husbands at the church door” – no one was allowed to marry in church).
I’m sure there will be more coverage of this – it is a hot button topic. I realize that you may even oppose it, which is your right. But I hope you sit there and think what this fight says about your place as a woman in this society.
Guess what, girls? We’re all bitches. And we should start to wonder why being bitches is so damned bad.
What about the Nice Girls? October 24, 2008
Posted by alysette in Uncategorized.Tags: bitch, nice guys, single women
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Everyone laments on how women love the bad boys while the nice guys sit at home, doing Suduko and watching HGTV.
Cry me a river.
What about the nice girls? I’ve yet to see anyone lament about how men prefer bitches. Or perhaps the question really is, how do the nice guys end up with the bitches, and the nice girls end up with the jerks? Why can’t a nice guy and a nice girl ever seem to find each other?
Opposites must attract. Some of the nicest guys I know are married to women I find so utterly charmless I wonder if they’re being blackmailed. The only other option is that I have to assume that the quality of their bedroom techniques must be comparable to a porn star. Hell, it must be better. Sometimes that does not bear thinking about. I usually do not get along with these women, so I refuse to ask them for pointers (not that they would give them – and not that I need them). However, I must confess that I do get great joy out of imagining the expressions on their faces were I to walk up and do so.
So what’s the problem?
I am a Nice Girl. How do I know? I suffer from the same symptoms Nice Guy Syndrome presents.
Guys like me. Guys tell me things that they don’t seem to divulge to other women. Guys and I get along just great. Guys don’t date me.
Guys open doors for me. Guys do favors for me. Guys will come into my office and blab my ear off on topics I didn’t even know they pondered (I have heard a guy say that he was getting too fat for his jeans). Guys do not ask me out.
I have concluded two things from this: one, that our system of connecting to people for partnership is seriously flawed (hardly a new or original conclusion) and two, that if I ever want to date, I need to become a bitch. Or more of a bitch. I’ve been working on it, but I’m apparently not there yet. How do I know? Because I’m sitting at home on Saturday night, that’s how.
