Pessimistic Politics: Wimin is gud

Allow me to use this as a forum for things that bother me.

I was sitting at the bar last night listening to the two girls next to me talk about, of all things, a lifeguard. "He's so hot," said the one girl, "only I can't tell how old he is. If he's over 25, he's all mine."

This is where I wonder at the requirement of putting limiters on things. Since when did it become manditory for the man to be older than the woman in a relationship? To a person displaying some sense, it wouldn't matter, and yet women do it all the time.

And don't say that girls mature faster than boys. Women have this shoved down their throats their entire lives until it's possible they actually believe it, but it’s not true. If you believe in psychology, then I can give you the address of at least one professor in Kansas who will vindicate me, although I've never believed in psychology to start with. Let’s rely only on my own experience, and I've seen some women do damn stupid things throughout their lives that some men would never think about. I use "some" to make the point that I'm not generalizing, I'm just saying that your generalization is wrong.

But back to my initial gripe. Let’s use my sister as an example, since she's the one that swears the thing about girls maturing faster than boys is a proven fact. My sister requires any man she's interested in to be not only older, but also taller than her (this makes me wonder how Danny DeVito could have ever hooked up with anyone). They have to be white Anglo-Saxons too, because that's just the way she is. In Toledo (because, lets face it, she's not leaving Toledo any time soon, if she ever does at all), this is a strict limiter to German or Polish men, only because there's not a lot of anyone else.

So, my sister is now not allowed to fall in love with anyone who's not a German or Polish man under 21 and below 5'10" living outside of Toledo. Fortunately, I know any number of places these kinds of guys might hang out. Unfortunately, most of them are already married, and the remainder aren't the kind of people a wide-eyed suburban girl would want to get hung up with.

Let’s talk about another thing that bothers me. The other day, I fell upon an episode of Smallsville my roommates were watching, and this particular scene featured a teenage Lois Lane talking to her roommate about whether or not to have sex for the first time. Neither of them would actually use the word, but there was a lot of talk about how her boyfriend didn't think she was ready for that kind of relationship (I think it might have actually been Lex Luthor, but I don't know), and she was starting to think she did.

"Just don't do this because you're afraid you'll lose him if you don't." said the roommate. She also quoted a statistic that most college girls regret doing it too soon.

They went back and forward a little bit about the consequences, but what concerned me the most was what wasn't being said. They talked an awful lot about doing this for their boyfriends, but neither girl could at any point confess that THEY wanted to have sex.

Is this the way it really goes? Girls have absolutely no sex drive of their own, but only end up doing it because someone makes them? Are all women such good little girls that they would never think about doing something like that just for themselves, or is there something horribly screwed up about the WB (yes)? More importantly, is there something screwed up about an entire culture that would spread this kind of message?

I have cited here two ways that women put on an act, even to each other, that has been so drilled into them that what comes out is entirely divorced from reality. I could name others.

I could talk about the way attractive women always seem to have unattractive friends. Why is this, just so they can feel better about themselves? And what do the ugly one’s get out of it, other than the guy who occasionally takes one for the team?

(I can hear my sister now screaming, “I’ll have you know that all my friends are good looking!” What does this tell you?)

I could speculate as to why women radically change the second they get married, and how they seem to lord it over one another, even the ones who swore they never would. Deep down, does a small part of them want to feel like a possession?

Why are women taught to deny their emotions? Is it because, if they had to admit it, sometimes they feel frightened and vulnerable, and just occasionally, maybe, they feel men might actually be stronger than they are?

(Do men ever do the same thing?)

I could talk about all that, but I won’t. I have to pay some lip service to political correctness, and I’m running out of space.

Suffice to say, all such behaviors bother me.

If I have anything to say that this has been leading up to, it is only this: at some point, we're all going to have to learn to lay aside our masks, or we're going to be so tangled up in the rules that there's no longer any way to act like a real person. I, for one, have decided to stop acting like anyone other than who I am. I invite you to join me.