I’m thinking once again about the “myth of male weakness” this morning.
Jonah Goldberg has a piece this morning with the whoppingly patronizing title “Where Feminists Get it Right.” (Don’t get excited, folks. Hell remains unfrozen.) Jonah concludes his piece, which largely focuses on the now-familiar yet ever-depressing litany of abuses against women in the less-developed world, with this gem:
Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and “Lord of the Flies” logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.
Give Jonah credit. He’s not blaming women directly for their failure to civilize men. Rather, he’s blaming certain cultures that fail to give women sufficient authority with which to do their civilizing. But that doesn’t change the basic problem in his argument, based as it is on pseudo-science, Victorian sentimentality about women’s “nature”, and a William Golding novel about pre-pubescent boys.
As I sigh at Goldberg’s piece, I think about an email I got from my friend Emily. She recounts a Facebook exchange she had with a female friend of hers, a fellow Christian. Em’s friend posted on her status update that she was “really disappointed w/the female human species.” When Em inquired why, and whether her friend was also disappointed in men, she got this response:
It appears as if men are weaker when it comes to sex, money, power. With that I am realizing that it is the women that should be held at a higher standard because we need to set the tone for our weak counterparts. If women looked at themselves as holy temples and didn’t allow anything less than excellence this may force men to step up their integrity and priorities…
We could go through the gospels, pointing out over and over again the places where Jesus demands that men show self-restraint comparable to that demanded by women. But I’m not just interested in responding to a fellow Christian. Rather, what concerns me here is one of the most troubling aspects of the myth of male weakness: it creates an atmosphere in which both men and women feel justified in policing other women’s behavior.
If men cannot control themselves, and women can, then it is (as Emily’s friend suggests) women’s task to set the limits for men which men cannot set for themselves. All bad male behavior, it quickly follows, is invariably a woman’s fault. We’re all familiar with the loathsome notion that a cheating husband or boyfriend deserves less ire than the woman with whom he cheated. (The “he couldn’t help it, but she ought to have known better because she’s a woman” theory). The end result is a culture of mistrust and hostility among women.
A great many of the young women I work with claim to have trouble liking other women. Call it the “most of my good friends are guys” phenomenon, which is sufficiently common as to merit a word other than “phenomenon”. Many young women — even in feminist spaces — will list the countless ways in which they have felt judged, policed, or betrayed by other women. Many will say things like “I expect men to let me down. But when a woman hurts you, it’s worse because she doesn’t have an excuse.”
The point that feminists try and make in these discussions is that the myth of male weakness is at the very root of this internalized misogyny. The logic is inescapable. The less self-control women believe men have, the less they hold men responsible. The less they hold men responsible, the more responsibility they ascribe to themselves and to other women. The less they believe in men’s capacity to self-regulate, the more hostile they are trained to become to any woman who seems unwilling to engage in the rituals of female self-policing. At its most extreme, every mini-skirt becomes not only a threat to the fragile order women have established for mutual protection, it is perceived as an act of both betrayal and hostility towards one’s sisters. The hisses of “slut”, “whore”, and “bitch” soon follow.
We often refer to men as “dogs”. It’s not really an insult. Rather, it’s a artful way of excusing bad male behavior. We don’t rage at a puppy for piddling on the floor, or chewing up our favorite shoes. The dog is doing what its biology intended it to do — and that biology trumps its will to please. To call men dogs is to invite us to view them indulgently, as well-meaning creatures ultimately incapable of thoughtful self-regulation. But while men have the excuse of being, alas, too much at the mercy of their impulses, we don’t grant women this same good-natured toleration. Women who “slip up”, or who “tempt” men to slip up, do so consciously, with malice, and — we believe — the capacity to do otherwise. Our vituperation for these sorts of women is rarely restrained.
Are men responsible for the fragility of female friendships? Individually, perhaps not; collectively, yes. To the extent that we outsource our self-control to women, we make it impossible for women to do anything but police each other. When we insist that testosterone or Y chromosomes trump our self-control, we divert blame for rape and abuse and infidelity from where it rightly belongs. Men’s fear of women’s anger (a subject I’ve written about before) dovetails nicely with the myth of male weakness. By insisting that we can’t help what we do, we suggest that our wives and mothers and girlfriends direct their rage towards the women who tempted us, who “made us fall.” We get to dodge accountability,and we get the added special bonus that we increase women’s suspicion of other women.
It is nearly axiomatic that women who have strong relationships with other women will be less likely to stay in abusive relationships with men. Women’s solidarity with other women is a prerequisite for feminism and for the transformation of the social order. This doesn’t mean that the provision of justice is solely a woman’s job. But it does mean that men’s capacity to continue to exploit and abuse women hinges on women’s difficulty in standing united against the myth of male weakness. Though few individual men are conscious of it, the principle of “divide and conquer” plays to men’s advantage here. And it is our collective belief that women are the more responsible sex, the less libidinous sex, the less rage-filled sex, that is at the root of so much intra-female hostility — and at the root of so much male privilege.
Hugo,
I find this ironic:
“Are men responsible for the fragility of female friendships? Individually, perhaps not; collectively, yes.”
This is, mind you, in a column regarding the “collective guilt,” so to speak, of women.
I could ask, “Are women responsible for bad behavior on the part of men? Individually, perhaps not; collectively, yes.”
I take it you would agree with the first quotation; I hope you would, because it is yours. But, I suspect that you would disgree with the second.
It appears you think men are collectively responsible for women’s behavior, but women are not collectively responsible for men’s behavior. How do you distinguish between these two statements?
-Jut
Jut, you’re derailing us a bit here. This is a feminist blog, concerned with feminist issues, for commenters sympathetic to the basic tenets of feminism.
I’ll help a bit: It’s like race. Whites collectively oppressed blacks in a way that blacks did not collectively oppress whites. There is no reciprocity of the sort you imply.
Please keep the rest of your comments narrowly on-topic.
Goldberg says “Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow.”
Which would be… Goldberg, a man, setting expectations for male behavior. Very low expectations, sure, but not ones set by women.
Which is, of course, the nice little trap men like Goldberg want to set for us: expect to be able to indulge your more infantile and/or animal impulses; then either blame women letting us live up to the expectations we ourselves set, or else resenting women for using sexual access (the only leverage we permit them to have) in order to get us to act like actual adult men. The minor “upside” for anti-feminists like Goldberg is that men are absolved of all responsibility for, well, responsibility. The infinitely larger downside is that women are expected to have all the responsibility but none of the authority (we just call them “bitches” when they try to make us do the task Goldberg assigns them.) The end result isn’t even zero sum, it’s negative sum: grown men and women are reduced to what Cathi Hanauer cleverly phrased “the bitch in the house” and “the bastard on the couch.”
Quick question for Goldberg: what does he imagine, say, Aristotle, or Augustine, or, Confucius or, I dunno, Maimonides, or even Tolstoy would think of his assertion that women are a civilizing influence on men? I happen to think all those gentlemen were dead wrong to believe men were uniquely moral and civilizing compared to women, but Goldberg and his desperately anti-feminist ilk just as wrong to imagine their fantasy of essential gendered women’s morality is any more real.
Screw Goldberg and the coin-operated horsie he rode up on.
figleaf
Fig: that’s the comment of the year so far. Thank you.
I think I can go one better: Goldberg actually has it exactly backwards. It’s not that women civilize men, it’s that oppressing women uncivilizes us.
When men have the idea that we automatically have dominion over roughly 50% of humanity it’s easy to think “why not have dominion over all of humanity.” And when men believe we can automatically ignore the agency of half of humanity, rob them of their power, and use them as objects of our own convenience or gratification it’s a quick leap to “why not make similar use of all of humanity?”
Where Goldberg goes wrong is he thinks that just giving women enough power to better withhold sex creates civilization. Instead it’s that taking away any power from women as a class makes us all uncivilized.
And once you get that it’s easy to see how, in this case, his plea to give women a little bit of power so that they can trade sex instead of just having it taken from them, is completely anti-feminist. And uncivilized.
figleaf
Ha! I love your comment figleaf. As a philosophy student, it’s extremely popular of Enlightenment and ancient Greek philosophers (with the exception of the Stoics and perhaps Plato) to insist that women are morally inferior to men. 100 years later and the exact opposite dominates the public consciousness. Although, there still seems to be hold-outs: I know of a great many men that old that men are uniquely rational while women are hormonal and over-emotional. That’s old style misogyny. The psuedo-liberal (read: not liberal) version seems to be the line that one is totally a feminist or feminist sympathizer because they hold women collectively responsible for the behavior of men — unless women actually do go about controlling and policing the behavior of men, then we’re all “bitches”.
It’s all very arbitrary and up to the whims of shifting cultural norms. We combat one version that impedes women, only to have the exact opposite spring up in its place, although with the same suppressive effect. Hell, it’s not even rational. Nobody with a lick of sense could seriously hold such views if they properly examined them. They’re just too internally inconsistent, not to mention easily defeated with readily available empirical evidence.
Still, the meme continues. I’m certain (but this is the pessimist in me talking) that if we ever do succeed in making the view Schwyzer detailed unpopular, someone will come along and negate it but in such a way that it still manages to oppress women. That’s the only rationale behind such views: the commitment to the eternal division of the sexes through the collective devaluing of women’s morality and agency. Other than that hatred, they have no content.
JutGory, I’m going to try to answer your question, but not in quite the same way that Mr. Schwyzer did. (I’m going try to answer it because I think there’s an important distinction which your question brings up and in spite of the fact that I promised myself a few weeks ago that I’d keep my typy fingers to myself and would give the commentating on blog sites a rest for a month or two. Or three, or four. Oh well.)
I personally wouldn’t go so far as to say that men, collectively, are responsible for the fragility of female friendships, nor would I go so far as to say that women, collectively, are responsible for (fill in the desired quota of) male misbehavior. But there is an element of truth to both those charges, and it’s an element of truth which can be mined out of the same vein. It’s the word “collectively” which is the key term. “Collectively” is exactly the right word to use here, because the type of responsibility which can be attributed to both men and women on this score (men because they discourage closeness between women, women because they enable bad male behavior) is the kind of responsibility embraced by people who buy into a system for the sake of what they can get out of it, even though the price of entry to the game may surpass any of the benefits derivable even by those who play successfully and well.
Guys know or imagine they know that if they set a low bar for themselves they’ll be better able to beat out the competition–not among people generally, but among other men, where real bets are called in and real favors received and where the competition counts. Women, OTOH, like to assure themselves that if they are content to don a mantle of all-purpose do-goodiness they will magically be imbued with some of the qualities of the fabricated mantle, that by acting “good” they will, in fact, become good. Never mind that this flat-out doesn’t work. (And never mind that much of what the purported “goodness” of women comes down to is: look pretty, smell nice, don’t upset the apple cart. Keep yourself down, and, if you can, keep your man down right down there with you. No wonder there’s an aspect to this guys don’t like.)
Not all men buy into this particular male strategy, and not all women buy into its feminine counterpart. But enough individuals, on both sides, invest enough time and energy into their respective plans to keep the schemes running. Besides, even though we as individualistic Americans don’t like to admit it, groups have a life and a vitality of their own. The collective reality of groups often overrides the individual realities (strategies, experiences, life choices, etc.) of the individuals who make them up. Even more: these two time-honored, if not terribly effective, male and female gambits have gotten typical enough of “men” and of “women”, or have been accepted as being typical enough of “men” and of “women”, to start to be accepted as basic components of what men and women are. Men regard everything in life as part of a system they have to outsmart, and women are pathetic, if driven, control freaks. That’s just the way she rolls. Male and female created He them.
I admit that isn’t a universally accepted cosmology. But it comes close enough to being that to fuel a continual, and very real, race to the bottom for men, and to fuel an equally continual, if somewhat more spurious, race toward a factitious “excellence” for women (which selects, more than anything else, for the talent for never being seen at a disadvantage). A woman has got to look as though she works hard (on her appearance among other things) and as though she never takes or gives herself a break. Whatever qualities she may have or lack in addition to that deserve and get no notice and no mention.
Now that I’ve said all this, you might well ask, what’s my gripe? A conservative, like Goldberg, would posit that this is a system which works well enough for most people. I’m not a conservative: I quarrel with it because I don’t think it does work well enough for most people. Men are expected gravitate toward women sexually but to be cold toward women in all other respects. They are expected to love their buddies but to perpetually want to outwit them. They are allowed to shine in the hot pursuit of money, there is that, but then too, there’s only so much room at the top, which means (unfortunately) that most men are going end up losing at the only contest they’re permitted to admit matters. Women are expected to be human greeting cards, contentless advertisments for fellow-feeling and altruism and generalized niceness, all of which notionalities are generally perceived to fall distinctly into the category of Sucker Bait. That’s why I find fault with this way of doing things: nobody wins. Everybody, or practically everybody, ends up getting had.
And it’s a set-up which can’t really be changed through individual action. Enough people, collectively, are going to have to try to change the rules that the game starts to become unplayable on its former terms (at which point characters like Goldberg will always be at the ready, chanting: “You broke it. You broke it. Look at what you did!! And it was all working so well before you came along!!” The only solution is to ignore them, even though, as I have pointed out, what they say does contain an element of truth (even if it’s one part gold to about four hundred parts dross).
Another fair thought-storm. Some memories pop into my just-got-home, tired head.
As a pre-op trans-neuter, I’m officially a conscientious objector in the battle of the sexes. Like many others I wish that peace could be made. But I feel like it’s going to take a while when I read of the social nastinesses you all describe. –I find analogies close at hand–men are often said to be slobs and smell bad and so on yet this is just considered funny by the people who say that, they are either men poking fun at themselves (and still in control) or women who aren’t taken seriously anyway; meanwhile, women are treated as dirty and nasty and needing special deodorants for certain areas–how many have wondered where are the dick deodorants for guys?–and yet this is not funny, it is not even all that conscious. In this particular example, the genders despise each other, yet somehow the oppobrium falling on women is less funny, more serious, less questioned. Partly because it dates back to ancient taboos, while the myth of men being crude and rude is more recent.
Another example–on a message board dealing with mechanical hurling, most of the denizens thereof were men, and one time this woman comes on to talk about her machines, and one of the men says it is so great to have a woman here, they are a civilizing influence, etc., and I (though I remained silent) was annoyed. That lady came there to talk hurling, not to civilize people in need of civilization; why should she have that extra duty? I decided long ago to civilize myself, and limit dealings with the uncivilized [fortunately the hurling board was decent enough.] One wonders if some women might intentionally become barbarians just because they’ve had enough of this expectation. As if even half the population could realistically be expected to civilize a group that’s on a race to the bottom, especially when that group is the other half. Anyway, a person who has seen the infighting between girls in school or women in an office will know that these are not civilized by any stretch of the mind.
I also notice that some of the women who are quickest to slam men as a group, for whatever reason, are the ones that sound least likely to identify as feminists–this despite the myth that feminists all hate men.
I’m not prejudiced–I get ticked off at everybody! But I am glad that people here are dragging all these undercurrents out in the daylight and stomping on them. It makes me have hope that all the crap about gender and race will someday be swept away, and we can turn our attentions to straightening out the idiots who cut down too many trees, the morons who jabber on their cell phones on the bus, and the imbeciles who spit all over the sidewalk.
I do agree with your closing statement, but I certainly hope that there is way at some point to break this awful chain. However, I have no sympathy for the men who hold no self accountability. It is a sick world we still live in, where men believe they can get away with almost anything, and in some senses they can. I never thought about the way in which men react to being caught, but certainly do try and shift the blame don’t they? If a man can say that his libido is what made him do it, the heat of the moment, or whatever other reason he may come up with, it instills displaced anger of the girlfriend or wife to the woman or women with whom he shared his indiscretions.
In general men need to stop. It really has gone on for too many centuries. There is no excuse for lack of self control and blame needs to be placed where it is due.
Off topic: You may enjoy this interview series of professional women in online journalism.
http://www.ourblook.com/Table/Gender-Studies-and-Media/
It was conducted by the University of Iowa Gender and Mass Media Class this past fall and offers some unique perspectives and insights to the future of online journalism.
I have no intellectually or philosophically significant comment to make, other than this particular read was eloquent, perfectly articulate, and eye-opening. Thank you.
In regards to the author’s comments towards Jut, I think it’s foolish to have an article on the Internet and then qualify that the comments must be “sympathetic to the basic tenets of feminism.”
Not everyone will agree wholeheartedly with your statements. I certainly don’t agree with every statement you make, but I see where you make valid points. I also see that there are flaws in your logic. It is not simply males or females accepting or condoning the behavior, but rather society’s furthering of ridiculous ideas. Newer studies have found the women cheat almost as often as men, now, so it’s not like women can take the moral high ground in every situation.
And in many situations, I see women being responsible for the fragility of female relationships. Their tactics are emotional, rather than physical, and tend to have more lasting effects on another person’s psyche. The bitchy behavior of many women results from the belief that they must manipulate in order to get what they want. That need to manipulate comes from their mothers, their female friends, generally not men.
In all, people need to be kinder to each other. Underlying in gender and race arguments are the ideas of division and a focus on the differences, not similarities. People are assholes. Not just women, not just men, but everybody.
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2009/03/23/we-have-used-our-power-to-dominate-and-our-weakness-to-manipulate-more-on-the-egalitarian-vision-and-the-fundamental-sinfulness-of-traditional-gender-structures/
Manipulation is not encoded in women’s DNA. It’s a learned response to male domination, Betsy. It’s a survival strategy.
What Betsy said in the last paragraph. Maybe we can all come up with some better survival strategies.
“Many young women — even in feminist spaces — will list the countless ways in which they have felt judged, policed, or betrayed by other women.”
Doesn’t a lot of this behavior stem from what is learned and modeled to them from their mother’s and sister’s, and even their relationships with their fathers? Doesn’t all this modeling of behaviors start in the home? I believe it does.
“And in many situations, I see women being responsible for the fragility of female relationships.”
I agree with Betsy’s statement above and I also agree with this observation, “Their tactics are emotional, rather than physical, and tend to have more lasting effects on another person’s psyche.”
Myths abound about women’s behaviors as well, one that springs to mind is how much more nurturing women are supposed to be given that they become mothers. Those myths hurt people and quite frankly, I’ve met some men who were far better and more generous emotionally than some of the women that I’ve met. Those are personal experiences and I don’t feel comfortable making sweeping generalizations.
Hopefully, Betsy’s point wasn’t to suggest that manipulation is encoded into women’s DNA, but I do not buy into that it is a learned response to male domination.
As far as manipulation goes–narcissists are pretty adept at exploiting people’s emotions. Manipulative people are just expert at fighting in subtle, and almost undetectable ways, but they are still fighting for position, advantage or gain. That is why they inflict a lot of psychological harm.
That is also why it feels so wounding to women when other women-their friends betray them, because of all the myths that abound about women’s emotionally superior nature, how much more nurturing they supposedly are. It sets people up for not being able to detect competitive and interpersonally manipulative behaviors and not being able to detect covert aggression which is at the heart of most manipulation.
Yeah, I have to agree that “Manipulation” is NOT a survival trait against male “Domination”. People, of both sexes, Manipulate because they find it works and most times the person who they are doing it to never notice it. Saying manipulation is a female’s way to fight off male domination smacks of “Copping out”. If someone’s is Manipulating someone, should we hold them responsible for that rather then saying “It is not your fault, you are just a poor female/male and don’t have any choice.”
Interesting stuff, Hugo and Commentors…
And interesting points in all of it. I think it is true that women often police each other- as a result of expectations of men, but often I wonder when does the time come for people, as individuals, men and women alike, to realize that excuses such as “ingrained morality/immorality”, “natural tendancy towards manipulation vs natural tendancy towards physical violence” and all those other things are merely that: Excuses. Used all too often as cop-outs for less than acceptable behavior. Do I think men and women are socialized differently when it comes to expressions of physical attraction, love, aggression, all of those things? Absolutely. Do I think failure to comply with that prevailing system of socialization is regarded with disdain and often punishment? Absolutely. However, I also think way too often such things are used as excuses.
How all that goes on and works is a fascinating subject however, and it’s interesting to see it discussed.
I don’t much beleive that men are “coded via biology” to various behaviors, nor do I really think women are…because I have seen so many expections to that “rule” it merely makes no sense to me at all.
Your takedown of the last paragraph was spot on. But….
If you will forgive me a brief derail, Hugo, I really have to take issue with your characterization of feminist issues in the developing world as “familiar” and “depressing.” Your language sounded very dismissive to me, which I found troubling. Most discussions of sexism could probably be characterized as familiar and depressing–what of it? The fact that the issues discussed in Goldberg’s article do not routinely affect people in this country does not mean they are less important than our privilege-laden discussions of sex and gender roles.
Lucy, that’s fair — I was referring (inartfully) to the way in which the media tends to trot out particular instances of women’s suffering abroad as a trope to make American women seem positively ungrateful if they complain.
Well said, figleaf.
Betsy, manipulation is what people to do get power when they can’t get it openly. Do you really think that it’s only women who encourage manipulative behavior in other women?
1. Nearly all people seek power over others. We can safely leave out the saints and sages who are on a different path; their impact may be large but their numbers are small.
2. People seek power in the easiest, lowest-cost way they can find. Burly jocks often find power can be attained through intimidation and fear. Clever nerds often find power can be attained through manipulation and deception. And so on.
3. Many people are expert at explaining why their power-over-seeking behavior is in fact selfless or for the greater good. Occasionally these people actually believe this.
4. Many people are expert at explaining why their power-over-seeking behavior is in fact created by the wicked actions and bad intentions of other, putatively more powerful individuals. Quite often, these people actually believe this.
5. Most ideologies can be adapted without difficulty to serve the rhetorical needs of power-over-seekers. The trade unionist needs power to protect the workers from the wicked capitalist. The capitalist needs power to protect society from the wicked socialists. The technocrat needs power to protect society from the wicked rent-seeker. The rent-seeker needs power to protect himself from the depradations of the market. All of these rationalizations, regardless of the truth of the scenarios they narrate, are simply excuses for power-seeking behavior.
Reading this I couldn’t help but think about Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old South Hadley, Mass. student who took her own life after she was taunted mercilessly on Facebook. This had a very tragic outcome, yet I see and have experienced very similar behaviors all the time. They may not result in death, yet they are destructive. The bigger question here is about what we model to our children, who turn into teens and ultimately adults.
Is this a case of as Betsy writes, “And in many situations, I see women being responsible for the fragility of female relationships. Their tactics are emotional, rather than physical, and tend to have more lasting effects on another person’s psyche.”
Or is this ultimately the result of as Hugo states, “It’s a learned response to male domination. It’s a survival strategy.”
Is the survival strategy driven by an obsession with winning? Everything in modern society is geared towards a cutthroat, competitive lifestyle which I believe rewards those whose bullying ways put them on top (and manipulation is a form of emotional bullying). This obsession with winning creates a culture of cruelty. I see very little value placed on how we conduct the fight for personal success and dignity with competition which is fair and disciplined.
I think that we may have some misunderstanding going on here re: manipulation as survival skill. I don’t think anyone is arguing that a given act of manipulative behavior is necessarily motivated or excused by male oppression. Men and women seek to control others for a wide variety of reasons. BUT cultural power dynamics and gender expectations dictate how much starting leverage people have and what are deemed acceptable ways to go after things that you want. Manipulation is a survival skill in that women are routinely trained not to be direct and confrontational in seeking what they want, so manipuation is an alternate way of getting what you want. I’m the first to say that manipuation and mind games can be incredibly damaging. But I think we would see a lot less of it if it was more widely socially acceptable for women to be direct.
I respectfully disagree, Lucy. Male or Female, manipulation is the route of lies, half-truths, and ruthlessness. People manipulate because when you do it “correctly” (For lack of a better term…), then you get what you want and with the least amount of effort.
We need to start treating people who manipulate, of BOTH sexes, as we would anyone else who is doing something deplorable. Much in the way that physical bullying is condemned, we sure as heck need to condemn this form and all forms of emotional bullying.
After all.. if we except one form, we need to accept them all. And I am just not ready to do that.
Blunthammer: I completely agree that emotional bullying is unacceptable. I was a victim of plenty of name calling and back biting in school, and I am in no way trying to excuse such behavior. Deliberately huring other people is not okay. Period. I spent most of my childhood hanging out with boys because I couldn’t handle the psychological torture that some of my female peers put me through. I do think that the form that bullying takes is influenced by cultural norms.
This line, Hugo, reminds of the weird sort of narcissism I’ve encountered around alcoholics and addicts with some familiarity: being “the piece of crap that the world revolves around.” It’s vanity wearing a hairshirt.
Men and women each compete amongst each other for social position and the undivided attention of mates. It’s part and parcel of being the social animals that we are. Men’s forms of doing so are generally more ostentatious and direct, while women’s are usually more sublimated. But neither sex is “responsible” for the members of the other sex trying to one-up each other (well, not except perhaps in the Darwinian “who gets to reproduce” sense). Men are not “responsible” for women blaming each other for the fact that men generally don’t fulfill women’s perennial fantasies that the men who are with them at the time are going to be there “forever and ever.”
I agree, Tom.
At some point adults are responsible for our own lives. If men, genuinely, are responsible for women’s collective behavior, then women, collectively, are not adults.
I prefer to think that women are adults. Certainly the (chronologically adult) women I know are. “See what you made me do!” stops being an acceptable thought around the age of two.