Women Aren’t Broken, Let’s Stop Trying to Fix Them
I have a few obsessions and one of them is a reflexive distaste for the idea that any problem that women have can be solved by women being … different. Better. Using different words, getting more education, standing up for themselves. The list goes on and on.
This editorial in today’s Sunday Review articulates one specific piece of this -- the basic idea that if women asserted themselves they would get the raise, the promotion, and would not be a victim of harassment. This is all nonsense of course since women do ask for raises and promotions and definitely say "No." to harassers. But the myth persists -- if only they asked ... more nicely, less nicely, some other, unspecified but definitely different way.
The writer flips this entire notion on its head -- maybe the problem isn’t women. Maybe it’s men. Or, to put it better: maybe prizing everything men do, say, think while also denigrating everything about women is the actual problem.
I remember thinking this when Kate Middleton married Prince William. There were stories about women planning to get up at 3am in the US, organizing viewing parties where everyone would dress up and drink tea, that sort of thing. And then the stories and commentary inevitably turned to criticizing the frivolity of it all. Women just want to be saved by a prince. Caring about a huge, expensive wedding is just so … shallow.
And yet. When men go to some kind of sporting event in a crazy outfit with the teams logo and colors painted across his face that is viewed as silly, perhaps, but not as evidence of some basic lack of value. We certainly don’t believe that a guy who engages in this kind of trivial ritual can’t also command an executive meeting on Monday.