Yesterday someone told me, in a list of things, that I appeared to be ‘difficult to please’ (or that this was the version of me he had created in his mind). It was all in light conversation, but it made me think about the things I have heard all my life, about all the things I read – about all women – particularly this week when International Women’s Day hit.
“She’s so difficult to please.”
“Really? Do you even know what she wants? Did you ask? Did you, more importantly, listen? Did you even try?”
Somehow, dude, just by existing in the world you didn’t please her. Imagine that.
My Facebook feed and other online outlets were filled with stuff about women’s day, women’s strength and the fight for equality. (We’ve got a long way to go as long as sexist buffoons like Polish politician Janusz Korwin-Mikke exist.)
I had and really still have almost nothing to add to any of it. I wish none of this ever needed to be discussed. International Women’s Day was always one of those things that seemed like such a big deal everywhere except America (where I was educated). I only knew of its existence at all through my Russian studies, when it became clear that women’s day was supposedly such a big deal in Russia. Little did I know it was ‘big’ everywhere. It figures that it doesn’t register with me even now, after almost 20 years away. “What? It’s women’s day? So?” It doesn’t register with me – not because I don’t think it should exist. Not because I don’t believe in feminism or equality. Of course I do. But it’s like with all days set aside to “honor” some group, accomplishment or … even love itself, it sequesters it. Sure, it’s meant to shine a brighter light on something (or sell more greeting cards and flowers), but does it excuse everyone from thinking about women and equality the other 364 days a year?
It’s obvious to say these things – and it is obvious that it is so much more complex than being reduced to memes and 10,000 articles on variations of the same theme, as the women’s-day-dominated internet was. Subtly discriminatory practices and ripples of inequality are insidious – they are everywhere (and this, of course, is applicable to the ‘enlightened’ northern European world I live in – I can’t speak for anywhere else). And they live every single fucking day.
After reading what was meant to be a comical take on women/feminism (a primer for men, I guess), I questioned what is actually wanted/desired versus what people say they want. As long as a woman is called out for “being difficult to please” because she has preferences and reasons for them, we’re still far from total parity.
“Our ultimate aim, when it comes to men, is to find an amusing mate we can have sex with, then sit on the sofa with, watching re-runs of Seinfeld and eating a baked potato. Discount all that Christian Grey/abs of steel/”bad boy” shit. Our priorities are: 1) Kindness; 2) Jokes; 3) High tolerance of carbs.”
If this is true, why is it that women as a huge, whole, general population have this reputation for “being difficult”? (Surely some other part of the article, such as “Periods”, cannot account for all of it.) Could it be that things that are perfectly logical to women, such as having a closet full of clothes yet still have nothing to wear, sound illogical until you take the full picture into consideration (as the article’s author does): “What we mean is, “I don’t have anything to wear for who I need to be today.” Most men will never live with the same kind of scrutiny women do for how they look and what they wear and what it says about them. All these decisions are loaded for women.
I guess what I am trying to say is that these things that seem frivolous and vain are often informed by so much societal and cultural baggage – if you’re not a woman, you are not going to get it. Or at least if you do get it, you’re going to get it intellectually only because you’re probably never going to experience anything in the same way. I’m sure we appreciate that you try to ‘get it’, but there are experiences all of us can never have and lenses through which we can never see.
I read a recent interview with Allison Crutchfield in which she touches on this – men are never going to understand the woman’s reality (any more than we will understand theirs), but there is a certain self-congratulatory strain in some men, which wouldn’t be half so bad if they did not proceed to hijack the discussion:
AC: I think it happens all the time. I can only speak to my experience, but I think that I had a few different relationships with people—platonic or romantic—that inspired this song. I’m happy to say that those relationships have all kind of ended, slightly because of this. But that line is specifically about just actually having a conversation or a discussion about feminism, and about my experience as a woman, and literally being talked over by a man who had not had that same experience. And that was really difficult for me.
I feel a little bad calling him out on this, but I had a really hard time watching that show Master Of None. I like Aziz Ansari, but the feminism episode of that was so hard for me to watch. It didn’t necessarily inspire this song, but that is something I can point to where it’s like, Aziz Ansari just gets feminism all of a sudden and is just yelling about it from the rooftops. I feel like a lot of people, a lot of men, want this pat on the back for correctly identifying how they feel about feminism, how radical they’re being and how much they “get it.” That is just really gross to me. That’s what that line comes from. It’s about feeling like I’m surrounded by these people who really think they’re doing the right thing but they’re completely socialized to scream over women who are trying to talk to them about their actual experiences and also sort of borrowing the reality of a woman’s experience.”
In fact, as a case in point, a lovely former colleague (a man) shared:
“Well, that didn’t take long.
Staff chat about International Women’s Day descended into a group of men mansplaining why any institutional solution to the shortage of women in tech is mathematically bad and undermining the goals or equality.
The actual women in tech who weren’t being listened to mostly dropped out early and got back to work.”
I am no expert on this subject. My own attempts to undertake formal education in gender studies ended in frustration when many of the readings were just slightly less venomous than Andrea Dworkin’s infamous “sex is just rape embellished with meaningful glances” comment. My only claim to being able to talk about this, and it should be enough to have an opinion, is that I am a woman. Rambling on about this is not an edifying experience; it’s just that this stuff is so virulent but often just beneath the surface.
Am I difficult to please? No more than any other woman who wants to be heard and have choices.
Photo (c) 2017 astoller used under Creative Commons license.