As far as I can tell, there's only one universal problem with women: they demand attention. They want you to take them to places and stuff. Who has time for that? There's already so much to do even without women.
I think men are scared of successful women because it is assumed they demand even more attention, and all your precious time otherwise spent in the lab/studio is sucked away from you. Better be wary.
I have no first hand experience, though. As you may be able to tell. ;-)
In my experience, very few men dislike women merely because they have a happ'nin' career (so to speak). Most men DO dislike women who are strident, aggressive, rude, obnoxious, moustachioed, and look like men. Nearly all the women I've ever met who complain, that men don't like "strong" women, tend to associate "strong" with all sorts of qualities that are, to both genders, unappealing.
I would never turn down a woman who had a lot of positive developments going on in her life. In fact, I generally can't find enough women who DO have something more to offer than, merely, the skill at being a rather demure help-meet. Most of the women who are out there in the dating pool seem to think, that teaching gymnastics on alternate Thursdays for an hour to toddlers counts as a "job" and a "career." I go to an office for more than 8 hours a day. Then they want me to clean up as often as they do and to consider their "aspirations" (maybe she'll get promoted to first-graders?! yeah!) as equivalent to a lawyer or doctor climbing the ladder of material and influence success.
If a woman says that the men she meets don't like her "because" she's a successful career woman and therefore "strong," I'd hazard to warn her that maybe the causal link isn't there. Maybe the thing that men dislike about her is the same thing that women dislike about her -- she has blunt, loud-mouthed, under-informed opinions, perhaps; or she does not brook disagreement over the smallest matters, from cooking technique to dog-walking schedules; or she rejects friendships that include emotional sensitivity because they might intercede on her oh-so-important corporate raider schedule at inopportune times; or she believes that material success and craven salary-comparing obsession with promotion is, in and of itself, a true and fair measure of moral worth. If that's what passes as a "strong" woman, then I'm proud to admit I would dislike them too.
But I don't think that's very "strong" at all. I think that's very very insecure and "weak."
I wrote "strong", not strong. It's a code expression denoting the character traits in certain type of women.
The expression comes from the fact that these women themselves think what they exhibit is strength. In reality it is anything but. We use the code expression for compactness and to spare the reader from the gory details. Final Idenity, above, gives us a mere hint of the magnitude of the repulsiveness. But we better leave it at that.
You do not want to go anywhere near "strong" women.
Strong women, on the other hand, we admire greatly. :-)
TTL, Eo, if you'd been madly in love, you would speak differently. Sometimes, one person becomes as important to you as the whole world. And it's meant to be that way. (At least at the start, so that you may learn to live together in good harmony.)
The only woman I'd really be scared of is one who can't laugh. And I've met several of those! :-( Three guesses why I never dated them.
It's funny... I would PREFER a successful woman, precisely because I wouldn't want her to end up helpless should something happen to me. Or to "us". Wanting her secure is part of loving her in my eye.
Pascal, I am all for being madly in love and the person becoming very important to me. And I have been there. But I still wouldn't want that person to steal me away from myself.
Your comment about why you would prefer a successful woman is interesting and thoughtful.
I think the gap between Pascal's and ttl's/Eo's views is an easy one to bridge. Ultimately there's no disagreement.
Human beings have a limited attention span. Because of this we're going to form some bonds with people that go deeper than our bonds with other people. It doesn't mean we hold one soul as being more valuable than another, or that we place our worth as individuals on our relationship to a specific person or group, but simply that we gravitate towards them because of what they share in common with us.
It's not meant to be a divisive construct (though it is often twisted into an "us vs. them" attitude) but rather a paradigm that enables interaction in a comfortable environment. (Which is also twisted into, "be like us or suffer the consequences.")
I've been madly in love before. I'd say I am right now. Though I may, in one of my more poetic moments, describe the object of my affection as being my world, I do not mean to imply that I've given my worth as an individual to that relationship. Neither can it be said that I've forgotten other important things as I've gazed into the eyes of my lover. Just the opposite; a healthy relationship should spur one on to fulfill those ambitions and see the individual will of both parties come to pass. If the woman you're with doesn't understand your passions well enough that she lets you act on them without interference, if she does not encourage you to do so even when it means she gets less attention than she may like, she's not a woman worthy of standing at your side. There's no such thing as a selfish lover. This is the key thing we forget in our relationships.
In our society we romanticize the idea of becoming so wrapped up in another's affection that if it were removed we would crumble and there'd be nothing left of us. THAT'S insanity. But a bond wherein you're completely free, free to share your darkest thoughts and your wildest dreams, free to follow your heart and even walk away someday if you see fit, all without tarnishing the love that binds you... That's something worth having.
The difficulty is that most cannot separate the nonsense we've been fed concerning relationships from what these relationships can, and should, be. We feel we lack security, we want to know that even if we are not loved there will always be people there surrounding us. If nothing else, we can share our misery. Loneliness is a fear on par with death for most people. Instead of joining together in freedom, because we choose to be in each other's presence, we try to bind each other in cages and destroy the key.
This may also be where the fear in alpha males comes from, because I know it does exist. I've seen it first hand. There are men that are legitimately scared of being in a relationship with a woman that has an equal, or better, career. It's because the instinct for freedom is much stronger in masculine energy. If the woman has more money, often a symbol of power and domination in our world, he will be stuck in a cage. It is not his own impotence that he fears so much as what it implies: someone else has control over his life. This does not mean women are content to be controlled, or that they should be. The feminine desires freedom just as much as the masculine. The difference is that many women are left scarred by the doctrine of powerlessness they've been forced to adhere to for so long within a male dominated society. The counter energy to this is the feminist movement. It often goes too far and I'd venture to say it's responsible for a good number of "strong" women in our world today.
I suppose these are the issues basic to all human qualms. Liberty, companionship, creativity, passion, and their opposites, security (slavery), loneliness, staleness, and apathy. With every negative there is one commonality: fear. Because we fear loneliness, we make one person our world. Because we fear loss, we chain that person to us by whatever means necessary. Because we fear we're nothing without them, we make ourselves nothing. Then, if either wishes to move apart from the other, or an accident takes one of them from the world, the other feels justified in saying, "how could you have done this to me?" This, I agree, is madness.
True love knows no such quibbles. It laughs at that nonsense and goes on its way. Wherever love goes there is freedom. I wonder how we ever came to mistake its impostors for it?
By the way, I think the term is clearer if you put the quotes around both words: "strong women". Still a bit subtle, though, it might simply be quoting an earlier mention.
Interesting point about the punctuation. :) I'll avoid "strong" whether in quotes or not for this post.
About the rest of that "attention" stuff -- I didn't get the idea that this was central to the problem which strident, aggressive, rude women are complaining about. I note, for example, that the woman in the initial news story who says she keeps her career secret so that she won't intimidate men is physically unappealing to me (and I guess to a large number of men). In addition, most of the decent, mutually supportive long-term relationships I know out there involve women who have fulfilling, REAL careers and a sense of self-confidence that allows them to require something less than absolute obsession from their male partners.
It's all in the hands of the supposedly "str ... oh, I said I wouldn't use that word.
We have a (rather prejudiced?) expression here in the US South ...
"Fat blondes drivin' fast in mini-skirts."
It's not very polite. I try not to use it. But it does get to the point. There seems to be a particular demographic of rather obnoxious, generally upper-middle-class, generally white, generally blonde women who wear clothing inappropriate to their body type, drive aggressively, and think of the world as a challenge that must be made to get out of their way.
"But I still wouldn't want that person to steal me away from myself."
I believe doing so wouldn't be love. Or at best misguided love... Love is not a prison, a prison is not love. When you truly love someone, in any of Love's forms, you'll want them to be all they can and wish to be.
My own problem, as stated in the article, is: would a successful woman want ME? Otherwise phrased: men often don't know what they want, but it goes for women too.
eolake said... "Sometimes, one person becomes as important to you as the whole world." To me, that's insanity.
There is only one insanity worth living, and that is love. :-) When I say "as important", I mean in feeling, of course. There should never BE a choice to make.
I've been madly in love before. I WAS insane. But I was aware of it. So I never jettisoned my sense, just misplaced part of it for a while. I'd say, when your mind tells you that your heart is right, then it's okay to be insane.
Peaceful Blade said... "I think the gap between Pascal's and ttl's/Eo's views is an easy one to bridge."
Have I ever told you how much I like enthusiastic engineers? :-)
"There's no such thing as a selfish lover."
Not in true love, definitely. Very nice bridge you built us there. I see no default to correct.
As far as I can tell, there's only one universal problem with women: they demand attention. They want you to take them to places and stuff. Who has time for that? There's already so much to do even without women.
ReplyDeleteI think men are scared of successful women because it is assumed they demand even more attention, and all your precious time otherwise spent in the lab/studio is sucked away from you. Better be wary.
I have no first hand experience, though. As you may be able to tell. ;-)
I think successful women may demand *less* attention. But then they also have less to give, and men demand some attention too.
ReplyDeleteI follow you. I could never be bothered to even pretend that one single person/relationship can be more important to me than the rest of the world.
In my experience, very few men dislike women merely because they have a happ'nin' career (so to speak). Most men DO dislike women who are strident, aggressive, rude, obnoxious, moustachioed, and look like men. Nearly all the women I've ever met who complain, that men don't like "strong" women, tend to associate "strong" with all sorts of qualities that are, to both genders, unappealing.
ReplyDeleteI would never turn down a woman who had a lot of positive developments going on in her life. In fact, I generally can't find enough women who DO have something more to offer than, merely, the skill at being a rather demure help-meet. Most of the women who are out there in the dating pool seem to think, that teaching gymnastics on alternate Thursdays for an hour to toddlers counts as a "job" and a "career." I go to an office for more than 8 hours a day. Then they want me to clean up as often as they do and to consider their "aspirations" (maybe she'll get promoted to first-graders?! yeah!) as equivalent to a lawyer or doctor climbing the ladder of material and influence success.
If a woman says that the men she meets don't like her "because" she's a successful career woman and therefore "strong," I'd hazard to warn her that maybe the causal link isn't there. Maybe the thing that men dislike about her is the same thing that women dislike about her -- she has blunt, loud-mouthed, under-informed opinions, perhaps; or she does not brook disagreement over the smallest matters, from cooking technique to dog-walking schedules; or she rejects friendships that include emotional sensitivity because they might intercede on her oh-so-important corporate raider schedule at inopportune times; or she believes that material success and craven salary-comparing obsession with promotion is, in and of itself, a true and fair measure of moral worth. If that's what passes as a "strong" woman, then I'm proud to admit I would dislike them too.
But I don't think that's very "strong" at all. I think that's very very insecure and "weak."
From my reading of the article (and Eo's note), the question was not about "strong" women. It was about successful women, as in earning more money.
ReplyDeleteNo one, of course, want's to go anywhere near "strong" women. That's a given. But I doubt that money wants to go there either.
The question about successful women, on the other hand, is more interesting. Are they high maintenance (in terms of demanding attention) or not ...
"No one, of course, want's to go anywhere near "strong" women."
ReplyDeleteYou think? Personally I don't see why anybody would be interested in being around less-than-strong people of either sex.
I wrote "strong", not strong. It's a code expression denoting the character traits in certain type of women.
ReplyDeleteThe expression comes from the fact that these women themselves think what they exhibit is strength. In reality it is anything but. We use the code expression for compactness and to spare the reader from the gory details. Final Idenity, above, gives us a mere hint of the magnitude of the repulsiveness. But we better leave it at that.
You do not want to go anywhere near "strong" women.
Strong women, on the other hand, we admire greatly. :-)
Yeah, TTL is making a joke by drawing the distinction between (a) "strong" women and (b) strong women. It's all in the punctuation. :)
ReplyDeleteAha. Yes.
ReplyDeleteI don't know any "strong" women. I have lived a sheltered life.
Well, maybe one or two.
TTL, Eo, if you'd been madly in love, you would speak differently. Sometimes, one person becomes as important to you as the whole world. And it's meant to be that way. (At least at the start, so that you may learn to live together in good harmony.)
ReplyDeleteThe only woman I'd really be scared of is one who can't laugh. And I've met several of those! :-(
Three guesses why I never dated them.
It's funny... I would PREFER a successful woman, precisely because I wouldn't want her to end up helpless should something happen to me. Or to "us". Wanting her secure is part of loving her in my eye.
Pascal, I am all for being madly in love and the person becoming very important to me. And I have been there. But I still wouldn't want that person to steal me away from myself.
ReplyDeleteYour comment about why you would prefer a successful woman is interesting and thoughtful.
"Sometimes, one person becomes as important to you as the whole world."
ReplyDeleteTo me, that's insanity.
All the world's love songs and novels notwithstanding.
ReplyDeleteI think the gap between Pascal's and ttl's/Eo's views is an easy one to bridge. Ultimately there's no disagreement.
ReplyDeleteHuman beings have a limited attention span. Because of this we're going to form some bonds with people that go deeper than our bonds with other people. It doesn't mean we hold one soul as being more valuable than another, or that we place our worth as individuals on our relationship to a specific person or group, but simply that we gravitate towards them because of what they share in common with us.
It's not meant to be a divisive construct (though it is often twisted into an "us vs. them" attitude) but rather a paradigm that enables interaction in a comfortable environment. (Which is also twisted into, "be like us or suffer the consequences.")
I've been madly in love before. I'd say I am right now. Though I may, in one of my more poetic moments, describe the object of my affection as being my world, I do not mean to imply that I've given my worth as an individual to that relationship. Neither can it be said that I've forgotten other important things as I've gazed into the eyes of my lover. Just the opposite; a healthy relationship should spur one on to fulfill those ambitions and see the individual will of both parties come to pass. If the woman you're with doesn't understand your passions well enough that she lets you act on them without interference, if she does not encourage you to do so even when it means she gets less attention than she may like, she's not a woman worthy of standing at your side. There's no such thing as a selfish lover. This is the key thing we forget in our relationships.
In our society we romanticize the idea of becoming so wrapped up in another's affection that if it were removed we would crumble and there'd be nothing left of us. THAT'S insanity. But a bond wherein you're completely free, free to share your darkest thoughts and your wildest dreams, free to follow your heart and even walk away someday if you see fit, all without tarnishing the love that binds you... That's something worth having.
The difficulty is that most cannot separate the nonsense we've been fed concerning relationships from what these relationships can, and should, be. We feel we lack security, we want to know that even if we are not loved there will always be people there surrounding us. If nothing else, we can share our misery. Loneliness is a fear on par with death for most people. Instead of joining together in freedom, because we choose to be in each other's presence, we try to bind each other in cages and destroy the key.
This may also be where the fear in alpha males comes from, because I know it does exist. I've seen it first hand. There are men that are legitimately scared of being in a relationship with a woman that has an equal, or better, career. It's because the instinct for freedom is much stronger in masculine energy. If the woman has more money, often a symbol of power and domination in our world, he will be stuck in a cage. It is not his own impotence that he fears so much as what it implies: someone else has control over his life. This does not mean women are content to be controlled, or that they should be. The feminine desires freedom just as much as the masculine. The difference is that many women are left scarred by the doctrine of powerlessness they've been forced to adhere to for so long within a male dominated society. The counter energy to this is the feminist movement. It often goes too far and I'd venture to say it's responsible for a good number of "strong" women in our world today.
I suppose these are the issues basic to all human qualms. Liberty, companionship, creativity, passion, and their opposites, security (slavery), loneliness, staleness, and apathy. With every negative there is one commonality: fear. Because we fear loneliness, we make one person our world. Because we fear loss, we chain that person to us by whatever means necessary. Because we fear we're nothing without them, we make ourselves nothing. Then, if either wishes to move apart from the other, or an accident takes one of them from the world, the other feels justified in saying, "how could you have done this to me?" This, I agree, is madness.
True love knows no such quibbles. It laughs at that nonsense and goes on its way. Wherever love goes there is freedom. I wonder how we ever came to mistake its impostors for it?
Well said.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I think the term is clearer if you put the quotes around both words: "strong women".
Still a bit subtle, though, it might simply be quoting an earlier mention.
Interesting point about the punctuation. :) I'll avoid "strong" whether in quotes or not for this post.
ReplyDeleteAbout the rest of that "attention" stuff -- I didn't get the idea that this was central to the problem which strident, aggressive, rude women are complaining about. I note, for example, that the woman in the initial news story who says she keeps her career secret so that she won't intimidate men is physically unappealing to me (and I guess to a large number of men). In addition, most of the decent, mutually supportive long-term relationships I know out there involve women who have fulfilling, REAL careers and a sense of self-confidence that allows them to require something less than absolute obsession from their male partners.
It's all in the hands of the supposedly "str ... oh, I said I wouldn't use that word.
Well put, Blade.
ReplyDeleteEolake said: "By the way, I think the term is clearer if you put the quotes around both words: "strong women".
You are right. I suppose you could also refer to them as loud women. "Strong women" are almost always loud.
We have a (rather prejudiced?) expression here in the US South ...
ReplyDelete"Fat blondes drivin' fast in mini-skirts."
It's not very polite. I try not to use it. But it does get to the point. There seems to be a particular demographic of rather obnoxious, generally upper-middle-class, generally white, generally blonde women who wear clothing inappropriate to their body type, drive aggressively, and think of the world as a challenge that must be made to get out of their way.
"But I still wouldn't want that person to steal me away from myself."
ReplyDeleteI believe doing so wouldn't be love. Or at best misguided love...
Love is not a prison, a prison is not love.
When you truly love someone, in any of Love's forms, you'll want them to be all they can and wish to be.
My own problem, as stated in the article, is: would a successful woman want ME? Otherwise phrased: men often don't know what they want, but it goes for women too.
eolake said...
"Sometimes, one person becomes as important to you as the whole world."
To me, that's insanity.
There is only one insanity worth living, and that is love. :-)
When I say "as important", I mean in feeling, of course. There should never BE a choice to make.
I've been madly in love before. I WAS insane. But I was aware of it. So I never jettisoned my sense, just misplaced part of it for a while.
I'd say, when your mind tells you that your heart is right, then it's okay to be insane.
Peaceful Blade said...
"I think the gap between Pascal's and ttl's/Eo's views is an easy one to bridge."
Have I ever told you how much I like enthusiastic engineers? :-)
"There's no such thing as a selfish lover."
Not in true love, definitely.
Very nice bridge you built us there. I see no default to correct.