As a woman who can’t pee while standing, or at least in a way that prevents pee from getting everywhere, I very much appreciate my winter, indoor plumbing for the everyman and all the people who make it happen. And when it’s the holidays, and I’m drinking, I appreciate it even more. Cold outhouse seats suuuuuuck.
Cheers to remembering how much worse it could be and how the little things we take for granted do matter.
Absolutely; I agree. I appreciate your thoughtful response. There are always going to be selfish people and users in every gender, and they do give the whole group a bad rap. I’m never going to say that all women are above the description the poster I replied to gave. And, like you said, we can call these specific people out while still uplifting others who don’t engage in such behavior.
The poster that I was replying to seemed like they had been burned by a person like that, and while I understand that it must be awful to experience being with someone who uses you only for what you can provide and that it can easily make you jaded, this particular post comes off like they have extended that bitterness to the entirety of women, whether or not those women have chosen (or seek) a partner with wealth. It’s frustrating to watch so many great women be reduced to greedy users, and I don’t want to allow the continuation of someone spouting blanket assumptions toward my gender without addressing it. That’s how I ended up with a multi-paragraph response to a simple statement.
But I absolutely agree with your assessment and really appreciate the thought and effort you put into it. It’s incredibly refreshing to be able to have an actual discussion about a topic.
Okay, I’ll bite. The reason women end up choosing to be with a man of means, and I am in no way saying that all or even most women want this, is because we often don’t/didn’t have the opportunity to gain those means ourselves which thereby impacted our ability to survive and control our own lives. This is due to the oppression of the very men that you think we seek. Over the course of thousands of years, men cultivated a world where they steadily sought, gained, and ever increasingly obtained as much power as possible. In order to gain more power for yourself or your group, you have to take away power from someone else.
One of the people or groups whose power was regularly stolen is women. I’m sure this was a slow transition over a long period of time, but it ended with a world where women were rarely allowed to gain the skills or implement what skills they had in order to earn money. If you don’t have the ability to earn money yourself, you are forced to be reliant on someone else who is allowed to earn money. My point being, if you want enough money for you and your children to survive, you basically had to marry as rich as you possibly could.
Enter the modern women’s rights movement. This is where financial freedom became incredibly important to women. We collectively realized that we, much like any other human beings in existence ever, wanted to be able to have some control of our lives, our families, and our fates. This is why we entered the workforce in droves. Women who were suffering under the control of men who beat them and their children, potentially raped them, or demeaned them regularly with the full acceptance and support of society, wanted a way out. The available options were pretty bleak, so we worked in solidarity to find another way to survive with both our physical safety and dignity intact. Now, as an obligatory caveat, not every man was/is oppressive to women. But, since men as a whole created these arbitrary restrictions on women’s lives, they are the ones who have to suffer the aftermath of this system of control that was developed, especially since they are the ones who continue to experience advantages and benefits because of those exact lingering effects.
Most women would prefer to be able to support themselves and their family while having their partner contribute equally, either through earning money or doing an equivalent share of the household/family tasks. But, since something that becomes systemic is difficult to remove, we are still trying to shake the ramifications of this exertion of control. I assure you, most women would rather have less money and more autonomy when given the option.
This brings me to the point you’re trying to make. If the “primary motivator” of a woman is to choose a man who can provide adequately for her offspring, it is only because of the lingering effects of historical oppression that men created in order to exert control over women. It’s very frustrating to be in a world that constantly tells you that you should be pursuing a partner with money so you can have a stable future, but then simultaneously reprimands you for actually making that choice. Just as it’s difficult, but required, to acquiesce to the control of the man who holds your money.
I don’t think it should be presented as though this woman is shallow or terrible for making such a choice. Who wouldn’t choose a life of stability over one of chaos or continual financial stress? I know many men who would make the same choice if offered it. Like you said, I’m sure he was doing a good job of providing for their family financially, but let’s not be too reductive about her choice to have him as a partner. You say it in such a way that you are not only chastising her for her choice of husbands but are chastising all women for prioritizing their and their children’s survival and safety. That is something that comes across as offensive to the entirety of my gender because it implies that we shouldn’t consider ourselves of value or of having worth.
You may be right that this woman chose the CEO of UHC as her husband because of his wealth and ability to support their children and family lifestyle. Most likely, she knew what her husband actually did for a living and it’s effect on the lives of others and chose to ignore or not look into the deaths, horrors, and financial destruction that were created by the company her husband controlled.
But, one way or another, let’s not reduce the struggle that women go through at the hands of historical, and often modern, men to blanketly imply that we are all naturally money hungry and that we are obviously all using men for our own gain. I’m going to go ahead and assume that women, including myself, disagree with such an unfair assumption.
I’ve never seen a truer post.
I’m sure you’re aware, but some people seem confused, so I’m going to post a link here to the poem that is being referenced above.