Dear Women, Let's Play Games
If You’ll pretend to be a damsel in distress, we’ll pretend it doesn’t matter
Photo by Evgeniya Litovchenko on Unsplash
Despite advances in women’s rights, some things remain stubbornly the same…
Men still want to be perceived as strong, powerful, and tough minded.
Women still want to be perceived as attractive, loving, and desirable.
And while women are surpassing men in education, careers, and general wealth, they are playing a hypocritical game of saying one thing and doing the exact opposite.
Men are engaging in a similar ruse, insisting they’re looking for an equal partner yet continuing to approach women as sexual objects, often times with arrogance and grotesque misogyny.
Women say they want their man to be more emotionally available and less controlling yet insist on traits like physical strength, toughness, and sexual prowess in their boyfriends and spouses as baseline requirements.
Men say they want a strong, intelligent, woman who can be their equal yet still insist on traits like physical beauty, body type, and submissiveness as baseline requirements.
Many men don’t care if a woman makes more money than they do, or has a higher degree, or better career pathway, but society hasn’t found a way to brand a “house husband” as anything other than a stupid, gender neutral, soft-spoken, loser.
TV commercials love to portray men as knuckle dragging neanderthals — desperately relying on their sophisticated, overly educated wives to help them figure out how to use computer apps, remind them to how turn off the oven, pay the bills, tie their shoes….or speak in complete, grammatically correct, sentences.
One commercial portrayed a hapless husband as barely potty trained.
Men are portrayed as a bunch of useless dunces — not knowing how to behave, what to say, without any discernable, meaningful, lifetime goals other than merely taking up space.
Women are now portrayed as doing it all: raising the kids, conquering the housework, paying the bills, figuring out how to use technology, all with a sometimes sneering, ironic, giddy, smirk.
To be fair, I grew up with commercials that strictly portrayed women doing laundry, making beds, and baking cakes, so the payback from the advertising industry is understandable.
It’s one thing for well-meaning men to acknowledge, intellectually, that they believe women are equal to men but in reality, men have a deep, profound, desire to be in charge of their relationships or marriages.
Men like to be in control.
Funny thing is women like to be in control too.
Women also don’t seem particularly interested in pretending to be some kind of vulnerable, weakling, praying for her Knight in Shining Armor to save her from a life of hopeless despair.
And, men can mouth the words, “Of course, women are equal. Of course, decisions are made together. Of course, women can express aggressiveness, toughness, and control the same way men do,” but there is something inside men that screams, “I want my woman to feel protected and safe with me. I want my woman to need me. I want a woman who can’t live without me.”
I suspect many women still want to be swept off their feet by a man on a white horse —knowing her every wish and desire will be provided by her powerful prince.
And there are plenty of men who don’t lose their manhood just because they are being taken care of by a woman.
But men don’t have the equivalent of what feminism is for women — they don’t have the organization and verbal lexicon to express how they’ve changed…and how women have changed in the way they deal with them.
There is no grand “meninism movement” where men are systematically taught how to process and handle their feelings of masculinity, strength, and need to be in control.
Most men aren’t raised anymore to think of women as barefoot, pregnant and subservient. But nothing has replaced that outdated way of raising boys.
Many modern men want to be equal partners with women but are processing confusing signals from women who want a strong, masculine man — without the aggressiveness — like a beast in a circus — ferocious enough to have a killer instinct but tame enough to not to actually use it.
Men tend to know exactly what they want in a woman: attractiveness, kindness, compassion, and, yes, a desire to be thought of as a strong, masculine, powerful, person — their woman’s savior.
Women sometimes seem to be saying something like, “I want a man who is emotionally available,” or “I want a man who respects me as his equal,” but still crave rock-hard, muscular, six-pack abs to rock their world, physically.
And while feminist concepts sound perfectly reasonable on their face, how do women want this new emotional availability in men to manifest itself?
Should men express their inner fears and worries more forthrightly?
Should we keep a journal?
Should we cry whenever we feel the impulse?
Should men believe you, when you say you don’t care how much money they make as long they love and respect you?
Will you ever understand what it’s like to be thought of as pussy-whipped, effeminate, castrated, she-man — as men who take on traditional female roles of child rearing and housekeeping often do?
Yes, the world is changing, and boys and girls are less frequently being raised with the same fixed gender roles of yesteryear.
But we still live in a world with enormous pressure on men to be….men….and women to be…..women….whatever the heck that means.
Solutions are difficult to come by since men who express even the slightest amount of misogyny or masculinity are deemed “Andrew Tate neanderthals” and men who raise the kids and clean the toilets are robbed of their manhood and made to feel inferior — like a dufus.
It may be men and women need to go through a phase where they consciously play silly but necessary mind games.
Where the woman “plays” the damsel in distress and the man “plays” the masculine hero to satisfy and quench deep desires emotionally, romantically, and sexually.
A kind of wink-wink of sorts.
A temporary suspension of our disbelief — an allowance that we still crave a certain amount of boys-will-be-boys and girls-will-be-girls in our relationships and marriages.
We will get to a point where it truly doesn’t matter whether the man or woman make the money or raises the kids or cooks the meals, but we’re not there yet.
And until we get to that stage of romantic nirvana and equilibrium, we may need to find a way to honor, tweak, and indulge each other's deep-seated needs.
Let your man think he’s tough, strong, masculine and powerful….what’s the harm?
Let your woman think she’s a princess you swept off her feet….who cares?
When push comes to shove, we either adjust or we don’t.
If a couple stays together long enough, gender roles will change.
And there will come a time when nobody judges men and women for breaking the rules of gender.
Nobody will care.
But that’s just step one.
Once men and women get over the stigma associated with gender-entrenched roles in their marriages, they still need to figure out how to handle sexual desires outside of marriage, how to define their partnerships financially, and how to deal with betrayal and jealousy.
But, for now, let’s meet each other in the middle.
When a man tells a woman he loves her for her intelligence and strength, he’s probably lying but give him a chance to walk the talk.
When a woman tells a man she loves him despite being short, chubby, and unemployed, she’s probably lying but give her a chance to appreciate his strengths.
We will eventually have relationships based on mutual attraction, respect, and equally shared responsibilities.
But until then…..We’ll have to keep playing these mind games a little longer.