Saturday, April 28, 2012

You are not man enough!

The above was said to a woman.
Yes that's right. To a woman.

And no, it wasn't meant to be some sort of backhanded compliment.
It was actually meant exactly in the spirit you would expect: as a reproach to a woman who was being judged as a man.
She wasn't aggressive or tough enough.
Not 'balsy' enough to survive in the tough business environment she found herself.

This was on the British version of 'The Apprentice' a few years ago.
The woman in question soon dropped out of the running.

I thought it was a tragedy.
How wrong I was!

In my post about the 'players' and 'officials' of the current SMP, I mention that the State or employer punishes the 'nice girl'.
In this sense, I guess I mean a woman who actually wants to be a woman.

She is at work because she has to be, or chooses to be.
No matter. She does not need to turn into a man to 'get ahead'.
But she is made to feel like she does.
And then when she does, she finds she does not like it.

The above has been said to me in some form or another throughout my own working life.
I have been sent on a 'leadership' course to get me to be 'stronger' on more than one occasion.
But I dug my heels in.
It did not suit my personality to be a 'leader'.
At least not the kind of leader I was being groomed to be.

I am glad I didn't take the bait.
Because I know I can lead when I need to. From the backseat, which is my preferred 'driving position'.

Many women fell into a trap laid out for them by feminism.
Unwitting victims in a cunning plan to rob them of something precious.

There are some women who are natural leaders.
These women are easy to spot. They are great to be around, because they are not working hard to be what they are not.
They are leaders in whatever environment they find themselves.
Some are 'high T' women. Some are surprisingly not.
But they are all women, nonetheless.

And then there are certain women who are some weird form of hybrid between what is normal for a man and what is definitely wrong for a woman.
These women went to 'Feminista school' and graduated with honours.

And now they are just plain scary to little children, even their own.

I see them coming and I have this overwhelming need to run the other way.
If I, as a woman can react to them like this, how much more a man?

It is not these women's fault. Like all of us, they have been tricked by an unseen force.
They were just at the forefront of the proverbial front.

The problem with this scenario is, the effect it had on some men.
Thankfully, this was a minority of men.
The unfortunate ones who were hit with a 'double-whammy'.

These are the men who overly self-identify with women. Because they may not have had a man around to take them by the hand through the walk of life.
These men who also saw how women around him were being masculinised and thought to themselves subconsciously, 'Well, I never! Something's missing. Don't know what it is, but I shall try to find it.'

Well, unfortunately, that something was femininity. The beautiful kind.
And these men went in search of it and lost themselves. Their masculine selves.
Not their fault. The same masculinisation of women robbed them of their fathers, so to speak.
Being good sports, they attempted to right a situation which was not up to them to right.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

These men ended up being deried by both men and women.
To women, they were 'freaks' of Nature. A feminised man. Hello LJBF.
To men, they were also 'freaks' of Nature. A mangina with no masculine soul. Hello lynching by the bollocks on Manosphere sites.

Unfortunate chain reaction.
With many victims.

Mr Lynch has woken up from his slumber. The one that brought him the nightmare of his life.
And now he is angry.
Unlike 'Sleeping Beauty' who was woken by a kiss from a prince, this man was woken by a slap from a masculinised angry woman.
And now he is chasing the same masculinised angry woman round a bed as described here.

Most of his peers successfully manouevred their way through the tricky SMP thing. He was left behind because he had his eyes on women at a time when he should have been watching other men.



There is  a reason I don't like horror films.
How can we stop the production of 'Screech 2'?

We have already listed a lot of the possible antidotes in previous posts.

To summarise them, I shall try to re-construct our list here.

1. Stop telling women to be 'more like a man', i.e. 'Kill your own snakes, never need a man.' This is going against Nature.
In particular, stop using the phrase 'strong and independent'. Most people don't know what this truly means!

2. Planned single motherhood as a 'lifestyle' really needs to go. Our society needs this like a fish needs a bicycle. You already know my thoughts on this.

3. The good Manosphere sites should be essential reading for both men and women. (We can decide amongst ourselves which ones are good for men, and which ones are good for women, hehe).
In this manner, I think men are showing true leadership. A man is really the best mentor for both men and women when it comes to the SMP. In addition, a good mother is essential for a woman too. Both men and women lose out in the absence of a good father-figure. Hence 2. is important.

4. The Angry men should go sort their heads out privately without hurting innocent young women as 'revenge' for the sins of their mothers/big sisters.
Otherwise, rinse and repeat in twenty years.


Does this cover it for now?

We can grow this list together in the comments section.
Or, any howlers above deemed unacceptable can be contested :-)











I know which one I would rather be.

15 comments:

dannyfrom504 said...

there's an orthopedic surgeon that has a rep in my department. she's such a ball busting, narcissistic, control freak. she's the only surgeon that people go out of their way to get out of florouing for. NO ONE wants to be in the OR with her.

your post was written with her in mind, and i'd bet a paycheck that 100% of my co-workers would associate this post with her.

100%

Gob bless you for being a soft (nothing wrong with that btw), caring, nurturing woman. there should be more like you.

Charming Disarray said...

"He was left behind because he had his eyes on women at a time when he should have been watching other men."

I agree with what you're saying in this post, but don't the men in the manosphere also have their eyes on women constantly? Everything they do or say or write about is in relation to how a woman will react. Real men spend considerably less time thinking about women than those bloggers.

Anonymous said...

At the risk of being repetitive:

Be what you want to be, do what you want to do, hurt nothing in the process, and stay true to yourself.

The Navy Corpsman

Spacetraveller said...

@ Danny,

Sadly the woman you describe is all too common.
But...I do know of at least two female surgeons who are great people to be around. One of them has the best sense of humour I have ever come across in any surgeon - male or female.

I just think it's so nice to meet women who are women. Not to say they are pushovers. In fact, these women are far from pushovers.
I look for them and I try to copy them. The others make me cringe and I avoid them at all cost.
Thanks for your compliment.
I knew it wouldn't work for me to be the ball-busting type. It's too far away from my natural personality. No amount of 'leadership courses' will make me change, I don't think. Besides, I like being this way. Even if it means I sometimes pay the price because I might seem like a pushover.
Just got to work out how to stand up for myself without getting stepped on...tricky but doable.


@ CD,

I think The Manosphere was born with these ultra-feminised men in mind. The existence of The Manosphere means that these men now have other men to watch. Rather than women, which never works for a man. He needs another man. And The Manosphere solves that problem.
Yes I agree with you that not all Manosphere blogs are 'kosher'. The bad ones are best avoided. They are just 'vexation of spirit', as someone I know would put it.
But the essence is clear. For that matter The Manosphere provides useful advice for women too, which is nice :-)

If the subject matter of Manosphere sites is women, well, that's a good thing, no?
We are interesting enough for them to talk about us.
I'd be more worried if there was zero mention of women in The Manosphere...


@ NC,

Repetition is the mother of learning.
:-)

just visiting said...

Lord help me from men and women who keep pushing the ballbuster theme. I'll never understand why it's seen as a positive. But, outside of the sphere, this is what's applauded and pushed. Leadership does not mean that you have to become a tranny. I've never had to act like a man in any business that I've owned.

just visiting said...

Number 4, about angry men leaving innocent women alone as revenge. I think for many, their anger blinds them. There are no good women. And a conscience is pedestalizing, or beta, or something. It gets to me sometimes.

Spacetraveller said...

@ JV,

"Lord help me from men and women who keep pushing the ballbuster theme. I'll never understand why it's seen as a positive."

Thank you. My thoughts exactly. Have you noticed how some female newsreaders and reporters come across as 'feisty'?
Sometimes one can see it's not their natural personality. They have had to 'learn' to be like that to get on in their careers.
A friend of mine (the same one who does Tango dancing) has a sales job. Just last week I was talking to her and she was complaining about how her boss wants her to become more aggressive. She is resisting because she knows that would just annoy her clients. She prefers to do her job the more subtle, feminine way, but despite doing just as well as her male colleagues, she is still seen as the weakling of the group!

Re the revenge thing, I have seen reports of 'pump and dump' of very young women on Manosphere sites (one in particular - I won't mention any names but I bet you can guess which one) which disturbs me.
Sure, it's perhaps not new, this behaviour...but there is a sinister twist to it now.

Good Game to allow a man to get himself the best woman he can for a LTR gets the thumbs-up from me (not that anyone cares what I think!). But 'Dark Game' to hurt a woman who is an innocent bystander is not cool. Leave the kids alone, I say.

I understand that some of these 'kids' are far from innocent, sure. But that's just their immaturity showing, no? Some of them are functionally 'parentless' and are 'acting out' and don't have the usual 'b*tch shield' a young woman should have. Sad.
I guess asking men not to go after these inexperienced young ones is to ask a dog not to eat the steak you've just put under its nose.
I guess it's the young women who need educating.
Far too many of them are ruining their lives before it has begun.

just visiting said...

Re: Your friend in sales,

Years ago , I had a sales job where I was the only woman on the team. I was told the same thing, despite being a top producer. I could understand this in terms of not being timid on calls and not taking rejection personally. (Perhaps the closest I will understand men approaching women and getting shot down.) But when it came to selling, no way. Interestingly, my male co workers thought that I had an unfair advantage being female and selling to mostly male clients. I didn't disagree.

Which brings to mind one of your favorite actors. Mark Wallberg is in a movie called Avon Man. I'm pretty certain that if Mark Wallberg showed up at my door selling skin cream, not only would he be led to the couch, but I'd be making coffee.Lol. He'd be rubbing the latest lotion on my hand, and I'd be buying 10 of everything. Hahahahah.

It's funny, but your post idea was something that I was thinking about the other day. A friend of mine who is a single mother has a son who was goofing around with my teenager. The insults were fast and furious, and my friend was horrified. She turned to me and said, "I just can't get him to stop doing that." I told her to not worry about it. It's how boys socialize.

But it got me to thinking how varying degrees of teasing insult is a part of male social skills, whether it's among their friends, or the teasing neg with women. Training that out of a boy could cause a lot of problems.

Anonymous said...

@JV,

The "ball-busting woman as role model" works...

For women who see the professed end-state of Gender Feminism as the ideal. The fact that this end-state is a disaster for most women and Western society in general is overlooked.

For men who find the traditional responsibility of manhood too daunting. It gives them a plausible (and, within some circles, honorable) escape from having to be manly.

For most women and most men, it is a losing proposition.

Bill

just visiting said...

@ Bill

Agreed.

Anonymous said...

Now this is interesting; I teach in higher education, which makes for an interesting discussion of the possibilities.

Higher education teaching has traditionally been a male-dominated field, yet, withing these fields of study, teaching has become more a feminine endeavor, ie., drawing upon my knowledge of my collegues' fields in law, becoming a law professor presents an ideal work-family balance--flexible schedules, with much opportunity to work from home.

Yet, being women in the higher education setting, the students can have stereotypes in their mind that female teachers, especially those who are more traditionally "feminine" are not as competent as the men, especially when they are younger-appearing women, ie., in their 30s.

Yet, they can demand more of female professor to do the "feminine handholding" than they demand of the men. They are more tolerant of obnoxious male professors.

So how to balance that? I go toward the "brilliant, competent and feminine" approach, drawing upon everything--my knowledge of my field, and the way I present myself--dress, comportment.

In dealing with my students, I can appear to be warm, caring, nurturing, yet demanding of them. I don't let them demand too much of me when they are unreasonable. When they want too much hand-holding, I'm willing to kick them out the nest, as I did recently.

Classes just ended, exams are coming up, and the students are getting overly needy, when I know they know more than they think they do. So I cancelled the last day of class and refused to hold a review session, telling them they can see me during office hours.

With review sessions, they become panicky, become less willing to think on their own and want me to just give them answers. I push them stead towards independence and competence; that is what they will need when they leave the classroom.

PVW

Spacetraveller said...

@ JV,

Interesting point about the boys...
Girls 'bond' by building each other up, dressing each other up, eg. applying make up to each others' faces...
Boys bond by beating each other up!
Or at least tearing each other down in some other way...
Healthy male competition or one-way ticket to hooligandom?

:-)

I think you make a very important point about where to draw the line when it comes to 'bad behaviour'. Are we demasculinising men while they are boys?
Afterall, no-one stops girls from dressing up their dolls...
A little girl 'playing house' is not on an express train to teenage motherhood any more than a boy playing with a toy gun is on the fast track to gangster life, surely?



Oh, yes please! For sure, I'd have M.W. rub whatever he likes on my hands :-P


@ PVW,

Would you say that your students are being unfair in wanting those 'feminine qualities' from a female teacher and yet 'penalising' her when she is 'not masculine enough' at the same time?
Would 'equality' as defined by feminism be a reasonable ploy in your specific working environment, or would you say that this is never necessary, and that, as you have managed to, everyone can find the right balance for their own individual selves?

I ask this question specifically with something JV said on an earlier post, in mind...

Anonymous said...

Spacetraveler:

Would you say that your students are being unfair in wanting those 'feminine qualities' from a female teacher and yet 'penalising' her when she is 'not masculine enough' at the same time?
Would 'equality' as defined by feminism be a reasonable ploy in your specific working environment, or would you say that this is never necessary, and that, as you have managed to, everyone can find the right balance for their own individual selves?

My reply:

Yes, I think it creates a double bind, which requires a need for balance. For me, is it a matter of feminism as being unncessary, or is it a matter of qualifying what type of feminism one is talking about?

Absolute equality v. difference feminism, the latter saying that men and women are equal but different, and that these should be calibrated?

PVW

Spacetraveller said...

@ PVW,

Yes, JV once said that it is up to the individual to make up their own mind how to conduct themselves in any given situation. I paraphrase liberally, but you get the picture. NC and Bill also said the same, more or less.

I find it fascinating that in your case you didn't feel the need to be aided by feminism. That you chose to use your own personal creativity to manage this situation.
I think sometimes it's all too easy to seek a knee-jerk, 'fix all' solution, and some of the ridiculous laws we have are a reflection of that.

Anonymous said...

Spacetraveler:

I find it fascinating that in your case you didn't feel the need to be aided by feminism. That you chose to use your own personal creativity to manage this situation.

My reply:

The thing that I think you would find interesting, is that I teach feminist theory and so I have different perspectives on feminism to draw upon.

So I don't draw upon notions of absolute equality when I think about feminism. I don't have to be exactly like a man; I trend in my day-to-day life towards the cultural/difference, that men and women are equal but different, and that differences are not fatal. Some differences can even be beneficial.

The problem is that traditionally, differences have been used to deny women equality when it wasn't relevant, ie., much older laws that denied married women the right to manage their own property that they brought to the marriage or which they acquired during the marriage.

Some of my colleagues are more on the equality side, and there is a difference in how we teach certain topics; they are more bothered by it, for example, the persistence of difference that they experience in their own lives. They are not running to the barricades, though. They just deal with it.

So if my students treat me or think of me differently because I'm a woman, how do I deal with that? I play up the feminine because that is what I am.

I build upon my strengths in femininity at the same time it is balanced so that I'm not overly feminine in a way that garners no respect in a field that has traditionally been male dominated. I tend to think of it as I described it, feminine competence and strength. That is what I draw upon.

PVW