Equality of the Sexes Messed Women Up

I wish someone would have told me sooner

Spice Girls, from Vanity Fair

Equality of the sexes messed women up.

And I am talking about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

(Yes, you read that right, and I will explain what I mean.)

Equality of outcome, ie equity, is the obvious progression of feminism, following equal opportunity. Equity means you’re supposed to vote for a female president instead of a male, in order to be a good progressive. Equity means you’re given social or legal privileges to “balance” the scales in the favour of the historically “oppressed” group— here, women.

Equality of outcome is obviously a stupid and dangerous idea, and I am sure I don’t need to explain why to any of you reading this.

But equality of opportunity, you may ask, isn’t that a good thing?

Well, yes. Of course it is. In the legal sense. In discussions about the sexes (which happily, if you’re living in the USA, there are now legally only two again), equality of opportunity means that women and men have the same rights. They can vote, own property, apply for a job, start a business, enjoy freedom of speech, and own a pistol.

But equality in the philosophical, emotional, psychological, physical or social sense, is a lie women have been sold for decades.

As

Bruce Pardy

argued in the brilliant piece, A Letter to my TERF Friends, women have been granted access into men’s spaces for decades, which he suggests is a double standard. When I was a teenager playing soccer on the girl’s team, for example, there was a girl slightly older than me who was star of her own girl’s team. She was so good that she was invited to play with the boys. Though many of them may have secretly felt uneasy or wondered if it was fair, one of the teenaged boys was honest enough to say something.

One day, the coach had remarked how great of a player she was: “There’s nothing the boys can do that she can’t do too.”

Her male teammate smugly replied: “There’s something she can’t do. She can’t pee standing up.”

As brash as this was, he was right. Treating girls as equals to boys, women as equals to men in the social sense, has morphed into the belief that they are the same. It has erased some of the most fundamental differences between the sexes, and the way we operate in the world.

And this has messed women (and men) up.

A Letter to My ‘TERF’ Friends

When I was a girl, I was living in the height of the “Girl Power” movement. Girls can do anything boys can do. Girls are special. Girls can become whatever they want to be. Girls rule, boys drool.

What do you want to be when you grow up? was a normal question posed to girls. This question hides between the lines this statement: What will you do for your career?

I couldn’t figure it out. I wanted to be a singer, I wanted to be a writer, maybe a psychologist, maybe the curator of a museum of fine arts.

I had the brain and grades to enjoy the world of equal opportunity. In high school, I was a student who excelled and graduated at the top of my class. I was in the top 5th percentile for Mathematics in the country, with grades hovering between 98 and 99 in advanced math. The only student whose grades were better than mine, was a math whiz named Peter, who was destined for MIT or somewhere like it. A boy.

I won the award for best writer upon graduation from high school, too. Peter, one day, asked to see my grade on an English essay. Mine was 99, his was 97.

“What is it that makes your writing better than mine?” he wondered aloud.

“I don’t know.” I said.

Why was I slightly worse at math then him? Maybe it’s how we are wired.

Writing is different than Math. Some men are excellent writers, some women are excellent mathematicians. Historically, the best stories in the world are written by men like Tolkien and Dostoevsky. But the J.K. Rowlings and Mary Shelleys are among the best, too. The hard sciences are where men tend to dominate, women making up a smaller percentage of the cohort.

Individual cases of talent and greatness do not necessarily mean hard rules. Women and men can choose whichever career suits them best, but this is diverging from the point I would like to make: women have been told they should focus on their career first, in the same way that men have. And this has caused a great turmoil.

Women, in order to fulfill their career potentials, have struggled with the pull towards the divine feminine that makes it difficult to remain satisfied or driven on their career path. Something is missing, but they don’t know what. In their pursuit, they have repressed a biological and physiological calling that they uniquely possess, obviously, that of maternal creation.

In response to this thoughtful article by

Michael Woudenberg

, Rediscovering the Goddess, I jotted down the following note:

Women have internalized masculine standards through feminism. For example, we focus on what we are going to “do” (career) vs. what we are going to “create” (mother).

Of course, some, many, most (?) women have aspirations other than being mothers. But by being conditioned to bypass motherhood as being “enough”, have we drained our innate creative energy in order to “do more”?

What is enough? What is actually meaningful to us, as women, as creators, as potential mothers?

For the first decade of my adult life, I felt at odds with my inability to figure out exactly what I wanted to “do with my life” (as in, what kind of work did I really want to pursue).

Then I became a mother. Now, it’s less about finding a fulfilling career than it is about finding balance and meaning— between creative pursuits (music, business, teaching, writing), being a good wife, and mothering.

But I still struggle with guilt for not being as focused on the manly things, like bringing home the bacon. The conditioning of feminism runs deep.

I wish someone would have told me this when I was younger. I wish someone would have said this:

“Love yourself enough to stay out of trouble. Seek a quality partner; your relationship will be the most important decision of your life. Pursue your passions and interests without worrying too much about carving out the perfect career. That should come second to finding the right person for you. Become a mother with this person, nothing will make your life as meaningful and beautiful as that. The rest will fall into place.”

Men and women are not equal; they are complimentary. Women, in their quest to become equal to men, have become like men, and wonder why they are dissatisfied. They also demand their men become more like them, and then can’t understand why their relationships are a source of frustration instead of joy.

They have traded reciprocal monogamous relationships for casual sex, telling themselves they can handle it (they can’t).

They have worked tirelessly to carve out careers before settling down, finding themselves in their thirties or forties single, childless, and deeply sad.

Or they have never really figured out a career or been satisfied with their jobs, thinking there is something wrong with them, with the resulting low-self esteem making them prime targets for narcissists, situationships and hollow one-night-stands.

Not all women will choose to become wives and mothers, and this on an individual basis is not necessarily problematic. To each their own.

But I’m talking about trends here. Women have been sold a lie, and they are bearing the consequences.

If instead girls and young women are told to pursue their creative passions while also focusing on finding the right man, nurturing their relationship, and having a family when or if it feels right, they might feel some relief. They may not search endlessly for something that doesn’t make sense to them. They may have children early enough to spend their late 30s, forties and fifties focused on career, once their children are older and independent enough to make room for their own returning independence.

Instead, many reforming cultural feminists are waking up to the lie in their mid 30s, rushing to find husbands and make babies while working, trying to do it all at once. Racing against the clock.

Zoomers, if you’re reading this, don’t worry about your career. Have an idea of what lights you up, and pursue it. Get into a healthy relationship with the right person, it’s the most significant decision you will make in your life. You can change your career path multiple times. Your biological clock doesn’t care about your income or independence.

I’ve done so much more to develop a career since I’ve become a wife and mother than in the soul-searching decades before, and that pursuit has become far clearer and simpler. Motherhood is a literal life force, it inspires women more than anything else in the world. Love, relationships and family provide fertile soil for everything you need to bloom.

It may sound old fashion, and in a way it is. But even if you choose not to have children, your creative energy will be ignited in an environment of love, fulfillment, meaning, and the sacred potential energy of making life.

You don’t need to be more like men, and men don’t need to be more like us.

Equality of opportunity means we have the same opportunities as men. But girls can’t pee standing up, and men can’t have babies.

We are not the same, and that’s a good thing.

A special note to thank

Nathalie Martinek PhD

for a personal conversation which planted the nugget about women’s desire to create and its link to our ability to birth babies. Make sure you follow her newsletter for incredible insights on the human psyche, spirit, and emotional realm.

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