The Problem with Women

(and a tiny little bit about the problem with men)

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The average woman, until art comes to her aid, is ungraceful, misshapen, badly calved and crudely articulated, even for a woman. If she has a good torso, she is almost sure to be bow-legged. If she has good legs, she is almost sure to have bad teeth. If she has good teeth, she is almost sure to have scrawny hands, or muddy eyes, or hair like oakum, or no chin. A woman who meets fair tests all 'round is so uncommon that she becomes a sort of marvel, and usually gains a livelihood by exhibiting herself as such, either on the stage, in the half-world, or as the private jewel of some wealthy connoisseur.

But this lack of genuine beauty in women lays on them no practical disadvantage in the primary business of their sex, for its effects are more than overborne by the emotional suggestibility, the herculean capacity for illusion, the almost total absence of critical sense of men. Men do not demand genuine beauty, even in the most modest doses; they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty. That is to say, they show no talent whatever for differentiating between the artificial and the real. – H.L.Mencken In Defense of Women

Full disclosure here -- I wanted to write an essay about the problem with men. But I realized that no man would read anything I might say on that subject ( because it’s just mommy  telling me how bad I am and who needs that) and too many women would automatically take pity on the men and filter my comments through a haze of sympathy tears.

So I have resolved to provide “balanced” coverage, starting with the problem with women. I know women will be happy to read such because we’re primed for the criticism necessary to buy into some sort of “self-help” offering – how can we improve ourselves if we don’t know what’s wrong with us!? And I know men will be happy because any day with woman-bashing in it is a good day.

Before getting into the nuts and bolts of it, I would like to relate an anecdote from my time as a college educator, teaching poor readers how to analyze written texts in the hopes that they might eventually qualify for obligatory first year English courses. An upgrading course, in other words. Reading for dummies, some of you might say. At the time I believed no one was actually stupid, just too frightened to learn. A fearful mind is a closed mind. One of my tactics was to scare them even more, which often had the result of springing the mind wide open again.

I was in the enviable position of being able to choose my own reading material and brought in a variety of non-fiction materials from magazines, college reading texts and assorted books. One day I came across an old hardcover by H.L. Mencken, who I discovered was an early 20^th century American satirist. (I’d never heard of him, but then, who has?) The book was called In Defense of Women, and there was a chapter in it that was just perfect, I thought, to teach these adolescents the importance of paying attention to detail.

The chapter was full of explicitly stated criticisms of men, so we spent a good few class periods finding them and examining the reasons Mencken had for making them. But as the days went by, I became uncomfortably aware that the classroom environment was changing. The young men were wilting in their seats, having to “take” the criticism because I, a woman criticizing them, had all the power in the room. I think it was on only the second day that all the young women spontaneously and simultaneously leaned over to the nearest boy and draped their arms around him, trying heroically to soothe him, muttering such consolations as “I don’t agree with him,” “it’s not fair,” and etc. It was revolting.

 What I knew, and what was hidden from my students because of their general illiteracy, was that slithering in the shadow of each upright attack on men was a venomous depiction of women. For example, Mencken might have said plainly “men are arrogant,” but then would proceed to describe a devious woman without explicitly naming the crime.

So I directed the class to start reading again, from the beginning, and this time I pulled the shadows away for my students so they could see the portrait Mencken was painting of women.

Everything changed. The clouds blew away, the storm moved on, the men sat up straight again, self-satisfied and congratulatory smirks on their faces. Women were worse than men and the planets were in their proper orbits after all.

And the young women? Forced to unembrace their male classmates, they sat with limp and empty arms, slumped, shame-faced.

I had, I realized, hit them twice – once with the criticisms of Mencken, and once, through my own trickery, leading them to sympathize with the males when such sympathy was misplaced, when it was in fact they who deserved the sympathy.

They got none. Not a single man in the room attempted to console the women for the terrible things Mencken was saying about women.

I don’t need to say anymore, do I? This anecdote actually says it all. The problem with women is that we are conditioned to be uncritically sympathetic to men, at the expense of ourselves. And the tiny little problem with men is that they are conditioned to resist having any sympathy for women.

So twitter is full of men howling with rage at women for calling out their theft of womanhood, of prizes, of honours and for even noticing the statistics on male violence and predation. Beside them, hordes of women scream at one of their own, who had just been fleeced of a trophy, for simply caring about herself, and refuse to acknowledge the truth of the stats. Hands over their ears. La la la la la la.

How is it that this conditioning is still rampant? It is conditioning. It is not innate. No woman is born a martyr, it is not our biological destiny, and no matter what YouTube psychologists might say, it is not evolutionarily beneficial for half the human race – the child-bearing half at that -- to be genetically programmed to sacrifice itself for the other half.

At this point maybe a man will pipe up with something about the male half actually being genetically programmed to sacrifice itself for the other half. Yes. Right.  In that case, we can chat about genetic mutations that cause “protective” genes to convert to “destructive” ones later.

It’s not biology but people who are responsible for this. As hard as it may be to believe, parents, caregivers, teachers, neighbours, the guy who walks his dog along your street, the dog itself, as well as other children, are sending out the signals that they themselves have received. Subliminally most of the time. Words are extra and, in our time and place, pretty superfluous. Those signals whisper to girls the correct attitude to males, and whisper to boys the correct attitude to females. And the hierarchy of gender is perpetuated.

There was too much shame in that classroom for me to burn away their fear. Their greatest shame was not that they were poor learners, but that they were becoming men, or women. I think the greatest shame the women felt though, was that they had been tricked into offering what they must have thought of as their very best gifts – the gifts of empathy and nurturance and comfort.

Imagine Pavlov’s pack realizing they’ve been slobbering over beef-scented stones, for the amusement of their handlers.

We are sponges, absorbing from birth whatever honey and whatever poison is circulating in our culture.

We have to stop this. The girls and women of twitter, tiktok, and all the glittery rainbow clubs are being tricked into giving the best of themselves for nothing. Maybe this – when they come to realize it – will provide the fire for their revolt.

They will be angry. As those of us who already see the enemy — the misogyny that is our culture — are angry.

In the meantime, you can’t do better than crack open the dusty spine of your library’s In Defense or click on the link here and have a little read. Mencken’s criticisms of men and women, even if some seem a little out of date (people change!), are refreshing, as bracing as a splash of cold water and unhindered by concerns about hurt feelings.

And isn’t it better if we can face our faults squarely, without shame or fear? I’m going to say it, yes, how else can we evolve into the wise elders our culture so badly needs?