And of course there's an extra bit to that double bind--it's not just other women who "helpfully" advise this. Some men are quite happy to police it. In my opinion, that's what's behind the whistles and comments women often get when they're, say, dressed in sweats with practically everything covered up, sweaty from work or the gym, and not the least bit dressed in a way that would attract the "why did you dress that way if you didn't want attention" thing. This is more common in some places and situations than others, but I've definitely experienced it. Dress "nice," get harassed and told it's your fault for dressing that way, if you didn't want to be a target for men's desires you shouldn't have dressed so sexy. Dress sloppy or deliberately unattractively, get the same comments. As, it seems to me, a punishment for not making yourself an available target for men's desires.
I think the social pressure to "dress nice" is so strong that once many women hit that double bind, they decide to stick with the "dress nice" end, all the time trying to negotiate that extremely narrow place where they're maybe, mostly, allowed to exist without too much trouble. From that angle, they genuinely are trying to help you because they see that narrow place as the only safe place to be.
So, I'm supposed to do things that make me uncomfortable to make contacts with people who only want to talk to me because I do things that make me uncomfortable.
Yeah. It's like "The Rules," isn't it. Where there were all these things you had to do if you wanted to convince some man to marry you--because A)Of course that's what every woman wants and if you don't find a man willing to marry you, you'll die a lonely failure and B) Men, not being actually interested in marriage or family or anything like that, need to be tricked into it--if you wanted to get a man to marry you, you had to pretend you didn't know as much as you did, and let him have his way over pretty much everything, and bend over backwards to make him feel like he was strong and dominant. Which, all right, lets say that works, it's bound to in at least some cases. You end up married to a guy who thinks you're a doormat and he's happy with that, and you have to spend the rest of the marriage shoring up his sense of superiority and pretending you're not as smart as he is. Hooray, sounds like paradise to me!
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Date: 2012-07-31 01:24 pm (UTC)And of course there's an extra bit to that double bind--it's not just other women who "helpfully" advise this. Some men are quite happy to police it. In my opinion, that's what's behind the whistles and comments women often get when they're, say, dressed in sweats with practically everything covered up, sweaty from work or the gym, and not the least bit dressed in a way that would attract the "why did you dress that way if you didn't want attention" thing. This is more common in some places and situations than others, but I've definitely experienced it. Dress "nice," get harassed and told it's your fault for dressing that way, if you didn't want to be a target for men's desires you shouldn't have dressed so sexy. Dress sloppy or deliberately unattractively, get the same comments. As, it seems to me, a punishment for not making yourself an available target for men's desires.
I think the social pressure to "dress nice" is so strong that once many women hit that double bind, they decide to stick with the "dress nice" end, all the time trying to negotiate that extremely narrow place where they're maybe, mostly, allowed to exist without too much trouble. From that angle, they genuinely are trying to help you because they see that narrow place as the only safe place to be.
So, I'm supposed to do things that make me uncomfortable to make contacts with people who only want to talk to me because I do things that make me uncomfortable.
Yeah. It's like "The Rules," isn't it. Where there were all these things you had to do if you wanted to convince some man to marry you--because A)Of course that's what every woman wants and if you don't find a man willing to marry you, you'll die a lonely failure and B) Men, not being actually interested in marriage or family or anything like that, need to be tricked into it--if you wanted to get a man to marry you, you had to pretend you didn't know as much as you did, and let him have his way over pretty much everything, and bend over backwards to make him feel like he was strong and dominant. Which, all right, lets say that works, it's bound to in at least some cases. You end up married to a guy who thinks you're a doormat and he's happy with that, and you have to spend the rest of the marriage shoring up his sense of superiority and pretending you're not as smart as he is. Hooray, sounds like paradise to me!