Paradise Preoccupied

I’ve spent no little time taking on men in a WTF-is-with-them-anywhoo? sort of way over the past months, so it’s time I set my blaster on stun and turned it toward my own gender.

As this article suggests, as it is, “Holding Up a Mirror Along with the Bullhorn: Why Women Can’t Lay All the Blame Elsewhere”.

When we consider issues of gender in this country, we tend to assess the progress and prospects of the American woman through an amorphous sort of “look how far we’ve come” or “look how far we haven’t come” analysis, eyes trained on the Man and related cultural influences that have historically beaten us back. It’s a legitimate exercise. And yet, as we do this, I think it’s also valid to consider a related, if more elusive and controversial, component to the contemporary female experience, one we’d much prefer to sweep under the rug. And that’s the degree to which girls and women are — or are not — nurturing each other’s ascent.

To be fair, it’s not a one-side thing, this accusing.

In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman. ~Nancy Astor

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rise above, does it, Girls?

Yes, Madeleine Albright got it right when she said, “There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women”, but another woman who made it big in the man’s world that is politics, Bella Abzug, references another issue …

I prefer the word homemaker, because housewife always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.

Ay, there’s the rub.

So much of my yammering on the duplicitous nature of men has rather ignored the huge part played in those dramas by women only too happy to bounce on someone else’s trampoline.

Although it’s sometimes merely circumstance that leads women into a dally with another’s dolly, there are those who prefer to play with a Ken who has a Barbie:

The hooked and booked man is like a forbidden temptation. That’s what makes him irresistibly attractive to a woman. He stirs a challenge in her. She feels a sense of power in attracting a man who is already taken. What makes him the catch for her is his confidence, experience and authority. The excitement stems from the fact that he’s already taken.

Having seen infidelity from every angle … yes, I admit to taking a wander over posted ground where “No Trespassing” was writ large a few times … I have first-hand experience on both sides of the fence. Although I never set out with an intention to encroach, it happens, and since the end results vary between a shrug, a sly and secret smile and nuclear holocaust I’m not recommending a hop into that pasture to anyone.

Of course, an intentional invasion is a declaration of war and there are none-to-few who quite happily lob a grenade into a mine field, sit back and wait for the massive explosions one would expect from such a provocative act. Sometimes the earth settles and they plow it for a while, but they’re always on the lookout for new incoming that can rip apart their tidy furrows.

Truth be told, women don’t like women much, and trust them even less. Sure, we have girlfriends … and FFS! we do need and treasure them … but women in general? Not so much. If to men we are the sugar and spice of life, to each other we are arsenic; in controlled amounts helpful and healing, but otherwise poison.

Divide et impera, hey, Ladies? That is the result the lack of sisterhood leaves us with. Playing into the hands of men … in any old way … has done us little good as a gender, and it’s only when we make the effort to join hands and hearts and minds that we have any luck at all in climbing ladders or breaking ceilings or gaining control of such basics as our own bodies.

So … Girls … maybe it’s time we developed a new perspective. I suggest this thought: You wouldn’t think of using another woman’s douche bag, so why in hell would you use another woman’s douche bag?

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