“She’s just a woman.”
Men and women alike have been well-trained to hate that sentiment. It’s the kind of phrase you only expect to hear from one-dimensional movie villains these days–the kind who will inevitably get a moment of girl-power comeuppance later on in the film. What was once common sense can become beyond the pale shockingly quickly, it would seem.
Like pretty much everything else feminists accomplished, driving this observation from the male lexicon was a tremendous disservice to men and women alike. Based on the presumption that women can do anything men can do, they encouraged us to judge everyone simply as people rather than as men and women. This was supposed to shatter glass ceilings and usher in a new age of opportunity for women.
The problem, of course, is that the presumption of equality is blatantly false. There is no such thing as a neuter human to which we can compare men and women. When men think there is and try to measure a woman against this fantasy, they inevitably judge her the way they would judge a man. But women are the worst men ever. If judged as men, most women would be considered weak, cowardly, flighty, manipulative, and compulsively dishonest.
So when modern men who were raised to expect equality start forming closer relationships with real women, they often find themselves asking a lot of questions that men from other times and places would have found egregiously naïve:
- Why can’t you just set your feelings aside and focus on the problem at hand?
- Why can’t you just tell me what you want instead of making me guess?
- Why can’t you just pull yourself together and keep going?
- Why can’t you just argue rationally?
- Why can’t you just see things from my perspective?
The answer to all of these is, of course, “because she’s just a woman.” To be sure, any given woman might be able to do any of those things in some circumstances. That doesn’t mean she can do so in the same circumstances as most men, or that she will do so for the same reasons that most men will, or that she will do so as reliably as most men will, or that she feels the same obligation to do so that most men do.
So what happens when a modern, equalitarian young man finally encounters real feminine behavior? Ideally, he’d be able to learn and adapt in a positive way. This man will find himself saying “she’s just a woman” in a way that’s appreciative rather than diminutive. He’ll see the differences, appreciate what she uniquely brings to the table, and find ways to provide the kinds of things she cannot. He can genuinely love women and learn to live with them happily.
Unfortunately, feminists deliberately create roadblocks to this ideal resolution. They themselves cannot admit that equality is an outright lie and do their best to punish anyone who points out that the emperor is buck-naked. As a result, even though they can’t help but notice the differences, many men are burdened with a phony moral obligation to maintain the pretense of equality. They end up having a very hard time coming to terms with the real situation.
So what becomes of these men? Well, on one hand, you get men who end up being constantly disappointed by women. They’ll see the differences, but they’ll end up blaming the women in their lives for them the same way they’d blame a man. Instead of learning how to relate to women, they’ll learn that women are just incompetent and impossible to deal with. These are the MGTOW who eventually just give up, and it is not healthy for a society when too many men check out of life this way.
On the other hand, you get men who end up idolizing women. They’ll see the differences, but they will instead blame themselves for not behaving enough like women. Instead of learning how to relate to women, they’ll try to imitate them (and destroy their self-confidence as a result because men make absolutely terrible women.) These are the soy boys and white knights whose distorted masculinity ironically becomes toxic to everyone in the end. Unlike women, they will become truly weak, cowardly, flighty, manipulative, and compulsively dishonest. Nobody–especially women–really wants men to be like this.
The solution is simple (which is not the same thing as easy.) Men need to unashamedly rekindle some double-standards and reclaim that phrase: “She’s just a woman.” It’s an observation they should be prepared to make rather than discouraged from considering. They need to hear it from their fathers and older brothers–even about their mothers and sisters sometimes. They need to hear it from each other as they reach adulthood. Not as a tool to dismiss women, but as a reminder that sometimes men need to assign a very different significance to their actions. And when they hear a woman complaining about the phrase, they need to learn how to deal with it as pique rather than injury. After all… she’s just a woman.
