Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls…

(Originally published on LiveJournal, 25 June 2008)

I’ve got some stuff I want to get off my chest about relations between men and women. I’m going to try and keep it rational, and I hope it’ll end up coherent.

On the whole, I have to say I’ve been treated pretty shabbily by women most of my life. I’m quite a sensitive, gentle soul, and my inclinations have always been to the creative and the cerebral rather than the physical – as a child, I’d much rather read a book or draw a picture than play football or climb a tree. My mother disciplined me with guilt and withdrawal of affection rather than punishment, and was much more ready to criticise failure than to praise success. She also brought me up with a rather old-fashioned idea of women as passive recipients of male adoration, the winning of whose acceptance of his adoration was the goal of a man’s life. I’m an instinctive lefty liberal, so naturally I’ve always been sympathetic to feminism. After all, women have historically been disadvantaged in many ways, and in some ways still are. So my relations with women have been characterised, on my side, by guilt for historical injustice, a desire to please women and a need for women’s approval, all laid on top of my natural biological desire for sexual release and intimacy.

You can probably see where it all went wrong.

It’s taken me until my mid-thirties, probably until I got to the point where my libido doesn’t completely overrule my intellect, before I’ve really started to figure it out. Women are morally no better than men, and there are plenty out there who would see my combination of guilt, need for approval and desire to please and take advantage of it mercilessly. Not just would, but did, with a very few noble exceptions.

But the other thing I’ve realised is, if I go out leaving my house unlocked and get burgled, I’ve been a bloody idiot and made it easy for the thief, but the thief still has to decide to nick my stuff. Just because he can, doesn’t mean he bears no moral responsibility for doing so. I’m stupid, but he’s bad. My screwed-up attitudes may have allowed women to take advantage of me, but they, not I, are morally responsible for doing so. So fuck them. The ones who didn’t take advantage of me, who treated me sensitively and respectfully, well, that’s just what I ought to have a right to expect from someone halfway decent, so I no longer feel grateful for that.

I’ve heard all my life about the double standards that are unfair on women, and how terrible it is that men objectify them sexually, but it now seems to me that there are as many double standards that cut the other way, and that women objectify men just as much, just on different criteria. A women who’s not young, slim and pretty may be ignored by men, but she herself will ignore a man who doesn’t have as much social status or spending power as she demands. And as for double standards, there’s the issue of what we still euphemistically call “manipulation”. Female manipulativeness is regarded as an occupational hazard for a man in a relationship, when what it actually is is emotional abuse, and we need to start calling it for what it is and refusing to accept it.

If a man were to object to his wife or girlfriend going out with her friends, and by flying off the handle or sulking when she did so, or even suggested doing to, so so cowed her that she never went out, we wouldn’t hesitate to call that man an abuser. But it’s virtually standard for women to do this to their boyfriends and husbands. How many times have you heard a guy who’s started a new relationship say “it’s great – she lets me go out with my mates”? What’s happened there is, she’s assumed the right to give or withhold permission over his social life, and he, pleased she is currently allowing him to go out, has accepted her right to do so. Sooner or later she will start giving him permission with obvious reluctance and resentment, later throwing loud public tantrums and sulking, until he, out of guilt and fear of upsetting her will end up hardly seeing his friends at all. I’ve seen this done so many times and so expertly it can’t be coincidence. If a man did it to a women there’d be (and there have been) episodes of Eastenders and Casualty devoted to how evil it is. If a woman does it to a man it’s perfectly normal, and if anything he’s to blame for letting her.

Women’s magazines and the self-help shelves of the bookshops cheerfully advise their readers how to “train” a man like a domestic animal. This is what they’re talking about – keeping him so terrified of upsetting her, making a scene in public or withdrawing her affection that he’ll go along with anything she wants. It’s so mainstream we don’t even notice. But it’s abuse, pure and simple.

I suppose I have the abusive girlfriend of a friend of mine to thank for helping me realise that. Last summer I witnessed her throw a monumental nine hour tantrum at a barbecue that left her boyfriend in tears, completely ruined the afternoon/evening for all the other guests, spat in the face of the host who had not only gone to a great deal of trouble to put on the event but had also agreed to put her up for the night, and ended with the police being called, but was also, when seen from the side, completely calculated and designed to bully my friend into submission. It worked. He’s still with her, and still going along with her plans for their life, and several of our mutual friends put the blame entirely on him for allowing her to treat him like that. If it was the other way round, would she take any criticism at all, or would she be seen as the victim of abuse? That’s a double standard that people don’t often talk about.

I’m currently not looking for a girlfriend. I just don’t have the energy to be constantly watching my back.