Some Reads for Tuesday

 We can only hope that the religious right, aka "Christian nationalism," actually Christian Reconstructionism, is on the decline in this country.

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I get so tired of the notion that in this economy, all these "single" women are "buying" more homes than "single" men.  It is bullshit, as far as I am concerned.

 The notion "single" women are more likely to be "homeowners" than single men is completely faulty because NO study breaks down "homeownership" by type of housing (stick house on a lot, condo, or manufactured housing), true marital status (never married, divorced, widowed, cohabiting with a man), or region of the US, or whether young "single" women had help through inheritance or through parents financing the purchase. Therefore, ANY claim "single" women are more likely to be "homeowners" than single men is a complete and total LIE. It doesn't pass the smell test because men overall make far more money than women over a lifetime. The great majority of women don't have high-paid "professions" like being physicians or doctors or executives to break into real estate; furthermore, those parts of the country where the minority of women make big money are in areas of the country where housing is most unaffordable and the great majority of these women are married.

To put an anecdote here: I live in a manufactured housing park in southern Oregon, and there is not one place where a never-married woman "owns" the house on the lot. MOST "homeowners" are either men or married couples. The few "single" women have either been widowed are divorced. This is the rule throughout the country. Marriage is still by far the major means of upward mobility for women. I call b.s. on any flimsy-assed "study" that claims "single" women are far more likely to be "homeowners" than single men. It is as good as a lie when this "homeownership" isn't broken down as I have stated above. Being a never-married woman in this country is a one-way ticket to poverty in old age. That is just fact whether we want to believe it or not. It isn't right and it isn't fair, but that is the way our patriarchal society is set up. Furthermore, "owning" a home is a sinkhole of expenses in terms of upkeep, unlike an apartment. In divorces, women typically get the house, especially if there are kids involved. This means these women get a giant leg up in real estate purchases should they sell down the road. This is one of the major reasons this "study" is a pack of lies when there is no study breaking down the true marital status of women, region of the country, or type of housing. "Single" is a complete misnomer here and I think intentionally so, in order to further the narrative that men are somehow "falling behind" women.

Greater "singledom" through divorce and widowhood is the real explanation why more "single" women than "single" men are homeowners.

Why the Hell Bother at All?

Dating a waste of time after 60

Of course "dating" sucks after age 60.  Why the hell would anybody bother to do it at all?  One doesn't have the luxury of time anymore.  Not only that, but who wants to play the stupid games you have to play to "attract" somebody?  For women, it costs a fortune to buy clothes, makeup, and all the other shit men demand women get in order to satisfy the male fetish of "femininity."  It isn't just transvestites who obsess over the femininity crap; most straight men also have a femininity fetish--for women.  That is because most men "other" women regarding them as inferiors to them, and they want to make sure women fit in a certain box in order for these men to understand they are NOT "the other."  Many men are also completely fucked-up with porn, especially men under 40.  I would NOT want to be a young woman in the dating market today.

Getting back to the topic.  Women, especially those who have been married a long time and then find themselves "single" in mid or later life, have a hard time facing reality.  They have been socialized so much to think their sole purpose in life is to be a caregiver for a husband and kids, plus they have gotten addicted to the much-higher standard of living, that they find it hard to grow the fuck up and give up the Prince Charming horseshit.  You can see some women are still desperate for a relationship with a dude and go to dating "coaches," wasting hundreds if not thousands of dollars for "advice" they would get if they got some dogeared self-help book from the 1970s at a secondhand bookstore.  Many of these "coaches" are worse than useless.  I used to subscribe to one of them on YouTube for about a year until I was weary of the same old nonsense she was peddling.  She is one of these New Age-type women who thinks women can find their "soulmate" "at any age" if they only work on themselves and make themselves desirable.  She claims her program is "positive"; in reality, it is anything BUT positive.  When people believe in the b.s. of "the law of attraction," then you know these are the people to avoid.  New Age thinking is rife with this, and it is destructive because in the end, it is all about blaming the person if that person is poor, is sick, or doesn't have a soulmate.

It is all garbage.  The REAL problem women face in dating past 60 isn't that the men are chasing younger women--that is baloney.  Few younger--meaning YOUNG women (under 35)--won't have anything to do with these old coots.  What people have to understand is that Hollywood and the celebrity culture pairings are aberrations and aberrant.  Huge age gaps are NOT common and NOT advisable, especially if the woman is the junior partner, for she is going to end up spending her middle years being a caregiver to a sick or dying man.  Who the hell wants that?    The REAL issue with the lack of suitable men is simple demographics.  Men age quicker, get sick earlier, and die sooner than women.  A lot of them, especially those who worked in blue collar fields, are disabled.  Even if the men are healthy and available, many of them don't bother dating at all, preferring to pursue other interests.  Women all too often have not developed themselves fully and have instead oriented their entire lives and interests around relationships.  They need to knock it off and actually get real interests that are not man centered.  This will give them a lot of fulfillment, and women might find they actually have some untapped talent and interests  which would not surface if they were busy taking a ton of HRT (which I am convinced has a lot to do with these desperate women who want to date again) long past when they should, wasting money on "beauty" products and cosmetic surgery, wasting tons of money on clothes, and wasting money on dating coaches.

People of both sexes, grow up and enjoy the time you have left.

From the article:

Even with that assistance, though, many older Baby Boomers aren’t going on many dates. A 2017 study led by Michael Rosenfeld, a social demographer at Stanford University, found that the percentage of single, straight women who met at least one new person for dating or sex in the previous 12 months was about 50 percent for women at age 20, 20 percent at age 40, and only 5 percent at age 65. (The date-finding rates were more consistent over time for the men surveyed.)*

Indeed, the people I spoke with noted that finding someone with whom you’re compatible can be more difficult at their age. Over the years, they told me, they’ve become more “picky,” less willing—or less able—to bend themselves to fit with someone else, as if they’ve already hardened into their permanent selves. Their schedules, habits, and likes and dislikes have all been set for so long. “If you meet in your 20s, you mold yourselves and form together,” said Amy Alexander, a 54-year-old college-admissions coach. “At this age, there’s so much life stuff that’s happened, good and bad. It’s hard to meld with someone.”

More to the point, it is hard to find anybody still alive, especially past 65. I can't begin to tell "you" how many men I went to high school with who are now dead, both married and single. Many of them have died of cancer, and cancer is bad stuff at any age. Those who survive cancer usually have bodies all but destroyed by chemotherapy and especially radiation.

Another reason why "dating" is a waste of time and an exercise in futility.

*--My comment on the statement in the parentheses:  Men are far more likely to lie about how sexually active they are than women.  Let's quit pretending these men are out screwing everything that walks.  No sane woman would want these breeding grounds for disease anyway.  Men just think they HAVE to lie in order to feel "masculine."

Sexist Fashion Industry-No Surprise Here

Since clothing sizes are not standardized, there is no point for women buying anything other than XS-XXXL or whatever the range is today.  Even that is not foolproof, especially when buying "women's cut" t-shirts, which are not like men's at all and instead are designed to sexualize women by being form fitting.  Even "extra large" is too small on most women.

One of the big problems is almost all textiles have been "outsourced" to Asian countries, especially China, and China's sizing is not to be trusted at all.

The vast majority of women have NEVER had "hour-glass" figures naturally; only about eight percent of women are said to have the "ideal" figure of a "hour glass" shape.  What gets me is the old "beauty standard" of 36-24-36 is extremely tiny and all but impossible for women over five feet tall to attain, especially the hip measurement.  People don't realize how impossibly tiny that is; women who are that small have no hips at all and have extremely small frames.  The bust size too is extremely small--this is not referring to bra size, either, but the actual circumference over the bust, which translated is probably a size 30 or 32 C or D bra.    Yet the fashion industry wants to pretend the "hour glass" figure is "natural" for women. 

The article is deceptive about the prevalence of the "hour glass shape" women.  Women in the past were heavily corseted.  Even as recently as the 1950s, women were corseted into the fashions to get that "hour glass" silhouette.  Women wore scaled-down versions of the old corsets--"corselettes" is what they were called.

Rectangular and apple-shaped bodies are vastly more common and always were with women.  Designers don't give a shit, however, for having unwearable clothes helps to force women to undergo cosmetic surgery or "dieting" to fit the clothes.  What a goddamned scam the "beauty" industry in all its forms is.

All of it designed for the male gaze.  Men, however, can look as shitty as they want to.

Nothing But a Pack of Liars

People lie about it all the time.  Who really gives a shit how often somebody has sex and with whom?

How can these "studies" be remotely accurate?  People have to self-report, and they are simply not going to tell the truth about this topic.  It is impossible to objectively measure this because it is based solely on what people say.

Men especially are horrible liars about sexuality.  There is too much taboo involved if they tell the truth they aren't sexually active at all.  Note how far more men report sexual activity past age 50 than women.  Few men are out poaching much-younger women because very few of the much-younger women want them.  This can only mean men are lying their asses off about their sex lives.

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Not This Again

I noticed the New York Times has a newsletter or whatever that pertains to women's issues, which I am sure includes trans as well, but whatever.  In this one from a couple of weeks ago, we once again get treated to a woman who thinks she has to explain why she has remained single and without kids.  This brief piece also mentions of the possibility of having "rituals" to celebrate it akin I guess to wedding showers and baby showers or whatever.

Why would anybody in 2018 even give a shit what your marital status is?

Sometimes I feel like I am in a goddamned time warp of the 1950s through the late 1960s, when the idiotic sex roles were at their peak.  This woman whines about her status now?  How does she think what it was like when women came of age during that era?  THAT was "stigma."  Try rejecting the mommy/wifey/housewife shit back then.  Believe me, I got it from all angles, and I was a young girl then.  I learned as I went through life not to care what others thought. I charted my own path, and it wasn't a "glamorous" career but a field that I enjoyed doing.   Granted, it was easier after I moved away from the family in 1984 (I returned in 2010,  long after the parents died, because of financial reasons).  But of course women like her don't know what it was like because they weren't alive then.

And why do women at all need to even explain their marital status to others?  What is wrong with telling people it is none of their fucking business?  Why even write an article about it?  It is like the author wants permission from everybody else that it's okay for her to live as she sees fit.

The bottom line is this:  Women don't need relationships to feel "whole."  They don't need men, and they don't need babies in order to be "fulfilled."  Only a society that sees women as subhuman would regard women as merely objects existing through relationships to others.

Certainly a Sign of the Times

Unfortunately, the author of this article about a man who used an online dating site to scam numerous women out of their assets romanticizes "con men" when in fact this guy is not a mere "con man" but an outright sociopath.  There is nothing--NOTHING--admirable or romantic about people who have utterly no conception of the feelings of others and take them for everything.

One family member of mine was taken in by somebody who was somewhat like this man though on a much lesser scale.  He had a few--very few--virtues, and he certainly didn't go around impersonating men who served in the military.  That of course is a crime, and this dude will no doubt will spend a few years in prison at least for it.  Too bad he gets away with scamming the women.

This is one reason why I haven't and never will use online dating sites.  I don't have any idea what is on the other end of the "transaction."  It is way too risky, and I think these scumbags like the criminal in the article are more numerous in the older age brackets.  These guys (and occasionally women scam men) take total advantage of vulnerable women, who still think they are worthless unless they have some man around.  They never learned what I learned at a young age that men are not necessary for women to feel "complete."  This criminal in the article never targeted never-married women.  No doubt he preferred the divorced or even widowed women because they were even more vulnerable to scams than never-married women.

When women are raised in the straitjacket called "femininity," they are sitting ducks for scammers.

More Sexist B.S. from the Atlantic

You'd think the magazine would stop with the sexist hogwash after their embarrassing article about "men's rights" guru Jordan Peterson, mentioned on this blog yesterday.  But no.  Women are treated to still more trash that they "choose" to be low paid because the careers they pick are low paying.  Of course, women choose the jobs, but they don't like being underpaid one goddamned bit.  

Women don't "choose" to be low paid, you jackass. The trades are generally mind-deteriorating, unfulfilling work that causes people to wind up with physical ailments long before their time. The ONLY reasons these "skilled trades" are paid well is they are often unionized and they are almost always done by men. Stop the sexist b.s. that says so-called "women's" jobs are inferior. Jobs like teaching, nursing, librarianship, journalism, social worker, and others are very good jobs, but women don't appreciate being underpaid for them.

Of course, a lot of the "male" fields often are rife with sexual harassment against women.

Women are treated like garbage.  The fact is it doesn't matter what women do.  The male-dominated culture treats women like trash.  There is a reason for it.  The mindset says that men are providers and women are dependents.  Telling women they should go into male-dominated fields doesn't solve the problem of the denigration of women in the labor force.  The problem is the denigration of women's labor.  Many of the so-called "women's" jobs are highly skilled with a high degree of education, yet they are completely denigrated because of the notion all women are married and supported by men.  Any time women dominate a field, the pay and prestige go down.  This is SOLELY due to the notion of men being providers and women being dependents.

The Freedom of Movement

It truly is a woman's issue. Men are never confronted with this at all. They are just assumed to be real people who can just go about their business all times of the day and night and anywhere they want. Women are frequently hamstrung from moving freely about because too many men see them as prey, not as real people.

Of course in some countries it is unsafe for women or anybody for that matter to be alone, but in countries such as the United States, it can be pure paranoia on the part of women. That stems from social conditioning.

Is it any wonder? The reason for all of the idiotic warnings from mothers and sisters, as in my personal life, is not that there are real dangers from some men, but the reality that the warnings are there to keep women in "their place" and force them to be further dependent on men. They can't just be dependent on men financially; that isn't good enough. They have to be dependent on men just to move around.

Well, bullshit to that. I have always done things alone despite the moronic warnings by my mother and especially one of my two sisters. I couldn't travel across the United States alone, heaven forbid in my mother's eyes, when I went to Lexington, Kentucky, back in 1989. I wasn't supposed to do it because women don't do that. She didn't say that in so many words but the implication was clear. Ditto for the fact I had an apartment and lived alone. She read some bullshit article in Family Weekly or one of those Sunday insert magazines that it was "unhealthy," so I wasn't supposed to do it. I did it, of course, and lived alone off and on for many years. Wish I could do it now, I will tell you. So does my brother with whom I live.

The article:

In Washington DC, non-profit worker Hannah Geyer has all but given up her regular 15-minute walk through a park to and from the venue where she performs in a variety show. The groups of men who loiter in the park have literally frightened her off her feet.

“They would get really, really, really close to me,” Geyer says. “It’s one thing if you’re yelling at me from across the sidewalk, because I can just be, like, ‘whatever’ and keep walking. But physically putting their bodies into my path or getting into my bubble when I don’t answer or look irritated at them – which is all the time ... It was [them saying]: ‘I’m gonna stop you from walking where you’re walking.’”


Now Geyer takes ride-share cars, paying US $5-10 each time. But she is adamant that if she still felt safe enough to walk, she would.

And of course "ride-share" cars are infamous for sexual assaults. God damn it, woman, get a life.

That is no life at all if you live in paranoia.

Men Who Insist Women Should Cook for Them Should Be Ditched

It's amazing to me how outdated concepts of sex roles--gender--still persist even though times have so radically changed from fifty or sixty years ago. I was sure way ahead of my time as a little girl in 1963, the year Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique (of course at the time I had never heard of it), when I rebelled against the idiotic "women's work" around the house, being called "lazy" and "worthless" by my abusive parents while of course the males never did one goddamned thing around the house.

After all, nothing was expected of the girls in my family other than find some blue-collar idiot to marry, pop his kids out, and be a stupid servant around the house in exchange for the man "taking care" of them, to use my mother's revolting phrase as if women were little kids or invalids.

Naturally, I rejected all that.

I don't mind cooking for myself. I have never cooked a meal for anybody else, including and especially men, because cooking is expensive and a major time suck, despite all the howls by self-styled nutritionists and health food nuts, many of them MEN, bemoan the lack of home-cooked meals (ALWAYS prepared by women) these days. Furthermore, I am not some man's goddamned servant. If he wants a meal, he can fix it himself.

People always peddle the fiction that eating at home is "cheaper" and cooking at home is "healthier," but neither is true, plus people who make those claims always have sexist motives trying to guilt women to return to their "feminine" roles.

When you figure in the cost of transportation getting the ingredients, the cost of the ingredients and food, the time involved in preparing the food, and cleanup, it isn't cheaper at all. The time factor is the absolute worst when it comes to cooking anything other than basic meals. There is simply not enough time to fix five-course meals for dinner, let alone three times a day.

The last thing women need to hear is some sexist asshole trying to tell them they need to cook meals like their mommies and grandmommies did knowing full well their efforts would NOT be appreciated by their spouses/SOs and their kids.

In times of yore, "homemaking" textbooks like Teen Guide to Homemaking, a copy of the 1967 edition I bought on Amazon a couple of years ago, were very much mired in the 1950s idea that women had to fill all of the spare time available with making the home "arts" a full-time endeavor.

Given how "meal planning" was viewed in this book, that alone was a full-time job.

Here is an example of a "menu," which the authors of the book encourage young girls--and they WERE young girls back then because this was pre-Title IX--to literally have for each meal, and remember, this had to be done THREE times a day, FROM scratch for the most part. You couldn't go out and purchase microwavable meals (which didn't exist) or buy pre-made dessert dishes or pastries.

Breakfast:

Orange Juice
Scrambled Eggs
Bacon
Bran Muffins
Butter or Margarine
Milk
Coffee


Lunch:

Cream of Tomato Soup
Toasted Cheese Sandwiches
Baked Apple
Milk


Dinner:

Swiss Steak
Green Beans
Fruit Salad
Whole-wheat Bread
Butter or Margarine
Baked Custard
Milk
Coffee or Tea

Fuck this shit. I am SO glad that crap went by the wayside although mostly through necessity as women simply don't have the time to do this bullshit anymore.

Widows Aren't the Whole Story, Folks

It is a falsehood these days that women facing poverty in old age are widows who are "suffering" because they took care of kids and helped their aging parents. WHY is this lie allowed to stand? 40 or so years ago, women did drop out of the labor force to care for kids and even their aging parents, but nobody but the wealthy can afford to take much time off of work these days.

The women MOST vulnerable to impoverishment in old age are never-married women. Their numbers are growing, but you wouldn't know it reading this here. The REASON they are vulnerable (and in fact all women regardless of marital status) has to do with the structure of the labor force; that is, the concept of the "family wage," a relic from the industrial revolution and embraced by labor unions in the 20th century that says that men are the providers and women are dependents. Because of this, according to the notion, men deserve higher pay because they have families to support (whether or not this is true with individual men), while women don't need the money the way men do because they are or will be supported by men. Men are the primary wage earners while women are secondary earners. This is a FACT and is demonstrated all across all occupations, and female-dominated occupations DENIGRATED in pay and prestige because of this ""family wage" notion. It lies at the heart of sex discrimination in the workplace. Never-married women face the worst prospects in old age because they make less money, they don't have a second income unless they shack up with a guy (and many do), they are almost always shut out of the real estate market unless they are born to privilege (if they can afford "homes" at all, they are mobile homes or condos, not stick houses) so they don't have that buffer, and they don't typically become beneficiaries in life insurance policies, unlike married women. They can't piggyback on a husband's Social Security, like widows and divorced women who have been married more than 10 years. They are totally screwed.

But hey, people will say, you could have gotten married...Well, what these people are saying is that women have to prostitute themselves for some man in order to survive. That is not an argument and pretty revolting. Women should be able to have lives independent of men and not be forced making poverty wages because of some outdated notion some man is supporting them. Women, regardless of marital status, need financial dignity and respect before and during old age.

Why Did "They" Wait Until After I Hit Menopause to Think of Things Like This?

First there is a movement to not require doctor prescriptions for birth control pills, something that would have changed my life for the better, and now there is a movement to make female sanitary products like pads and tampons exempt from sales tax.

I lived in Reno, Nevada, longer when I was in my "childbearing years" than in Oregon, where there is no sales tax. I must have paid a fortune in sales tax all of those years, some twenty years, down in Nevada, just for the sanitary products.

Sanitary products should also be allowed for purchase with food stamps.

They are a necessity, not a luxury.

Take a look at the map at the link. It is absolutely appalling.

"Basically we are being taxed for being women," Garcia said in announcing the bill. "This is a step in the right direction to fix this gender injustice. Women have no choice but to buy these products, so the economic effect is only felt by woman [sic] and women of color are particularly hard hit by this tax. You can't just ignore your period, it's not like you can just ignore the constant flow."

I would add toilet paper shouldn't be taxed, either.

You Don't Have to Tell Me How Bad It Is For Unemployed Women Over 50

I have been living proof of this for nearly eight years, ever since that worthless school district kicked me to the curb. To date I have never worked full-time again and may never do so.

I was lucky I found what I did, but it is a pittance compared to what I made as a teacher in Nevada.

But while older workers generally have lower unemployment rates than younger ones, those who find themselves jobless, for whatever reason, tend to find themselves stuck there for longer. And women 55 and older who lose a job have more trouble than men getting another one, according to Sara E. Rix, an analyst and former senior researcher for AARP, the lobbying organization for older Americans.

“Older displaced women are less likely than displaced men of the same ages to be re-employed and more likely to have left the labor force,” she noted in a recent analysis.

The type of occupations dominated by women may play a role as well. For example, “public teacher employment is still below what it was in 2007,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “And that definitely disproportionately affects women.”

No, shit. It is still a hard field to get into though the supply is starting to dry up all over the country.

The mentality that women don't have to work because they are being supported by men is not backed by the facts, but the mentality is the reason women, especially never-married women, fare so poorly in old age.

Message to Young Women: Forget About College

THAT is the insidious message conveyed by this utterly crap article from an equally utterly crap book that spews the notion that if women go to college and graduate, no man will want them. College women are such elitist snobs they will not deign to marry men who are "beneath" them, and therefore they can expect to be failures in life because they didn't get some man to support them, and all of the other bullshit messages they get every single time there is an economic downturn.

The motive is to scare women out of going to college and into the labor force because they have no right to take jobs away from men, the people who really "need" the jobs because they have or will have families to support. Jobs are scarce, and therefore women need to be booted out of contention.

It is a bunch of 1950s-style crap spewing the insidious idea that highly educated women will never find husbands, which is completely contradicted by the facts. The more educated the woman, the MORE likely she will be married. People are delaying marriage because of economic reasons and large student loan debt. I know of what I speak as somebody who is never-married, REALLY never-married, and not somebody who is 25, 30, or 35 years old. The author is a lying POS. I KNOW for a fact he is a lying POS because he goes around and claims that Reno, Nevada, a town that has quite a few Mormons, by the way, is one of the best parts of the country for single women to meet single men. I LIVED in that city for 26 years, from 1984 to 2010, did NOT have a college degree when I moved there, moved there for job reasons, and I will TELL you there are NO available, mentally stable men at ALL in that town. NONE. ZIP. Whatever surplus of men there are have to be in rehab or at St. Vincent's, the homeless shelter. There are a high number of alcoholics and people with gambling addiction there. There are also a lot of con artists there. Many men and women have been divorced multiple times, and I am not talking about once or twice. Try three, four, five, or more. Nevada in general, and Reno in particular, is notorious for having a highly transient population. It is extremely difficult to meet others in that town.

I went back to college as a non-traditional student when I was 30 years old in part because of the realization there were no men to be had in Reno. This was long before the advent of internet "dating" and other alternatives. I had to focus on my own future, on my own needs. I didn't necessarily want marriage anyway, but the reality of the Truckee Meadows, with all of the unstable people and no available men at my place of work, forced the situation on me. I wanted to improve my standard of living, plus I missed going to college, so I paid my way through. No, there were no available men in my age bracket at UNR, there were no available men at places where I volunteered over the years. None. Nevada is the total pits in meeting people if you are looking to snag a spouse or even a long-term relationship.

The author of this book is peddling the same bullshit that was circulating around 1986 that unmarried women over 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than in finding a husband. It was an exaggeration, of course, but the notion that "elite" women, whatever the hell that is, would never get married if they wanted husbands was immediately debunked.

It isn't any different now and probably less the case because of online "dating" and other ways to meet people that weren't available 30 years ago when I was at the so-called "marriageable" age.

Pernicious Filth

This stuff is pernicious filth designed for the rest of us to take pity on a tiny number of wealthy women who had the path greased for them, thanks to their connections, and have a lot more financial options. The vast majority of working women are not in the alleged "glamorous careers," which aren't all that anyway, I can tell you, but struggle every single day to survive. They aren't "less ambitious" or "less driven" than the rich Ivy League-type snobs depicted in articles like this. In fact, the "struggles" of the oppressed top one percent or smaller aren't even in the same ballpark as the rest of us. It is long overdue to stop with this nose-in-the-air, I-am-better-than-you elitism. A Harvard study like this of rich, snob types means NOTHING to the rest of us in this country. It is offensive to shove this garbage down our throats when it is irrelevant.

We are supposed to take note of the "struggles" of "elite women" who are so much better than the rest of us. Cry me a goddamned fucking river.

The insinuation of this study, which has been done before with women from Harvard Business School, is just offensive in so many ways. Really, who cares about the fate of certain graduates, male or female, especially those who have the connections to get ahead?

So Why Are Women "Obsessed" With Wearing Makeup, or "Obsessed" With Beauty?

In truth, they have no choice at all.

Women are constantly inundated with propaganda about "looking good" (that is, young, slim, pretty) in order to attract the attention of men. Women are conditioned from the time they are born to submerge all of their own interests in pursuit of the love of a man. Women are told their own bodies are repulsive without makeup, without the right clothes, without high heels (especially the crippling stilettos), without the right hairstyle, if they aren't the right body size. Men won't love them and marry them if women reject all of the beauty nonsense. Women are considered to have a short "shelf life" to attract men. They are done for if they haven't found husbands by the time they are 35 years of age, but the pressure to "look good" goes well into old age in the off chance they can still get a man's interest.

Women will lie to others and to themselves that they use makeup, etc. for "themselves" and how it helps their "confidence," but the truth is, they do it for men. Not for other women, but for men.

It's really a sick society when members of one sex, women, have to go through all kinds of physical torture in order to get the approval, love, and financial support of the other sex, men. Men, of course, are free to look as good or as bad as they want. Women aren't afforded that luxury.

It's just time for a little truth.

"Having It All" Was Always a Load of B.S.

As I wrote on this blog many times, the phrase was always a cruel lie given the way the vast majority of women lead their lives, so this article comes as no shock to me.

Although Helen Gurley Brown was credited with the phrase, she herself did not believe in it and absolutely hated that title for her 1982 self-help book. However, people more concerned with book sales overruled her, and the phrase stuck.

I was around then when the notion was all the rage. It had nothing to do whatsoever with feminism but the delusions of Mad Ave types. In reality, "having it all" was an impossibility, while DOING IT ALL was the reality given how shitty too many husbands acted regarding household responsibilities and child rearing.

On a related note, I have heard it said that because wives typically earn less than their husbands, they would do most or all of the housework to "balance out" the fact they earned less. This is without regard for how many hours out of the week household chores take. The notion is that the man makes more money not because of sex discrimination against women but that he works harder than his wife, so that justifies him acting like a lazy shit at home. The fact is, making more money shouldn't have anything to do with the division of housework. The time factor is.

Anyway, "having it all" deserves to be thrown into the garbage can because it is just another way to straitjacket women.

Are Women Naturally Bitches, Or Is Something Else at Work?

Women can be truly shitty to each other, but then again it's more because of how our society has been constructed for women to hate each other in order to get men or get male approval than anything natural.

When I read stuff like this, I feel like I am in a time warp.

Look, the news isn't good when it comes to women supporting women. But by parading a woman—low hip-to-waist ratio or otherwise—in a purposely provocative outfit around a classroom setting (instead of, say, a bar or a nightclub where such dress might be far less out of place) the researchers in this study were creating a setup that, at best, served to pit women against one another.

Then, when the students reacted quite predictably, the researchers condemned and labeled them—the mean girls versus the slut—reinforcing gender stereotypes in the process.

Perhaps the female subjects in this study are indeed evidence of a new breed of women-hating women. Or perhaps they were simply reacting (as most people might) to a peer dressed inappropriately for a situation.

I hope most young women are way past this kind of crap.

I Might Have to Get Rogaine

after reading some of the comments following this piece about all of the economic "horrors" of single women who make it to old age.

Hell, the author comes across as an even bigger idiot than the commenters with her opening paragraph. She sounds like a clueless trust fund baby.

Poverty has nothing to do with how "savvy" an "investor" you are--it has everything to do with the worsening standard of living for everybody. It's basically out of your control. Horatio Alger is a myth.

In ten years, there will be articles whining about how destitute men will be in old age because that is the trend NOW.

I was totally disgusted with a woman who claimed she was one of those destitute women because she relied on a man to "take care of her":

I am not surprised, sadly. All too many women of this generation discussed still planned on being take care of by a man. All too many women of this generation chose low paying jobs that may not have even offered benefits. All too many women of this generation never learned about money management and preparing for one's financial future. I know, because I'm one of them. I pray for our younger women to educate themselves about their finances . . .choose to be a principal, not a teaching assistant . . . Work as a store manager, and not a clerk. Go for those higher paying jobs and have confidence in your abilities! Most of all, learn to take care of yourself. Mr. Right may never come along, or Mr. Right may one day, unfortunately, turn into Mr. Wrong, and take his money and benefits with him. Be self-sufficient!

My response:

Baloney. That generation of women has mostly died off. The ones coming into retirement NOW are baby boomers--age 65 now means these women were born in 1948--and were the first generation to benefit from gains in women's status. That has been taken away because of neoliberal economic policies which have destroyed pensions, destroyed high-paying jobs, and have destroyed lives.

Women don't "choose" low-paying jobs. That is utter nonsense.

Financial planning to ward off poverty is garbage, and your denigration of traditional women's work is offensive. There are virtually NO high-paying jobs left in this economy. Your post is sexist, cruel, and devoid of any concept of reality. If you are really telling the truth about your status, you are a minority of the "elderly" population today. The fact you claim women "choose" low-paying jobs makes your post highly suspect.

Women don't "choose" to be low-paid given this sexist job market. However, women are catching up with men economically because MEN'S standard of living is going down the toilet.

It won't be long before everybody is poor except the billionaires and hedge fund crooks who are dictating national policy.

It's Sexism, Period

There is no point giving this a contrived term. Women have ALWAYS been judged by their appearance. They can't do anything right. They can't be simply themselves regardless of "beauty," body size, aging, whatever.

Men are hardly ever judged by their looks. They can look like shit and nobody cares.

Women can't do that and not be severely judged.

This double standard is one of the most obvious ways women are still treated like second-class citizens in our society.

Not This Whining Again

The vast majority of men have NEVER had it all because they aren't part of the one percent or fraction of one percent who are in elite fields that are glorified by our society but are truly shit jobs (medicine, law, and the like).

This article is offensive on so many levels, but I have heard this b.s. for forty years.

Unfortunately, many feminists like Caroline Bird denigrated women for having traditional female careers like teaching and nursing and encouraged women to go into "men's fields" because they paid more. And yes, I have read ALL of the important feminist works of that era and KNOW that some of the prominent writers denigrated traditional women's jobs, which was a mistake. They should have been clamoring for better working conditions for women in all occupations instead of glorifying so-called male fields.

Well, guess what? Men's salaries started going south, their jobs started going overseas, and entire fields ended up being glutted. It wasn't such a great deal after all. Companies soon got clever and started paying men less so that they could get two salaries for the price of one.

It wasn't the women's movement's fault they didn't anticipate neoliberal economics.

What makes these conceited women think they are better than the average woman? The average woman works a hell of a lot harder than some Ivy League-educated spoiled brat.

I am sick to death of this whining shit. Walk a mile in my shoes and then you have a right to complain.