You could post endless lists on how being you is impossibly hard.
Or you could go to a psychologist.
As I keep saying, I am yet to meet a single male chauvinist pig who’d manage to insult me as much as these damsels in perennial distress.
23 responses to “Damsels”
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I’d be okay with those kinds of lists if they are just a list of dangers to watch out for, like “watch out for the pothole on the right bend of the road”. But these women don’t seem to talk to each other as human beings at all, at least from what I recall.
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They don’t see themselves as human beings. They are a compendium of shortfallings.
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In their world, a man is the standard and they castigate themselves for any deviation from it.
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Is that what they are doing? I seriously misread the whole thing for an awesome amount of years, since that would never have seemed possible to me.
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Look at the part about menstruation. They treat it as weird and disgusting.
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Oh, I must have missed it.
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I must admit that I had some very strong ideas about menstruation, in the sense that I didn’t like it. After some time, I concluded that since I was paying monthly installments to a company I hadn’t signed any contract with, I should find out what that company had available for me to take or exploit. Then I found my answer: sexual pleasure. I resolved to become hyper-sexual to take whatever I could back from this economy. After all, I had been paying so heavily into it, against my will. This solution made life quite interesting indeed, and probably had massive benefits, as I am not a Christian consumptive anymore. Also, I was able to gain great insights into socialized and religous repression on the basis of my strategy. In the end it paid off.
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I had a totally different thing going on, because people WERE treating me very poorly indeed, and I was told that if I wanted to be treated as a person, I would have to earn it. So I kept trying to earn it. Bizarre story but true.
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A little (okay a lot) off topic.
This week’s episode of This American Life has a great story on how a person constructed an identity for herself that turned out to be ….. not entirely acurate.
thislife.org (episde 539, The Leap, the segment in question starts 35 minutes in).
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Who are these “damsels in perennial distress”? Women who have the urge to constantly bow down to the expectations of “society”, yet they hate themselves for doing so, and bully other women who don’t behave like that? Once I was also like that, but I didn’t bully those who weren’t like that, I only mocked myself and the other damsels. After a while I had enough, and quit. Now I’m a human being who finds that list incredibly boring. A robot could write better.
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“Women who have the urge to constantly bow down to the expectations of “society”, yet they hate themselves for doing so, and bully other women who don’t behave like that? ”
– This is a very concise and meaningful definition.
“After a while I had enough, and quit. Now I’m a human being who finds that list incredibly boring. A robot could write better.”
– Exactly. The list does sound robotic because people who create such lists empty themselves of all meaningful content to become robots producing lists of grievances addressed to the universe. The author obviously imagines herself as some sort of a feminist but look at how she goes back to the ancient and deeply patriarchal vision of menstruation as “the curse.” We were given by nature or God, whatever it is we believe in, female bodies. Why not just accept that fact already and learn to live with it? And maybe even enjoy it.
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I don’t think I will ever enjoy menstrual cramps, and I’m more than convinced that they were invented by Satan itself, but I agree that the constant victim attitude is quite annoying. Victim “feminism” is just the other side of male chauvinism, basically both see women as incompetent losers, but they tend to jump down the throat of anyone who even drops a hint about it.
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And men are not likely to enjoy balding and erectile dysfunction. Yet I still haven’t found any self-pitying lists on the subject. And mind you, menstruation happens once a month and ends at 54. Balding and ED are always there and only get worse. 🙂
“Victim “feminism” is just the other side of male chauvinism, basically both see women as incompetent losers, but they tend to jump down the throat of anyone who even drops a hint about it.”
– Exactly.
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I didn’t know that being a woman was such a veil of tears for some. The challenges on this list strike me as exaggerated. For example, I didn’t get the memo which says that women weren’t supposed to ask for raises (LOL!). If you want a raise, ask for it. If the boss says no – as they like to do, for both male and female employees – find another job that pays more. Honestly, I find a lot of these complaints downright silly.
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“Honestly, I find a lot of these complaints downright silly.”
– You are telling me? Totally silly.
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“As I keep saying, I am yet to meet a single male chauvinist pig who’d manage to insult me as much as these damsels in perennial distress.”
Have you met Lincoln University’s school president, Robert R. Jennings?
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I’m wondering how much of this is caused by the modern trend to blur the distinction between sex (discrete biological categories*) and gender (culturally specific attitudes).
Identity abhors a vacuum and if biology doesn’t exist as a basis for identity then cultural ideas will take its place, probably in the most retrograde forms possible, exaggerated to extreme grotesque degrees.
This is why so many (US especially) modern feminists seem like parodies of Victorian ladies scandalized by impropriety and obsessed with observing minute details of etiquette and protocal.
*yeah, a very small minority don’t fit neatly in either of the two major categories, that does not invalidate either category
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The existence of such lists is a very small price to pay for the advances we have been enjoying. I’m making fun of the lists but it’s just a passing stage of being between eras.
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“Life is hard and I am sad.”
Buzzfeed provides content for other anti-whetstone social media. This is fairly worthless even by the standard of privilege lists I saw a decade ago. The reader is not supposed to do anything but nod sagely and share it with other like minded individuals.
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I’m afraid to go on Facebook now because I don’t want to see people I know liking this list. And I know I will.
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Just like when you have a real problem, they nod sagely and say, “well yeah, that is your identity under power relations, so what can you expect anyone to do?” and then they nod sagely some more.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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