People who are referring to Kanye West’s naked wife at the Grammys as a victim of abuse should remember that being unwilling to leave a mega rich man isn’t abuse. It’s greed.
It’s very tiresome that everything we don’t like is immediately tagged as abuse or “mental illness.” As a result, both expressions have come to be completely meaningless.
This is a weird case, Kanye is clearly off in terms of mental health and his wife’s willingness to debase herself in public is worrying, but it could really just be her being a greedy gold digger and having no standards.
My brother got me a new Kindle for Christmas and my guilty pleasure is reading romance novels on Kindle Unlimited. There’s loads of self-published so-called dark romance novels where the male protagonist is abusive, a criminal and/or a psychopath and the heroine a naive girl who falls for these evil bastards.
Seeing thousands of these terrible books while trying to search for something more vanilla made me realize there’s a lot of women with serious daddy issues who fantasize about guys like this. I guess they grew up with no dad or a loser dad and they’re subconsciously looking for a father figure, but instead fantasize about the worst kinds of men. I do read romance novels but I stay away from that type, I don’t want to read about abuse or possessive men or criminals. It’s mostly to unwind at the end of the day, I’m lucky I had a strong father and father figures so I’m not attracted to bad guys.
Somewhat related, this is why I feel a lot of Clarissa’s advice about finding the right woman/man doesn’t land. It assumes that people making these choices are psychologically healthy, know what they really want, what would truly make them happy, and are not swayed by popular opinion. The truth is that the atomization that’s driven by dating apps has led to people not even knowing what to desire, let alone how to desire. So when she says “a woman that’s into you will not care that you’re dressed sloppily, don’t have clean hand towels etc. (https://clarissasblog.com/2025/01/10/dating-advice-2/) she’s assuming her audience has their shit together. They don’t! Even ostensibly smart people are susceptible to groupthink. For example, data show that having an android phone is a dealbreaker for many people in dating.
Nearly a quarter of iPhone users say green bubbles are a dating dealbreaker, new survey reveals
Among Android users, 30 percent felt pressured to switch to iPhone.
https://mashable.com/article/iphone-users-think-less-of-android-users-green-bubbles
I’m actually willing to give the benefit of doubt to women who think like this and I’m sure there are many many women who follow this “rule” are actually decent people and would make great girlfriends and wives. If you start writing people off for stuff like this, you’re narrowing your potential dating pool by quite a lot. So, if having candles or clean hand towels are the entry fee to participate in this game, go ahead and do it, instead of walking away, thinking “Any woman who’s into me would not have these petty rules.” That way you’re not even giving yourself a chance.
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People lack self-awareness. They lack nothing quite as much. All these “people say XYZ is a deal breaker” are evidence of a complete lack of self-awareness on the part of those who respond. They are trying to create an algorithm for something that notoriously refuses to be algorithmically circumscribed.
I’m all for candles and towels (and less so for green bubbles) but people should be aware that playing this game leads straight to the dead bed we recently discussed.
People don’t need to have everything together to experience desire. Even the most messed up individuals feel it. I’ve seen women do acts of absolute madness for men they wanted. I’ve done such things myself. And yes, these same women would talk about green bubbles to bide the time until the man they could go crazy for would show up.
Unrelated, I read Demon Copperhead after I heard about it from you. My god, what a novel. Makes your heart ache. Thank you!
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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