feminism is when the patriarchy works for me
re that the cut article
It must be said, first of all, that I am addicted to arriving late to a Discourse Party. Everyone was talking about this last week, and here I am, several personal essay cycles later, reminding you about The Cut essay from Grazie Sophia Christie, the 27-year-old woman and Harvard grad who wrote about how she had won the lottery by intentionally seeking and then marrying a man ten years her senior, an event she uses to then preach to us the value for women of an "age-gap" (does ten years between adults really qualify as an age gap worth talking about? It is outside the scope of what we’ll discuss here, but no!) relationship.
People had a lot to say about this! I have no interest in discoursing the essay as a whole because it's been done and what can I say that's new? Little! How-e-ver, I have seen takes like the below go semi-viral the last week, and while I understand that on the surface, the sentiment holds some water, the second you begin to examine it in the context of women-as-people instead of women-as-auxiliaries-to-men, you start to think ... hmmmm. Which is precisely where I come in.
Like a Substack Voltaire, I will defend to the death a woman's ability to publish a personal essay, even if the contents thereof make me want to shrivel up and die a little. But the above snippet is exactly the kind of writing that gives only the veneer of depth and meaning. It has all the right words! Friends and teaching and women and dental health and men becoming better people through women and maternal phone calls and laundry. I get it! It is relatable! We all have (or are, lest I be accused of throwing stones from my cute glass house) a friend who's dated assholes who've then turned around and become good partners to someone else.
Forgive me as I am in my Earnest Era, but ... ok? Do we go through life expecting the least from the people we choose to share our lives with and then, when through our love we make someone better because we care about them, are we preemptively resentful that someone who is not us might enjoy the fruits of our labor? There is something so individualistic and profit-minded in such an approach to relationships — if I do not benefit from my partner’s growth, then what was it for? What a sad way to live!
Because what I do not like about the fascination, the that’s actually so true bestie, the nods thoughtfully in agreement, of the above paragraph and the reception thereto, is that it (1) essentially views women solely in the context of how they exist in men's lives and (2) assumes that most, if not all, women are innately Nurturing and Maternal and Wholesome for and to their (male) partners.
Let's discuss the two points I most hated from this essay!
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