Here’s a common complaint I’ve heard on several occasions from women I’ve known or worked with: “I just want to meet a nice guy, who’s well off so I don’t have to work anymore.” Many of these women have multiple degrees, they have switched careers at least once and they are still unhappy. Pointing out to them that the pool of men who have the where with all to take care of them in a manner that they feel they deserve is very small does no good. Add to that that these men most likely have access to younger and more attractive women than these gals, and their prospects look good for entry into cat lady status.
Sometime in the last day a woman took umbrage with the sluts and studs dichotomy. Apparently Talley and I want to go back to the days where men owned women. Yet, I find the sentiments express above by these women abhorrent, lazy, and downright deceitful. These are women who by and large embrace second wave feminism and all the privileges and special rights that have been bestowed upon them. What’s the sentiment that they are expressing? That in fact they DO want to be kept women, pampered, and catered to in exchange for a life of ease. Oh, I’m sure they don’t see it that way, but if someone else is paying the bills then you are beholden to him. You’re still in a cage, regardless of how gilded it may be.
What that gal who was so incensed by the sluts and studs post doesn’t recognize is that the flip side of the sluts and studs paradigm is that virginal women are prized by men and virginal men are decried as losers by women. I’ll say it again: Women are the ones that have labeled virginal men as losers, not men. Just as women are attracted to a man who other women desire, men are attracted to women who are judicious in their choice of men.
I have never once heard a man express a desire similar to the one related in the first paragraph of this post. Maybe because he knows it will never happen, maybe because he knows he’d be shunned by other men at best, or have the crap beat out of him at worst. Maybe there are men out that like Paul Varjak who are kept men. I’ve just never met one.
