In the 1980s, the French thinker René Girard launched the concept of 'mimetic desire'. It means: wanting to be or to have things because other people have it, especially people with higher status or whom you think have higher status. Unsurprisingly, the desire often is based on a misunderstanding.

I see a lot of characteristics of 'mimetic desire' in feminism. Feminist women want to have things they think men have and like, while men often don't like and even don't have those things. Some examples:

- working and having a career: most men work, but don't have a career at all. They would like to work less and at least partly be provided for.

- be promiscuous: many men aren't promiscuous, many even don't have sex at all. Even the hottest men must put some effort into having sex. For many men, if it really was easy to get a new chick in bed every weekend, most would get sick of it.

- be strong: the words 'power woman' form the most kitschy expression of the last few years. Men are strong when necessary, but the most pleasant and impressive men are not showing off about it all the time, and are glad not to have to show their strength too often.

- be profound: one way or another, many women think they have to impress others by saying or writing something profound, often with the actual level of a church calendar aphorism. Men don't find it that important to be profound, they don't even see such a big difference between everyday and more fundamental topics.

- have their own revolutionary movement. Before 2nd wave feminism, many 'revolutionaries' in the west were actually middle-class men doing their best to be solidary with the working class and with non-western guerillas. The movement was as little 'their own' as it was that of middle-class women. You're only really having your 'own' revolutionary movement when you're so oppressed that there is no other choice, and that is not something to wish for.

Does this make sense? And do people see other examples?