There's a lot of talk about how we need to empower women and girls. Despite my growing annoyance with the word "empower" (nothing too deep, just tired of it like a song that gets too much radio play), I'm all for empowering women and girls. People should feel free and capable of running their lives. Good stuff.

However, this talk of empowering women always carries with it the notion, overt or implied, that we're redressing an imbalance. That we're giving women something that society has always given to men. This, I think, is not quite true. What we're giving women is a kinder, gentler thing. I don't think women would want the kind of empowerment that is men's "privilege" to receive from birth.

Men's empowerment has a dark side that women, blinded by their envy of all our apparent privileges, do not see. As part of our new mission to offer this empowerment thing to girls, we tell them "you can be whatever you want to be, if only you believe in yourself!" That's a fine message, but it's only a distant cousin of the male empowerment experience. It's missing the countermessage, that dark whisper - "fail, and be despised… succeed, or you are worthless… don't be a fucking loser."

There's a picture that pops into my head whenever I contemplate this great misunderstanding. I see a track with young men lined up to race. The gun cracks, and they take off. Their friends and family are all cheering them on. Run, faster, run, you can do it. The female observer sees the cheering, and the adulation heaped on the winners of each event. Kept off the field herself, she can only envy their triumph. But there are quiet moments outside the spotlight of victory that she doesn't notice. The burning shame of the late-finishers. Fathers' hands placed awkwardly on sons' shoulders, walking off the field. Fathers trying to conceal their disappointment, fathers reliving their own moments of defeat, the moments when they knew for sure they would never live in that spotlight. Welcome son, to the dim claustrophobic world of Nice Try. And the tears… don't forget the tears. The final humiliation, betrayed by emotions you're not supposed to have. Not just a loser, he's a fucking crybaby too. Tears are like the peasants with spears at the end of the battle, ignominiously finishing off the fallen knights. They always come when you think you're at your lowest, to remind you there's always a lower.

This is what I picture when I hear about this empowerment privilege deal. My big freebie from the Patriarchy. It makes me fucking laugh.