One idea I’ve seen put forth by a few female commenters on The Spearhead is that if only men were wise enough to choose “the right woman” they could avoid the catastrophes that so often afflict them in marriage and divorce. There is probably an element of truth to this, but as with so many cure-alls, it is missing the bigger picture.
First, we should ask what is the “right woman?” If we are to take a woman’s opinion, she is intelligent, educated, independent, self-confident, capable, attractive and in control. How do I know this? Because this is how women are always portrayed in media designed to appeal to them, and we know it works, because women consume a great deal of material that is designed to cast them in that light.
If we were to ask a man, we’d get a significantly different ideal. Men – at least most of them – want women who are pretty, kind, caring, not stupid, modest and helpful. Not opposite, but a pretty big difference from what women think of as the ideal woman. A couple of these qualities are mutually exclusive, such as self-confident and modest, and others, such as in control and helpful, are quite different from each other. Even pretty and attractive are distinctly different concepts; attractive suggests the kind of woman who gets a lot of looks on the street, while pretty describes the girl who gives a man a feeling of a more privately shared desire. Finally, there is a pretty big difference between not stupid and intelligent: studies have shown that the more intelligent women are than average, the less likely men are to marry them.
Obviously, not all guys want the same thing, and fortunately human diversity does a great job of offering plenty of options. However, there is a looming archetype that casts a shadow over relationships between men and women in our culture, and it does a great deal of damage to the real partnerships that men and women create. This archetype is a product of the darker aspects of femininity — the drive for social dominance in particular.
Men are often unaware of the brutally competitive nature of women, who are far more conscious of social hierarchy than men. Men create hierarchies in order to get things done; they recognize that abilities and talents differ, and that each man therefore has a different place. They choose their leaders for qualities such as courage, charisma and righteousness. As Jack Donovan recently pointed out, men follow those they admire for their inherent qualities, and then they grace them with external honors. With women, this is inverted: women tend to view the inherent qualities as products of the external honors. The queen is superior because of her crown, and the prince more desirable because of his castle and fine steed. Men can only understand the appeal that a fairy tale such as Cinderella holds for women on an intellectual level after a good deal of life experience; for women the story hits them at a visceral level that they can feel from a very young age. The poor stepdaughter is scorned by by her privileged stepsisters until her fairy godmother comes to the rescue, and suddenly she is surrounded by finery and assumes social superiority over all other women. For boys, it is internal qualities, such as super powers, that allow them to rise above. As we know, most superheroes are ordinary guys when off the job, and refrain from using their powers in a social context. This is a profound difference.
It is this difference that makes women better consumers than men, and in our consumerist society the cultural emphasis has naturally shifted toward encouraging consumption by the most effective means. In the case of women, this is an appeal to the most basic components of the desire for elevated social status. Being a consumer is about more than simply buying things; it is also about buying into things. We all know that women account for the vast bulk of consumer spending in the West, but there is a reason they are coming to dominate university enrollment and high status professional jobs as well. For years, the message that having a degree or a job as, say, a doctor, confers social superiority has been rammed down people’s throats through popular entertainment. Men have long known that being a physician is a lucrative job, and quite a few have been attracted to the profession for that reason among others, but few boys become doctors because they idolized the hunks in white coats who so often appear in soap operas and TV dramas. For a woman, however, making the rounds and declaring herself a doctor at social events is a satisfying exercise. Likewise, boasting about her degree from a good school is a great pleasure. The social credit she gets from these honors is a reward in and of itself.
Women’s natural focus on social hierarchy combined with their overrepresentation as consumers has inexorably pushed us toward a more socially hierarchical society that is alien to most men. In a way, we are living in a world that increasingly reflects daytime soap operas, and many boys and men simply don’t understand the logic of this new society. It truly has become a woman’s world, and the characteristics that men find attractive in women simply aren’t relevant to it. In this world, a woman who wants to achieve her natural, instinctive goals will have to adopt a persona that is inherently unattractive to men. A woman of inherent quality and capability, therefore, will often be more repellent to men than a rather unremarkable girl, because her very ability to fulfill her desires will lead her to resemble an archetype that makes her a poor choice for a mate. This probably explains why highly intelligent women find it so much more difficult to find a mate than their dimmer sisters.
Most men are thus left with a difficult choice: either partner with a woman of inherent quality who has become unappealing because of her ability, or settle with a second-rate woman who has not only because she lacks the wherewithal. Neither choice is likely to lead to happiness.
We have created a society that virtually precludes girls from becoming the “right woman.” Few men in my generation will have the opportunity to find the right woman, and most of those who manage to make it through with an intact marriage probably won’t ever know what such a woman is. Perhaps that is for the better; what good could it possibly do them to know what women were like before the great cultural shift of the late 20th century?
Perhaps the most tragic thing about this is that the few women who really are the right women for men, those scattered renegades of their sex, are the ones most likely to suffer at the hands of dominant women. They are the real Cinderellas in a world dominated by evil stepmothers and stepsisters. Perhaps the old fairy tale is the best metaphor for our modern society: the gracious diligent woman is consigned to the ashy hearth while the harridan and her ungainly brood rule the roost.
