How Denying Difference Leads to Misguided Ideals of What Women & Men Should Be

Reading over my last post I found a doozy of a line:

"I see people holding the opposite sex to impossible standards. The idea of what a woman should be or a man should be becomes increasingly narrow. It is as though the fixation on the false idea of sameness has resulted in mass blindness, preventing people from recognizing the beauty in real women and men."


 What do I mean?


If we acknowledge that women and men feel differently, we can evaluate those differences. We can see that men really do have a tendency, say,  to judge women too much by their appearances alone. We can see that women really do tend, say,  to judge men by their status or power.


Once we recognize such a tendency, we can be on our guard against it.

In some ways I am lucky to be a man in culture so willing to criticize men. I am rarely allowed to forget the male tendency to fall for a younger woman, a woman with a good body, or just a pretty face. Whenever I feel attracted to a woman with any of these qualities I stop and ask myself, "Am I being 'typically male'?" Usually the answer is "yes." I'm on my guard. I think a little before acting and I'm better off for it.


Women in this regard aren't so lucky.  Because we live a culture where anyone who criticizes women is immediately labeled a "misogynist," most people wisely keep their mouths shut, even when criticism is due.   If more people just came out and said it, "Yes, a lot of women do have a tendency to go for men with power or status," maybe more women would stop and ask themselves, "Do I really like this guy? Or am I just drawn to him he's lead singer in the band?"
 
But fewer and fewer people are willing to admit that a lot of women have this problem. Instead, they retreat to the myth of sameness. They insist that women are attracted to a handsome face just as much as men are attracted to pretty one, that women are attracted to a sexy body just as much as men are, and even that men are attracted to status or power or success in a woman the same way women are attracted to such qualities in  men.

Pretend long enough that a problem doesn't exist, and a lot of people will believe it doesn't.

We end up with what we have today: many women who will not consider a man unless he has certain social or economic standing, a certain kind of power or status. When they cannot find a man with these qualities, they say, "All the good ones are married or gay," or they chalk it up to bad luck. It never occurs to them that they should reexamine their own standards and tastes because no one dares to question those standards and tastes anymore.


I'm not saying that men don't have their problems too. There are still plenty of guys out there who really want (or think they want) any woman with big breasts (real or not) and blonde hair (real or not). But we at least force such men to realize that they are being shallow and that they deserve the sort of women they wind up with.