When you let women compete with men, balls suffer.
Apparently young urban women are having a hard time dating dudes who aren’t freaked out by their earning power — and according to the New York Times Styles section, the women themselves are unnerved by their own financial situation. See what happens when you let broads get all educated and gainfully employed?*
The article is obnoxious for all of the obvious reasons, but I found parts of it to be really interesting. While the whole “women are too powerful and can’t handle it and don’t want emasculated men” thing gets old, I think it is fair to say that while feminism has been somewhat successful in expanding the scope of acceptable forms of female-ness, it hasn’t been quite as successful in expanding masculinities. “Manliness” is a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts, but for the most part it boils down to the ability to provide. The man-as-provider model cuts across a whole lot of different masculine incarnations, and when women challenge that, men often feel that their identity is being infringed upon. Women are also often raised to want a mate who will take care of them and provide security, and finances are a big part of that. I think Stephanie Coontz nails it:
A lot of young women “are of two minds,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, a research organization. “On one hand, they’re proud of their achievements, and they think they want a man who shares house chores and child care. But on the other hand they’re scared by their own achievement, and they’re a little nervous having a man who won’t be the main breadwinner. These are old tapes running in their head: ‘This is how you get a man.’ ”
Women are used to getting smacked down for our achievements. We’re brought up watching Disney movies and understanding that for us, beauty comes first, and while we should find a man who actually likes us as human beings, we should be a little careful about outshining him. We simply aren’t raised to feel as entitled to professional success the way that a lot of men are. Women notoriously don’t brag or even talk about professional achievements the way that men do — after all, as a general rule, men talking about their own lives are important, whereas women talking about their own lives are narcissistic or gossipy (or vagina dentata intellectualis). There’s a lot of baggage that comes along with being a successful woman, and especially with out-earning your partner. There’s a lot of baggage that comes along with being a man in a low-paying job, and especially with making less than your partner.
Articles like this can do their part to fuel that anxiety, especially when done poorly. But they can also serve as spaces for women and men to feel less shallow and less alone in finding partnership problematic. This one, unfortunately, doesn’t do a great job. It focuses on women’s anxieties as if we’re the problem, as opposed to a culture that fetishizes male earning power and princess fantasies, and dudes who are thoroughly unnerved by the fact that their female partners may be on equal (or higher) financial footing. Economic power has long meant social power, and when it comes to relationships, economic power has given men a disproportionate degree of power and control over women. Economic power has served as a male mating call, and the accoutrements of the big house and the nice car and the fancy dinner dates and the other outward displays of wealth are the human male’s peacock plumes.
Of course challenging that is threatening. What’s a guy to do when a chick has more to display than he does?
What bothers me most about the article is the incessant focus on women’s anxieties, when, if women are anxious, it’s as a direct response to male anxiety. Men panicking about their girlfriends paying for dinner are normal. Women who panic about their partners panicking are neurotic, narcissistic nutcases. There’s no real evaluation of the complicated social rules that lead to these situations. There’s no evaluation of the fact that this is a deep-seated and wide-spread cultural issue, and that it transcends the earning power issue — it gets to the very heart of how we define “male” and “female” in our society.
In other words: Patriarchy hurts men, too.
Maybe I just don’t really get it because I’ve never dated anyone who was independently wealthy, and I’ve never been independently wealthy myself, so it never really mattered. If I eat it, I assume I’ll pay for it.** On the other hand, this past summer I was making a decent amount of money — and while I wasn’t dating anyone, when I’d go out with friends who were in tighter economic situations, I’d try to pick up more of the bill. If I wanted to go out to a pricey dinner with my room mate when I was well aware that it was out of her budget (and, if not for the cushy summer job, would have been out of my budget too), I’d get the check. Fair’s fair. I don’t see why dating should be so much different.
Unless, of course, you see dating as a ritual wherein the male of the species makes a series of financial investments in order to gain access to the reproductive organs of the female, and the female acquiesces only after the male has proven that he can support her financially. In some cultures, a wedding ring is another requisite investment. If that’s your situation then, yeah, all this female-earning-power stuff kind of throws a wrench in things.
My paying-for-dinner (and most other stuff) rule: If it’s a first date, the person who does the asking pays. If you’re in a relationship, you split things along income lines — so if you both make roughly the same amount of money, it’s 50/50, or you just alternate paying for meals. If one of you is a starving artist or a student and the other is a big-time lawyer or an investment banker, the party with the greater economic clout pays a larger share. No genitalia involved.
But then, I’m a well-known emasculating vagina-dentata intellectualis bitch.
Thanks to Fauzia for the link.
*Warning: Total heteronormativity alert.
**So tempted to make a “your mom” joke here, but I’ll be a lady and stop myself.