Rise

When darkness rises, light rises, too. The opposite is true as well. We’re seeing it now.

The more men push us, the more we assess the framework that’s been baked into everything so deeply that it’s become the default. It doesn’t need to be defended! It’s just THE NATURAL ORDER of things.

Well, it’s not.

Women have eclipsed men in university enrollment and graduation. We’re woven throughout the workforce in every career. When they stopped clipping our wings, we flew. A man’s income was financial incentive for marriage in the past. But if we can make our own money, marriage becomes a choice rather than a necessity. If a man doesn’t improve our life, why would we invite him to share it?

An increasing number of women are happily living alone. The men who want to control us don’t like it.

But if marriage is just another hierarchy in which we’re the low ranking member, why would we aspire to servitude rather than independence? If a man is incapable of a partnership of equals, why would we want that?

I know that some women do. Ok. I don’t. And most of the women I know don’t want it either. Why would we accept a value system that places more weight on what men want than what we want? Aren’t both of our dreams and desires important?

But what if we’re also enough on our own? (Borderline Obsessing wrote an insightful, wildly entertaining essay about that called: Want to come over for dinner and sex and good conversation?)

We’re fed a romantic fantasy of love. My whole life I’ve been inundated with it. As if romance is the big prize.

There is so much more to life. Passions. Quests. Learning. Food, community, art, trees, rest. Cats! Whatever lights you up.

What if we valued the love of friends just as much as the love of a significant other? I want THOSE stories. Where women live alone and are joyful. Where friends share a space not temporarily—until they find THE ONE—but because they care about each other. Because they have become a family.

More women are choosing not to marry or have children. Or even to date. GOOD. Why would we yearn for a life in which we have LESS joy? Less respect? Less agency?

There is a stamp of approval, still strong in much of society, in having a man “choose” you. Convenient for them, and thrilling for us. (Some of us.) At first. But the gloss wears off, and if the relationship isn’t grounded in equality and genuine friendship, it’s at best a slog, at worst, a nightmare.

I had a short-lived first marriage. My ex believed that I should do all of the housework “in gratitude” for the fact that he earned more money than I did. (Which he also spent largely on himself, because he argued that his job “required it.” He shopped in more expensive stores and drove a nicer car than I did. Fun.) I also worked full time, and had a longer commute. He did earn more than I did (twice as much, actually), because he had parents who paid for him to go to college. I did not. He was a computer programmer; I had a clerical job in a hospital, which (apparently) relegated me to lesser status. It wasn’t about my brains or my heart, but MONEY. (Though I’m pretty sure that if I had earned more money than he did, there would have been a different argument as to why he was entitled to more…)

How he behaved toward me changed overnight once we got married. I asked why, and he said: “I was courting you then. Now I have you.” (Yes, he actually said this.)

I left. We didn’t make it a year. It was difficult to choose divorce because I took those vows seriously. But I was lonelier in that marriage than I was on my own, because it’s isolating to be with someone who has no regard for what you want or feel.

Please don’t settle for that.

We’ve been pelted with propaganda that we’re not enough. According to whose standards?

So much of culture is wrapped around women making themselves attractive to men. The diet industry to keep us thin. Make up to hide “flaws” or enhance whatever it is that we have. Plastic surgery to make us look “younger.” Uncomfortable clothes that make us look taller, thinner, curvier.

And then there’s age, and the pervasive belief that older women become “invisible.” To whom? Shallow jackasses who only care about fuckability? Cool. I’d rather those men NOT see me.

(Note: This applies only in a social context. That invisibility is devastating in a career setting or healthcare or in navigating any essential system in which men run the place. Which is most of them.)

And now, with the vile revelations in the Epstein files, we’re beginning to see that sexual predators are not, in fact, the exception, but are rampant.

It’s all connected.

In Jameela Jamil’s incendiary essay: “Ah shit! We let pedophiles decide our beauty standards.” she discusses the way that women are pressured to look like little girls.

And to behave like little girls as well. Compliant. Powerless.

What if we stopped giving a fuck about the labels dictated by people who do not have our best interests at heart?

Every woman who chooses herself, loudly, unapologetically becomes a beacon.

Alysa Liu generated shockwaves last week when she won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the XXV Olympic Winter Games. It wasn’t that she won—it was how she did it, bypassing tradition entirely. Striped hair. An unconventional piercing. A refusal to diet and insistence on managing her own program and training. She trusts herself. You can see it in her skating. I can’t even think of her—her incandescent spirit and dazzling performance in Milan— without smiling.

When we shape our lives lit by whatever is true for us we win. Even if we lose, we win.