This blog post is part of a series on the new, vastly expanded More Than Two site. This essay spotlights the Women as People page. Look for more spotlights in the coming days and weeks!
Image: Yay Images
The new More Than Two site adds entire new wings to the information and resources for polyamorous people, but the existing sections got some love, too. I gave the Principles for Good Relationships section of the site a pretty thorough overhaul, including a new Treating Women as People page.
I’ve said “treat women as people” a lot, but what does that really mean?
Most folks know how to treat people as individuals, as long as it’s on any axis other than sex or race. If someone asked you “what do right-handed people want in a boyfriend?” or “what do people with blue eyes think of anal sex?”, you’d probably think he was a bit daft. We all (I hope) know that right-handed people aren’t a monolithic group, with the same taste in boyfriends (spoiler, plenty of right-handers won’t date men!), so the question itself seems bonkers.
And yet, somehow…somehow many folks forget this when it comes to women.
What do women want in a relationship? Well, the white lesbian Silicon Valley startup CEO probably wants something quite different from the Black Southern Baptist in rural Arkansas, now that you mention it. And they both want something different from that other lesbian Silicon Valley startup CEO. Because—surprise!—tastes, desires, and dealbreakers are all individual.
Crouching Bigot, Hidden Sexist
The world is filled to overflowing with people desperate to understand “what women want” or “what men want.”
Do Women Dream of Electric Sheep? I found these questions in less than ten seconds on Quora.
The people who ask these questions probably don’t think of themselves as sexist. The popular mentality of the sexist is the lone incel raving about how much he hates women. But all these questions try to understand women, not as people, but only in terms of their membership in a group…which is the living, breathing heart of sexism.
There’s a pattern I’ve seen play out time after time: A man wants to understand what women want. He hears something that sounds plausible to him: “women like mystery” or “women like adventure” or “women like safety.” So he tries to be that thing. And a woman tells him, “I don’t like that, I like this other thing instead.”
So he tries to be that other thing. And a different woman says “I don’t like that.”
So he throws up his hands and says “women are so confusing! Even they don’t know what they want!”
No, my dude. Women are people. Different people like different things. If you stop trying to figure out what “women like” and instead focus on finding the specific women who like what you have to offer, maybe the world might be a different place for you.
But here’s the thing: All these guys, looking to unlock the secret of what women want, who women are…they don’t recognize their own sexism because they’re actually looking for the answer to a completely different question:
Am I Acceptable?
Image: Ermolaev Alexandr
The men who ask “What do women think of men who wear women’s clothes?” are actually asking a different question, one they’re too frightened to ask directly: “I like to wear women’s clothes. Does this make me unacceptable in the eyes of women? Will I be forever alone if any woman finds out?”
In other words, it’s a sexist question driven by fear and shame, not sexism. Almost all these sorts of questions can be turned around this way, and when you do, you see they’re actually a cry for acceptance.
Thing is, we live in a society where insecurity, fear of rejection, internalized shame, and fear of exclusion are all commodities, commodities that represent lucrative revenue streams. Seeing the world in terms of individuals? Looking for the individual women who want what you’re offering, instead of trying to fit yourself into what you imagine women like? Where’s the next-quarter revenue potential in that?
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” is probably one of the best marketing slogans ever created. It allowed a cartel that dominated trade in a common semi-precious stone to catapult itself into controlling the defining aspect of a marriage proposal.
That only works if people believe it—if you can persuade people that there’s a thing that women want, or a thing that you must do to be acceptable to women, and you are the source of that thing. Do that, and the potential profits are off the charts.
There’s more going on than just that, of course, but it illustrates why we, as a society, aren’t better at communicating “there’s no such thing as What Women Want, and you’ll be far happier if you find the tribe of people like you than you will be if you try to force yourself to fit a shape that isn’t right for you.” There’s money—lots of it—in teaching the opposite.
What’s the solution? Fuck if I know. But I do know that when you approach every new person you meet as a blank slate, without trying to figure out what they want or what motivates them or whatever simply because of the group they belong to, life gets a whole lot easier, and a whole lot less confusing.
Try it. What do you have to lose?
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