“Go Live as a Man for One Week.”
Nancy Bauer wrote a piece for the New York Times Opinionator section this week called “Lady Power,” in which she argues that the state of feminism today is embodied by Lady Gaga.
The comments were more interesting than the piece itself, and touched on artifice, morality and hook up culture. One in particular by a Transgender man (he was born a woman and became a man) really got me thinking about the difference between men’s and women’s experiences in our society.
This is his comment:
“As a Transgender man I have one recommendation to every woman who believes she is somehow ‘empowering’ herself by getting on her knees to service a man: Go live as a man for one week. See how radically different it feels to really be respected and empowered in this society.
I lived as a woman for 50 years, and was a real feminist. Then I transitioned to living as a man, and I was shocked at how different it felt on an every day basis, to be accorded the regard and deference that men are automatically given as their due in this world.
The first thing I noticed was how people moved out of my way when I walked down the street. That became my metaphor for how much easier it became to move through my world. Then it became stunningly clear that people no longer interrupted me when I spoke - they listened with a new interest and regard, and started taking my ideas seriously for the first time in my life (and I have an IQ of 160, so I was never a slouch in the idea department).
I found that I no longer had to earn and re-earn respect in every situation in my life, I was given authority and power to move decisions and change the course of events, automatically, and without having to prove myself again and again. Society seemed to constantly feed me positive energy and esteem. That powerful current of high regard bolstered me, fed me confidence and self satisfaction in a way I had never before experienced as a woman.
Gone were all the slights, interferences, being ignored, and challenges that seemed, by comparison, to diminish and drain my energy as a woman, not support it. Women get elbowed out of power all the time, and it becomes “normal” to be less than.
Power feels like having authority, having rights, being listened to, and treated with true respect. It doesn’t feel like servicing a demanding man in return for a moment of attention and acceptance. The difference is unmistakable. Until you feel it in your guts, in your stance in the world, and see it in the eyes of those who are looking up to you, you won’t know what real power feels like. Women are treated like chattel for the most part.
A moment of fleeting sexual attractiveness in a young woman like Lady Gaga, who is catering to her own sexual objectification, is a pathetic facsimile of power, a sheer self delusion that she will be granted a moment of attention before being discarded for the novelty of the next young sexual object. Look that bit of wishful thinking right in the eye, and see it for what it really is. No man respects you for it, he only uses you. When you no longer look cute and hot, where will you be? Some other new hot, cute girl will be on her knees in front of him, taking your place.
Real power is what you develop on the inside; it’s character, inner strength, tenacity, and courage. Confusing getting sexual attention with getting power is a flimsy fantasy that shatters at the slightest sideways glance. Confusing a childish delusion with feminism is dangerous thin ice.”
