Now I’m not some 40 year-old parent complaining about the behaviour of my kids and their peers..I’m not even a parent. I’m a 20 something who observes behaviours in my females peers and those my junior that leaves me dumbfounded.
And after reading Jeff Zaslow’s article I started thinking about all the BS my female friends silently put up with from their partners when they shouldn’t and and all the countless conversations I’ve had with my girlfriends and co-workers about dating and some of the risky behaviours these women still seem to engage in even in their late twenties in order to gain approval from the guys in their lives or in their never ending quest to find Mr.Right.
I don’t know when it became cool for women to act and behave more like men to gain acceptance from guys but more and more it seems that younger women are engaging in behaviours silently in order to gain the approval of their male peers and partners at the detriment of themselves and their sisterhood.
The activism of our mothers and grandmothers gave us the freedom and ability to embrace our femininity and the choice..CHOICE, to determine our own personal destinies while at the same time placing us on an equal footing with our male counterparts. That’s feminism! Differences shouldn’t mean inequality and we shouldn’t be trying to deny them as well. We are different from men.
Laura Sessions Stepp (i love her name..lol) says in her book “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and and Lose at Both”, ” This culture of sexual aggression often leaves young women physically and emotionally unsatisfied. It leads them to gamble with their health. And by never taking the time to get to know and care about one man, young women may be rendering themselves incapable of forging stable, loving relationships.”
I agree with Stepp wholeheartedly.
Now, I’ll admit I’ve always been the odd female out. In high school I was that kid that was president of everything..the debating society, drama club, book club and an athlete I didn’t have time for boys I was more concerned about getting into college lol..but my girlfriends often were..they wanted boyfriends and would do almost anything to get the boy they liked but the majority would often refrain from doing the deed until at least they were boyfriend and girlfriend and only a few girls were willing to go all the way and only a few boys would actually want ‘those’ girls for their girlfriends.
However, starting in college I’ve noticed a drastic shift in the opposite direction it seems that the majority of young women are willing to do anything for a guy and I mean anything from the most normal to the most insane acts or deeds in order to get the boys to like them and to pick them over the other girls! From so called tame one night hook ups with multiple partners to porno parties young women are increasingly engaging in behaviours that leave them emotionally drained and damaged.
Am I wrong here in believing that men even young men still like a challenge or do they really prefer the women that are easy and just roll over and acquiesce to their every whim and fantasy?
Now listen I don’t believe that people have to wait until they are married to have sex for god-sake I’m a liberal…lol but I do believe that women are emotionally different from men and that we are not built to have frequent casual sexual encounters and the more we in engage in such risky behaviours the unhappier we are and the more we are at risk for depression and severe depression later in our lives unlike young men who don’t seem to be that bothered or seem to able too escape the pitfalls that come along with such encounters due to their emotional differences.
And herein lies the real issue. Women are emotional creatures, most of us in the West and I would venture to say that the majority of women in the world want to be wined and dinned and romanced before we share our most intimate selves with a partner male or female. Most women want to believe that after we do the deed with someone even if that partner has made it clear that it’s only a booty call that he will call us and that it wasn’t just about sex. Intellectually we may know that it was but emotionally we want the opposite.
I don’t know what the problem is why more young women aren’t demanding more from and giving less to young men until they are in relationships when both partners should then be giving 100 percent but I do believe that if they do there would be a marked change in their emotional outlook and maybe just maybe the men and women who are doing the pursuing would be a lot happier as well.
