I enjoyed this book. Helen Gurley Brown was a prominent figure in the women’s movement during the 1960s and beyond. She was one of the first people to tell women it was okay to work and not want to get married. She encouraged women to put off marriage so they could live their lives and told them they could always marry and have children later in life. During this time, people did not say this. This was during the baby boom when women were marrying earlier and having more babies than since before the great depression.
Women will earn less in their lifetime, no matter their skillset, just because they are a woman. This is something I had a hard time dealing with in the early 2000’s. I cannot imagine how much worse it was in the 1960s and on. No matter how good you are as a woman, you will have earned less than if you were a man.
Can you imagine being the best at something and knowing that the only thing you could have done differently is have been born a man? This leads a lot of women to have penis envy. But I never wanted a penis or to be a man. And I think Helen Gurley Brown is with me on this one. Being a woman is a powerful advantage. You just have to realize the queen can move as she wishes, while the king has to follow quite restricting rules just like in Chess. I wish someone had told me this when I was young and before I got out on my own.
Helen Gurley Brown encourages women to make up the difference between women and men’s incomes by getting men to account for the difference in your personal life. The professional world will constantly undercut you, even today. The only way to make up for that is within your personal encounters with men. And if you do not try to balance this injustice out in your personal life, then you will have to be okay with getting the short end of the stick. Because no matter how many feminine revolutions or marches you take part in these disparaging differences in the way men and women are treated in the workplace and professional world will not end in our lifetime. Change takes time. People take time to change. You cannot force change. So you have to change to create the even playing field you need and desire. You may not be able to change the world overnight, but you can change your own world overnight.
If you want to have the typical life where you get married, have children, and have a career you need to make up for this double standard in the professional and real world the most. Women who have children take time off from work to have those children, which leads to them having less money for retirement because of lack of contribution during these times. Plus, they take time off to take their children to the doctor more than men. Even if they are giving into Munchausen by Proxy they are still contributing to their retirement less during these periods. And retirement is just one of the many ways the inequality towards women manifests.
“…no one but an individual woman could ensure her own survival, let alone happiness. Work was the key to autonomy… “
Growing up in the war games and the 1980s, I was told to find a partner to grow up with. Needless to say that did not turn out well. But I did get out in my early 20s. Knowing that I needed to be independent, just not knowing how to accomplish that. I had no role models to look up to. No woman in my family had ever done anything on their own. Except my Mother who joined the military so she could find a better quality husband by the time she needed to be married and have a child at 24. If she had stayed in Springfield, Oregon the pickings would have been much slimmer. That was my one example of independence. And of course no one told me about the rule of having a child by the age of 24, because my parents did not tell me anything about the war games. I grew up in them I did not know about them. So, my parents had many boys come into my life to try to breed me like a farm animal, but never expected me to marry or own a home.
I wonder how the war games changes the equation for female independence for the rest of the world? In Korea, most women never have children. And they seem to be really into the war games. But here in Oregon I have never really seen a woman live past her mid 40s without having children. Helen Gurley Brown did not have children and she was a second child. She did marry a man with a child, that does seem to somewhat count. However, never really enough to keep you alive till old age. I wonder what it is like for people who do not grow up in the war games. It must be really nice. Not so much poison, not so many people trying to kill you, not so many gender roles, etc. I honestly cannot see how they would want to live the war games. However, everyday I see people who did not grown up in the war games signing up to play them. It just makes me shake my head in disdain. Find a better hobby.
“Brown’s loyalty to the free market extended beyond the workplace and into the far more intimate arena of sexuality. She viewed women’s sexuality in the context of capitalist exchanges, where those with the money had certain degrees of power and those without tried to negotiate as best they could.”
Being a woman is something that you can capitalize on, you just cannot play by the rules made by men. The only way you are going to make up for making less over your lifetime as women is by using your sexuality and youth to compensate for this difference. The difference cannot be negated by skill. No matter how good you are at what you do, you will always make less over a lifetime than a man. So you have to use the skill that men do not have, your sexuality. I am sure a lot of you want to argue with me. But I would love to know how you would compensate for this disadvantage? Would you work more? Because even working more you would not make the same amount a man would make working the same amount of hours. If you play by the same rules, using the same variable, you are set up to be forever second best to a man.
“There is enough trouble having a man in your life without saying to him, Look, I didn’t have an orgasm last night, I haven’t had an orgasm with you, and I may never, the way things are going.”
Helen did not believe in telling men the truth all the time. What good is the truth going to do? How is it going to help? If men wanted the truth makeup, push up bras, and plastic surgery would not exist. It is like in the movie A Few Good Men when Jack Nicklson yells, “You cannot handle the truth.”
I love men. They can be fun. They are way more fun than women. Shall we talk about the science of the situation between the genders? You all know I love science. Men are generally speaking the more emotional of the sexes. Dyslexia is more common in men than women, which causes men to be more creative brain based. Creativity is just an emotion. Which means they use their emotional brains more. Thus, why makeup and pushup bras work.
However, men are also generally speaking less sociopathic than women. Men tend to be more narcissistic. Which I enjoy far more than someone who is sociopathic. How about you? In old age cluster b personalities all tend to get worse and show signs of sociopathy. But less is more when it comes to sociopathy.
When women have children they become sociopaths. It is a slow process. But it is known among professionals who work with cluster b personality disorders that clients who have children have a lot less of a chance of recovery. Having a child is like an open invitation to destroy someone. People with cluster b personality disorders cannot help themselves. It is like filling a fat person’s fridge with bad food and saying don’t eat it. People get hungry.
Throughout history there have been archetypes for men and women. Look at religion, nuns break people down and priests rebuild them using the systems at hand. Women throughout history have broken people. While men rebuild them to fit the society or rules of the times. It is just how it goes. Wasn’t this how your family was? Your Mom broke you and your Dad tried to rebuild you into something he saw fit. This seems to be the overwhelming pattern at least among people who grew up the war games. Men may be in charge of the real world so to speak, but women are in charge at home. This is why women are more sociopathic. They are constantly breaking people, but they never rebuild them.
So men are more emotional generally speaking because they are more creative/emotional brain based and because they are more human on a gene and cellular level. I prefer men. Women are destructive. The only you can really guarantee out of a relationship with a woman is destruction. And after they have children, they are a 1000% worse. Because children are the point of no return for cluster b personality disorders. I do not believe children effect men the same way they do women. Because the cluster b personality disorders they develop by having children have to do with the way they poison themselves when they are pregnant. So, most women are dead inside by age 24. I have never had a successful relationship with a girl/woman since grade school and my best friend from then also did not know about the war games. How about you? Have you had a successful relationship with a woman that did not include destruction or sociopathy? I don’t see how many people do. But maybe I am wrong.
Most men grow up with a woman destroying them, so it is all they know. And they accept destruction as if it is love. Unless you are like my Brother, than you just hate all women completely and want to hurt them just like your mother hurt you. Those men exist too. You have to watch out for those ones.
There is a war among the sexes. I am not sure what the answer is. But I can say that we all need to account for the unequal playing field. Honestly, I do not know how any of you have healthy relationships. Do people actually have healthy relationships or is that just a fairy tale too? I wonder that a lot. I see you people sign up to kill me and perpetuate my truman show. And you all are not happy or healthy and often you are with your spouses. Maybe Freud is right and it has to do with the relationship men have with their Mothers. That was Freud right?
Don’t follow the rules, I guess is the point. The rules were set up to make you fail.
I just rambled. There is a lot more science involved in the fight between the sexes. And there are epigenetic effects of our society not accepting women as equal. Men and women both pay for these inequalities. It is a warzone out there on countless levels. I rambled a lot. Sorry if that didn’t all make sense.