Fish are devoted cyclists

**pjanus** · 12th-August-2007

I've posted the entire article in case the link disappears, as I suppose we should save this for posterity or something.

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Well, It turns out that the fish are devoted cyclists.

Femininity, in its current incarnation, is built on an underlying sense of female inadequacy. Feminism, on the other hand wants to eliminate female inadequacy to trounce it as a patriarchal myth. The two continue to battle it out.

The problem is that the word around town is that women are facing a disastrous shortage of single heterosexual men wishing to couple on a long term basis. They are desperately trying to hook men and real them in.

Yawn.

The enemy within

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Feminism has made great strides in improving the lot of women, so why are we more dissatisfied with our lives than ever? Laura Kipnis thinks the proble
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 12/08/2007
m is not men, but what she calls the 'girlfriend industry'
These days it's almost as if the whole female condition hinged on some kind of ontological flaw. If you're a modern female, something's always unfortunately broken. Girls: be thinner, sexier, more self-confident; stop dating losers; get rid of those yucky spots; and put the spark back into your relationship.
Something needs improving: your lingerie, your stress levels, your orgasms. Are you in a 'toxic friendship'? Is your career in the doldrums? Is your boyfriend lying to you? Why not go organic - eco-chic is hot! Here Are Nine Ways to Re-Invent Your Body, Mind and Social Life - you can do it, all in your spare time, because you're fabulous.
Or you can be soon - just stop doubting yourself! (Self-doubt is not attractive.) Take this quiz, buy this amazing new moisturising deodorant, wax your eyebrows: you'll feel a lot better once you do.
Eager to feel less agonised about ourselves, we enlist in ongoing and usually pricey labouring, improving and self-despair, in service to the elusive feminine ideal. But, somehow, whatever we do we've failed in advance: there's always that straggly inch-long chin hair to eradicate all previous efforts, or the cottage-cheese thighs, or just the inexorable march of time - but keep slathering on that incredibly expensive breakthrough-formula antioxidant moisturiser, anyway.
And thus the whole endeavour starts again. If this is the current definition of femininity, then clearly - given the potions, regimens and routine discomfort required to achieve it - it's not exactly a natural state. But women have to fail at femininity precisely to keep working at it because, needless to say, our self-loathing is someone else's target quarterly profits.

Yet ours is a postfeminist world. There's no doubt that feminism has claimed a lot of social terrain over the past three or four decades, has made numerous inroads into the female psyche and overhauled gender identities across the population. So, if the female condition seems especially perplexing at the moment, it is because women are left straddling two rather incompatible positions.
Feminism ('Don't call me darling, idiot') and femininity ('I just found the world's best push-up bra!') are in a big catfight, nowhere more than within each individual female psyche.
Feminism has brought women equal treatment under the law, voting rights, access to public life, some progress toward pay equity and so on. Gender barriers have largely crumbled, and women have increasing economic independence from men if they choose it. But one keeps stumbling across a certain ambivalence, an ambivalence among women themselves.
Which is why being female at this point in history seems an especially conflicted enterprise, like wearing Birkstenstocks with Chanel, or trying to frown after a Botox injection. Which one should it be? The Feisty Feminist or the Eternal Feminine, career or motherhood, ballsy or baby-doll - or why not all at once? The main conflict comes because of the nasty little secret at the heart of 'femininity' in its current incarnation: that it is built on an underlying sense of female inadequacy.
Feminism, on the other hand, wants to eliminate female inadequacy, to trounce it as a patriarchal myth, then kick it out of the female psyche for good. The two continue to battle it out, nowhere more than within women's relations to their bodies.
For the first time in history, women are relatively free from traditional fetters. No longer is womanhood synonymous with motherhood for those who don't so choose. But freedom can be a heavy burden, or so it appears, since countless new bodily constraints have instantly blossomed to take the place of the old ones. One way or another, women seem to end up defined by their bodies, or defining themselves by their bodies: a source of self-worth, a site of madness, most likely both.
For every bodily advance wrested from nature or society or men, another form of submission magically appears to take its place; for every inch of progress, a newfangled subjugation. And now most of them are self-inflicted. Take the current mania for thinness, the quest for fitness, the war on cellulite.
Freed from compulsory childbearing, women have chained themselves to the gym. Once women suffered under whalebone corsets; now your skeleton must show through the skin for that fashionable look. Or consider the popularity of secondary-sex-organ mutilation in those areas of the world where primary-sex-organ mutilation is not the norm - in other words, breast implants.

Of course, the drawback to femininity, as currently construed, is that it can never be successfully attained. Or not once consumer culture has got in on the act. Between the mountains of instruction, the endless guidance and the chirpy helpful hints, the objective is clearly to perpetuate insufficiency.
In fact, a better name for contemporary femininity would be the feminine-industrial complex, a vast psycho-commercial conglomerate financed by women themselves and devoted to churning out fantastic solutions to the alarming array of psychological problems you didn't know you had ('Are You a Love Addict?', 'Do You Have Night Eating Syndrome?'), social hazards you hadn't even considered (dangerous infections from unsanitised pedicure bowls, the sociopath who could be living next door) and bodily imperfections previously overlooked (poor pore management, unkempt pubic hair).
Once, much of the oppressive advice was handed down to women by remote authorities: doctors, psychologists, domestic scientists - more often than not male. These days most of the oppressive advice comes from other women - let's call them Professional Girlfriends - always selflessly ready to aid and comfort another member of the sorority.

The top-down management of women's lives (and everything else) by men was called 'patriarchy' by second-wave feminists, and blamed for the various ills besetting the female condition. In place of yesterday's tyrannical husbands and social restrictions, today we have the girlfriend industry and voluntary servitude to self-improvement.
The genius of the girlfriend industries is in temporarily alleviating the sense of anxiety and inadequacy they're also adept at producing, while obscuring the fact that women end up more corseted and restricted than ever.
But back to the positive: with more control over maternity, record numbers of women are now participating in the workforce, meaning that womanhood is no longer synonymous with economic dependency. In fact, women can now be entirely free from men, should they so choose.
Yet it turns out there are rather obdurate female longings with regard to dependency on men, despite pronouncements to the contrary - women need men like fish need bicycles - back in those early heady years of the second wave. It turns out that fish are devoted cyclists. Indeed, the problem these days is that the bicycles seem to be fleeing the fish. So women have had to dedicate themselves to reeling them back, resorting to complex algorithms about not accepting Saturday-night dates later than Tuesday, or staying on the phone longer than the square root of the number of days since the last phone call.
What's evident about male-female arrangements at present is this: female dissatisfaction with men is a growth industry, and longing to possess a man doesn't have to include either trusting or particularly liking him.

Which means that modern male-female relationships can be an agonised business. Yet it's still the female half of the equation that's most willing to plonk down hard cash in the hope of salvaging things. Relationship-advice-dispensing tomes aimed at women are a staple on bestseller lists; male equivalents are strangely sparse. (Men will purchase self-help books, as long as they're about making more money or getting in touch with their inner golf game.)
But it's not exactly an even playing-field here either, as the word around town is that we're facing a disastrous resource shortage: not honesty from our politicians, not a pair of strappy sandals that don't cut into your feet like a dozen knives, but single heterosexual men wishing to couple on a long-term basis. It's not just that demand exceeds supply but also that the majority of single men are - according to field reports from those who've hazarded dating them - 'relationship-challenged', in flight from commitment, their true feelings, real women.
Thus it falls to the intimacy-seeking female to blockade the escape routes and lure those men out of ambivalence and into domesticity, this requiring her entry into the arcane cabbalistic world of secret knowledge possessed only by a few high priests of the hunt: relationship experts.
Please tell us, wise advice-book author: how's a girl supposed to nab (then restrain) one of these elusive, exit-eyeing males? Let's say you've met this man at a party and you appear to hit it off, and he seems really interested.
You give him your number but he doesn't call. You feel so disappointed. Should you call him? Maybe he is just shy. Why can't you make the first move? Because what does the gender progress amount to if women still can't call men? It's the 21 st century! Men and women are sexual equals.

But then you don't want him to think you're desperate. Be strategic. Remember, men like the thrill of the chase, and if you're chasing him, what reason is there for him to chase you? You have to play hard to get (but not too hard). Don't be needy (but don't be too independent). Try being more of a bitch (men love it, really). Let him see who you really are - except for the part that reads advice books on how to nab a man while not appearing desperate. If he doesn't call, he doesn't deserve you! But if he does, invent somewhere exciting that you're rushing off to - after all, you have a life too, a great life!
In fact, why aren't you rushing off somewhere exciting? Maybe you aren't putting yourself out there enough, which is why you're at home waiting for this ambivalent loser to call you and reading advice books. By the way, is he actually into you, or is that wishful thinking? Not having had a date in a year and a half is no reason to act like a doormat; remember, you're gorgeous! Here are ten bedroom tricks that really turn a man on. What about an edible thong? But remember that gorgeousness comes from within.
It comes from self-confidence and liking yourself. Consider whether you may be doing something that's putting potential dates off. Remember, we all transmit subconscious messages and cues that others respond to. Could you be sabotaging your love life? Lots of girls do, without even knowing it. Take this quiz to find out. And here's an easy way to firm your bottom in just ten minutes a day - have you looked in a three-way mirror lately? But just remember, you're irresistible.

Well, thanks for the… advice.
So, if something remains a little obdurate about female inequality after the past 40 years or so, it's because feminism came up against an unanticipated opponent: the inner woman.
Obviously, there's no shortage of external culprits to hold accountable, but what about the collaborator within? Whatever you want to call the current arrangement between the sexes, the complicity on the part of women themselves is, to say the very least, complicated.
Feminism, once construed as a liberation movement, has somehow ended up producing more dichotomies and more impasses; there's a sense that, despite everything gained, there's still something missing.
'The Female Thing' (Serpent's Tail, £9.99), by Laura Kipnis, is available from Telegraph Books (0870 428 4115) at £8.99 plus 99 p p&p
Illustrations: Zeegenrush.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/m...ism.xml&page=1

**Marx** · 13th-August-2007

I'm sure it would be a great read in full, if only I could get passed the 'wage gap' and 'the vote' crap... it's everywhere - urgh.

**pjanus** · 13th-August-2007

Quote from Marx

I'm sure it would be a great read in full, if only I could get passed the 'wage gap' and 'the vote' crap... it's everywhere - urgh.

I know what you mean. I long to find the 'off button' that will end their ceaseless, narcissistic, prattle.

Let me summarise it for you. Todays women are a tad confused. They have thrown off the shackles of male oppression only to oppress themselves with their relationship to their own bodies. (expletive deleted)

On top of that it seems that, despite dissatisfaction with men being a growth industry, nature has won out. They still want men to commit to them. The problem is their is a shortage of such suitable men and those that are available are not biting. Boo (expletive deleted) hoo.

**IronLady** · 13th-August-2007

When they say women should be "bitches", how are they defining that?

Nasty? Dominant? Aggressive? In your face? Because I never quite understood it.

**bachelor tom** · 13th-August-2007

She's got a couple of good points: one, that women are always dissatisfied with themselves, which fuels a huge self-improvement industry; and two, that women's basic nature hasn't really changed in spite of feminist efforts

There are some reviews of her book at Amazon, the ones I saw were favourable, though she does seem confused about women's legal status

**pjanus** · 13th-August-2007

Feminism, once construed as a liberation movement, has somehow ended up producing more dichotomies and more impasses; there's a sense that, despite everything gained, there's still something missing.

Cue more prattling...and guess what, when they find that missing thingy they will still have this strange feeling that something is missing. [/B]

BillyQuote:
Try being more of a bitch (men love it, really)
Well I for one don't!
Where did the modern woman get this idea?
Some men may like the hard types but not this guy.

They get this from the advice goddesses, from anti male adverts and from the endless soap television that for some reason they seem addicted to.

Annette1313When they say women should be "bitches", how are they defining that?

Nasty? Dominant? Aggressive? In your face? Because I never quite understood it.

Depends on which advice goddess is sharing her pearls of wisdom.

bachelor tomShe's got a couple of good points: one, that women are always dissatisfied with themselves, which fuels a huge self-improvement industry; and two, that women's basic nature hasn't really changed in spite of feminist efforts

There are some reviews of her book at Amazon, the ones I saw were favourable, though she does seem confused about women's legal status

When you peel away the layers of subservience to the sistas and the rest of her prattling she says exactly what? Nothing that anyone with a brain already knows.

Dissatisfied with themselves! They are dissatisfied with men, their work, their life, their holiday and anything else you can think of.

Actually, as well as feminism making women miserable, this dissatisfaction originates back to the paranoia of the Cold War, psychiatry and the application of 'Game Theory' that has defined our freedom....but that is a long story.

**Major Tom** · 13th-August-2007

Quote from Marx

I'm sure it would be a great read in full, if only I could get passed the 'wage gap' and 'the vote' crap... it's everywhere - urgh.

Yep... don't forget about the 'opressive advice' shite too!

'Once, much of the oppressive advice was handed down to women by remote authorities: doctors, domestic scientists - more often than not male.'

Nasty patriarchal men using their sinister advice to keep wimmin down!

**Male-Rights-Network** · 14th-August-2007

Relationship-advice-dispensing tomes aimed at women are a staple on bestseller lists; male equivalents are strangely sparse. (Men will purchase self-help books, as long as they're about making more money or getting in touch with their inner golf game.)

Bullshit female, semi-misandrist interjection.

The reason why "men's self help books" are so sparse and unpopular, is because they are not written by and for men. They are not genuine nor honest. A true "relationships" book for a man would require a critical analysis of the modern female which would be less than flattering. It would be something like "player" books, or the kind of material that features on Outcast Superstar. For example:

Western Women will squander their prime years to exciting bad boys and thugs and we are the guys who the Western Skanks 'save for later'. In other words we have to pay the bill for their 'liberation'. With all the man hating laws Nice Guys will also get a big ass raping in the Feminazi Court system as well. Thus we lose all our life saving and hard earned money to angry old bags of cellulite who had kids by different men during her prime years and YOU get to pay the bill.

I think the books she is on about - that are readily available - are like "Men's Health" magazines, really, emasculating women's literature masquerading as useful. I.e. totally full of shit.

For example, is the bad boy thug/nice guy sexual selection dynamic ever really addressed, or is it all "make yourself an whimpy metrosexual mangina" and everything will be okay! And if in doubt, you're to blame! Not culture, not sexual selection, not socio-economics, oh no! And CERTAINLY, not feminism!

The big name publishers would never publish books like Sex Ploytation, The Manipulated Male, Garbage Generation or the Predatory Female even though they would of course be very popular. Indeed, I think those books had difficulty in getting published or went out of print because of feminist/political pressure. You see, those books verge on the very MGTOW attitude with regard to Western Women and Modern Feminism that the Men's Movement is all about. And women would prefer not to have men thinking along those lines but instead reading their whimp manuals instead.

**Percy** · 14th-August-2007

No, she doesn't get it. Near, but no cigar.

She points to some issues that come close but is so intent on still blaming men that she doesn't pursue the thinking paths to which her own insights could take her.

Feminism has brought women equal treatment under the law, voting rights, access to public life, some progress toward pay equity and so on.

It has given them phenomenal privilege and unfair advantage, with affirmative action laws, preference hiring, enhanced outta sight education preference, false sexual harassment bonanzas, etc etc. Not 'some progress toward'. Geez.

...our self-loathing is someone else's target quarterly profits.

Not only are those 'someone elses' women in the main (magazine publishers, cosmetic producers - Victoria Principal et al- undie designers - Elle, Kylie, everyone and her dog - the slimmers - Jenni Craig et al, but the self-loathing is projected onto any man withing earshot. She can't loath herself for long without blaming a man.

...a better name for contemporary femininity would be the feminine-industrial complex, a vast psycho-commercial conglomerate financed by women themselves and devoted to churning out fantastic solutions to the alarming array of psychological problems you didn't know you had

Here she gets it,

These days most of the oppressive advice comes from other women

Not only advice but the preceeding criticism. But she can't bring herself to sat that it is infinitly worse than the prior 'Patriarchy' which supported her, provided for her, protected her and generally agreed with every daft idea she had with 'Yes, Darling'.

So she shies away almost immediately prefering to blame a host of mythological supposedly male attitudes and wants.

...female dissatisfaction with men is a growth industry, and longing to possess a man doesn't have to include either trusting or particularly liking him.

Men's intrinsic dignity and integrity are dismissed outright. It doesn't occur to her that men do not wish to be possessions like her friggin' handbag, and this whole idea of 'not trusting him or particularly liking him' really shows through in the divorce and subsequent abiding hatred statistics. Another projection. Women like to pass their own lack of trustworthiness onto men. Its men's fault !!

She even needs to go down the typical female path, trod since her early teens and barely analysed, to confirm her distaste with men. Here she totally loses the plot in her eagerness to join the ranks of the advice-givers, the new Priestesshood.

Remember, men like the thrill of the chase,

(* No we don't. We are heartly sick and tired of chasing stupid women who think it 'fun' to run when they want to be caught. You are the 'No' means 'Yes' woman who cries Rape afterward or even in the bleeding middle) and if you're chasing him, what reason is there for him to chase you? You have to play hard to get (but not too hard). (* A stupid 'Game', invented by women in order to get out of being responsible ) Don't be needy (but don't be too independent). (* Have you thought about being authentic, real, the person you think you are deep down? Nah. Thought not) Try being more of a bitch (men love it, really). (* Oh sure. Men like toothache and piles, too!) Let him see who you really are - except for the part that reads advice books on how to nab a man while not appearing desperate. If he doesn't call, he doesn't deserve you! (* If he doesn't call, dearie, its because he saw right through your see-through personality) But if he does, invent somewhere exciting that you're rushing off to - after all, you have a life too, a great life! (* That's it. LIE. It's what you do best)

...which is why you're at home waiting for this ambivalent loser to call

Women are the ambivalent losers . I only hope that she meant all that as horrible example but she shows up most women for the losers they are. Not 'having lost', losers, but 'losers'. But she can't bring herself to say that.

It's not just that demand exceeds supply but also that the majority of single men are - according to field reports from those who've hazarded dating them - 'relationship-challenged', in flight from commitment, their true feelings, real women.

No. men are not 'relationship challenged', we are sick and fed up with child-women, women who reached fifteen and stopped dead in their tracks, frozen in stupidity and adolescence. We men used not to be commitment phobic - an insult we have had to put up with for several generations - but we have bowed to women's self-fulfilling prophesy. What dork would want to commit to an untrustworthy 'possessor' who really only wants to possess his possessions, which she gets when she divorces him.

Women have insulted men for so long that it comes naturally to them. And men are now saying, 'Get fucked'.

**IronLady** · 14th-August-2007

Percy, I'm going back before this current generation when I say this but...my Dad and every male of my generation told me that men DO like the thrill of the chase. Its just that the women of the present gen are not worth the chasing!

And in nature, it is the male that pursues the female. Interestingly, in all of the animal kingdom, sex is usually rape. Only in the human species is sex viewed as being by choice. In almost every species, the male grabs the female when she is in heat, mounts her, and doesn't give two hoots what she thinks about it either.

**bachelor tom** · 14th-August-2007

Quote from Annette1313

men DO like the thrill of the chase. Its just that the women of the present gen are not worth the chasing!

And the chase can result in a sexual harassment charge

Women today seem to have lost any knowledge of or interest in "inner beauty". They can tell you everything about cosmetics and cocktails, but tend to be spiritually hollow imo.

**Percy** · 14th-August-2007

I guess when a chap is young, Annette, he doesn't mind the chase as if he didn't do any pursuing he would wait around all year. The chase helps pass the time and gives him some sense that he is in charge of himself. He gets disabused pretty quickly these days. It is wired in for him to want to mate but after a while, as he matures, as the years go by, he gets mightlily annoyed at the game, at the hypocricy, at the taunting and refusals and rejections. He is the one taking all the risks of rejection and she gets all the choice. And as Tom points out, all that is needed for his career to be ruined is some woman complaining about a mere look in her direction and a smile.

It ain't any fun, frankly.

Those that still 'DO like the thrill of the chase', as your dad might have said, are masochists. It takes all sorts, I suppose.

**Marx** · 14th-August-2007

I must be a fairly unique guy, I've never bothered engaging in the 'chase'... With only an exception, the chase has always been done by the women in my life, not me. I won't pretend there's much of a chase, LoL, but still...

I agree with everything said above. One of the reasons I've never bothered with the chase is because I grew up surrounded by women and would read their magazines and such. I'd read how terrible men are who chase, who rape, who do this, that and the other... and, conversely, how terrible they are when they don't chase, don't do this or that, and I guess the exception being rape.

I realised at a young age that 'chasing' was a bad thing, so I just removed myself from the idea. I wish I hadn't in some regards, as then I'd have been the one deciding who I wanted to be with, whereas instead of I got pulled up by some of the nastiest & selfish creatures on the planet.

**Yan Yan** · 14th-August-2007

'The Chase' is a worn-out bit of western romantic fiction that passed its sell-by date with the dawn of feminism.
Who wants to chase a painted decoy into a minefield?

If the truth be told, women chase men and not vv.

We fear for our brainwashed brothers.