This was originally posted as a response to a friend's reaction to a nasty piece of relationship advice by Tracy McMillan on Huffington Post. I'm screening comments from people who aren't on my LJ friends list. My usual comments policy applies. Don't comment here if you don't like it.  

Tracy McMillan has a book to sell. That's why she's writing this stuff. It's classic marketing: create a need, sell your product that just happens to fulfill that exact need. It has nothing to do with us.

You, me and other single women are just the marks. McMillan and the commenters judge us because they get something out of it. Some are pushing their products (Neenah Pickett is one of the first commenters and she just happens to have a web site that will help you find a husband called 52Weeks2Fi­ndHim.com), others just like to feel superior, and some like to beat themselves up.

That doesn't mean that it's wrong for us to react. This stuff is written to get us to react, ideally with a credit card number or self-flagellation. It's meant to hurt. McMillan is a professional writer, she is constantly trying to get better at eliciting specific emotions through her writing. In other words, she's constantly trying to become more hurtful and less _obviously_ manipulative.

Anger is a very appropriate response to that. That's why making you wrong for being angry, no matter how legitimate the reason, is her first point. McMillan knows that we've been trained to see our anger as damaging to relationships.

But what if she's wrong? What if showing up as an authentic person in relationships is the only way of allowing our true selves to be loved? Even if that sometimes means we're angry or insecure or flawed in other ways? Just like the "messy, farting, macaroni-and-cheese eating man" she thinks we'd like to marry?

Oh wait, I forgot, the first rule of relationship advice to women is that women who don't take 100% responsibility to keep their relationship going R DOIN IT WRONG. That's why "working around a man's fear and insecurity is big part of what you'll be doing as a wife." Does that sound like a relationship you'd like to have? Yeah, me either.

I just read about a Scottish cardinal who quit Amnesty International over its support for abortions "in the case of rape, incest, sexual assault or when pregnancy represents a risk to the mother's life or a grave risk to her health." Because obviously if you're a privileged male whose risk of being sexually assaulted is minimal, it's more important to protect unborn fetuses by rapist fathers than the lives of actual living women.

So I joined. You can join too.

If you disagree with any of Amnesty's other policies, please suggest viable alternatives in the comments.

Yesterday I read an article by Joss Whedon that disturbed me. He was drawing parallels between the stoning of a Dua Khalil and a soon-to-be-released American movie Captivity. Specifically he compares the way women are viewed as rightful victims of violence.

He writes that "Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies."

In his article Whedon links to  Equality Now and exhorts readers to stand up for what they believe in, regardless of how.

I completely agree with Whedon that this is a terrible state of affairs and I want to do what I can to address it. At the same time, reading about physical and emotional violence and discrimination inflicted on women upsets me greatly. I didn't see the videos of Dua Khalil's stoning but the images evoked by Whedon's text still haunt me and will for days. For me, making myself aware of these injustices is not compatible with a serene lifestyle or with maintaining emotional equanamity.

So the question becomes: How do I work toward the common good for all women and maintain my sanity at the same time? How do you do it?

From the altfriday5:

1. Which gender do you generally present yourself as (man, woman, androgynous, etc.)?
Woman.

2. Have you ever deliberately done "drag" (i.e., presented yourself as a gender you do not identify as)? If yes, how often? Why? How did it make you feel and act differently?
Not really, although I was a tomboy as a kid.

3. Do you get mistaken for another gender "remotely" (i.e., in letters, email, or on the phone)? How often? Why or why not?
I've deliberately chosen gender-neutral or ambiguous pseudonyms in many online contexts. Apel is a case in point. Since some people assume that anybody who doesn't immediately advertise that they're a woman is a man, it has happened that I've been mistaken for a man online. I'd attribute that to sexism and/or stupidity on the part of the other person, rather than any kind of androgynous linguistic patterns on my part.

4. Do you get mistaken for another gender in person? How often? Why or why not?
I'm occasionally called sir, probably because I'm often on my own and have short hair. It's a bit irritating, more because of the underlying assumptions that are exposed than because of anything I'd take personally.

5. If you could take one aspect of another gender's presentation (dress, make-up, hair, etc.) and instantly make it widely socially acceptable for your gender, what would it be?
Shoes, definitely. Men's shoes seem to on the whole be a lot more comfortable than women's shoes.

Now, if this question went the other way around, it would be much more interesting. I would love if more elaborate grooming were socially acceptable for men. They'd be much softer, prettier and sweeter smelling than they are now. That's something I'd appreciate.

This was inspired by a person on my friendsfriends list discussing if she wanted kids. She quoted popular opinion about single, childless, middle-aged women as OMG, the poor woman, she's so disturbed, she's all single and doesn't have any kids.

Oh yeah, I feel so sorry for me. Nobody wakes me up by puking in my bed in the morning. Nobody screams bloody murder right next to my ear when I go grocery shopping. Nobody prevents me from going on holiday to France. Nobody tells me to watch my figure when I buy chocolate. Nobody laughs at me when I do yoga (badly) in the morning. Nobody complains about my taste in music. Nobody gets all embarrassed and pretends not to know me when I stop and talk to cats. Woe is me! Woe, I say woe! :-)