Feminine Wiles, Women's Prerogative, Chivalry and Other Sexist Garbage

I have a trio of illustrations of how women expect to regularly flout the rules of fairness: 'Feminine Wiles', 'Women's Prerogative' and 'Chivalry'.

Masculine Wiles?

What are feminine wiles? It's when a woman can outwit a man by using her femininity. Well, guys see this in action all the time. I really don't need to explain how a woman can wheedle preferable customer service out of a male clerk, for instance. Do I really need to explain? I'll give you a (rare) example of masculine wiles to contrast:

I was at a Wendy's restaurant with 5 of my closest friends, including my brother. We order our food, and sit-down at our tables... I notice on the wall, an advertisement for one of those scratch-off ticket raffles that fast-food chains hold every so often. I realized that we didn't get any scratch-off tickets with our mass-produced food, so I walk-up to the counter (it wasn't crowded) and I said to the salesgirl "Hi, I noticed that we didn't get any scratch-off tickets with our food."

She was about 19 or thereabouts, and says "We're out of scratch-off tickets, sorry about that."

I feign irritation. "Do you know what this means?? It means that we've been all been deprived of our opportunity to win a fabulous Ski-Doo!"

"Sorry..." She screws-up her mouth and looks like she wishes I'd just go away. I'll give her no such pleasure. I press my attack.

"Honestly, we might've won something, and now we've been robbed of our chance! There are six of us, and we might've at least won a free Frosty or something." I scowl darkly.

She shifts uncomfortably in her shoes. "I'll tell you what? I'll let you guys have Frosties for free. Is that okay?"

It sure is! I walk-back to our table with 6 free Frosties. My brother is grinning ear-to-ear.

"NiceGuy, I saw the whole thing... do you know what you've done?"

"Gotten us free dessert?"

"No, you've just used your masculine wiles!"

"Is that so?" I grin. "Yeah, I guess I did."

Bob, one of my friends speaks-up, his mouth full of Big Dave's Deluxe. "Masculine wiles? What do you mean?"

I reply: "You know of feminine wiles, right? The fact that women can connive and finagle better service and favors out of the opposite sex by playing-up their looks and so-called helplessness?"

Bob nods, slurping his Sprite. "Ahh yes. Devious trickery!" He speaks in a high-pitched falsetto voice. "Oooh, I'm just a girl. Officer, I didn't know I was speeding..."

"Right. Well, NiceGuy just displayed a rare example of masculine wiles." Says my brother, jabbing his finger at the air. We all share a good chuckle.

Yes, that was a rare display of masculine wiles.

Feminine Wiles, however, is pervasive. In fact, I don't even need to say much about it, because every guy sees it on a daily basis.

Women's Prerogative

My Ex, Lying Whorebag, lied constantly. She lied to her family, her friends and to me. She even lied to herself. In fact, she lied so often, I think she had trouble distinguishing what truth was. And, in her own estimate, she was an honest person... the reason for this apparent contradiction is such: you can never be lying if you genuinely have no clue what truth is.

But, here's the kicker: if you ever caught her in a lie, then she would try to escape by claiming that she didn't lie but 'it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind.' Woman's Prerogative was the logical basis upon which she could lie.

Ah! So clear! Women don't lie, women CHANGE THEIR MINDS!

Example: it's the dead of winter. She says she needs to use my 4-wheel drive car while I'm at work... she would make a promise like: "Sure, NiceGuy, I'll drive you to work tomorrow morning so you don't have to walk out to the bus stop in four feet of snow."

Tomorrow morning rolls-around. I nudge her to wake-up and drive me to work.

She replies: "Ugh. NiceGuy, I changed my mind about driving you... It's too cold outside and I don't like driving downtown in icy conditions like this."

"Whorebag, you promised to drive me. Do you have any idea how-"

"Hey, so I changed my mind, Okay?! Jeez!" She flops-back into bed.

Ten minutes later, I'm tromping-out to the bus stop.

So that wasn't lying. It was just her changing her mind... to decide NOT to honor a verbal agreement. Makes perfect sense. This was a tiny example, but she pulled this sort of thing constantly. She could pick and choose which commitments she had to fulfill. She sees no issue over breaking a promise she made the day before, because her idea of what constitutes a promise would be DIFFERENT the next day!!!

She could discard whatever promises whenever she wanted, promises were optional to her! Freedom to lie and freedom to break promises: Woman's Prerogative in action.

Is there such a thing as 'Men's Prerogative'? I don't think there is. Men don't have too many excuses for not fulfilling their promises. If a man doesn't fulfill a promise to a woman, he's a lying bastard.

Whither chivalry?

A few years back, I was on a camping trip with a mixture of men and women. It was time to take-down the tents and pack them away. There were also a few heavy objects which needed to picked-up and put into our Land-Rover. One of the women was about to help load one of the heavy things, but then one of her girlfriends stopped her: "We'll let the guys do that heavy stuff." And, like dopes, we did.

I was at a friend's house yesterday; we were having a small party. All the seats were taken, and a woman who arrived late walked-in. She looked-around at everyone sitting; after noticing that there were no spare chairs, she said "Do any of you guys want to be a gentleman and give-up a seat for me?" I think she was disappointed that five men didn't jump to offer her a seat the instant she walked into the room.

Then there is the old story of Sir Walter Raleigh, gentleman and ladies man extraordinaire. He was walking with his lady of the hour, and her dainty feet were endangered by a great, wet, and potentially staining puddle of mud lurking in her path. He cast his coat over the offending puddle, thus saving the day and her shoes…

Once in a long while, I hear women complaining about how men just don't act chivalrous like that anymore. That statement, I think, is a true laugh. Women have been wanting equality for years... but chivalry existed because of the idea that women are feeble and incapable of taking care of themselves. Guess what, babe? If you want equality, one of the things that has to disappear is chivalry!

Equality don't feel so good once your perks dry-up, does it princess? Women don't like the fact that chivalry has to die: A poll for Britain's Bella magazine conducted among 500 women says six out of 10 women wanted the man to pick up the bill at dinner and nine out of 10 still hoped men would give up their seats on buses and trains. This tells me that women want it both ways: equality, yet still enjoy privileges from an era in which they were 'disadvantaged'!

In 1851, a woman named Sojourner Truth (an escaped slave, abolitionist and prominent suffragist activist) said the following at a women's rights gathering in Akron, Ohio: "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man- when I could get it- and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman?"

Yes, the far-sighted early women's' rights activists knew perfectly well that chivalry couldn't logically exist at the same time as gender equality. Yet now that chivalry is dying, the women of today want it back again! Are modern women childishly indecisive, or are they just morons??

My mom always told me to open doors for women. When I was young, I didn't argue- but one day I told her that I was taught at school that women were equal to men and perfectly capable of doing everything a man can do. Women aren't feeble! She replied that women still appreciate it when a man holds a door open for them. Now, I clearly see that this is an instance in which sexism can work for the benefit of women. About a year ago, I held doors open for women all the time. But since I started making this web page, I don't hold doors open for too many twenty-something women. (With a few women- very few- holding the door open is even patronizing and insulting.) Well, I hold doors open for elderly women, because they were brought-up in an age to expect it and will typically not consider it to be patronizing. And if a woman is struggling with a big package, yes I will hold the door open in the same way that I'll hold a door open for a guy with a big package. And my friend Miriam weighs about 98-pounds and has trouble opening certain heavier doors. But most fit young women have two arms and two legs, so why should I treat them like they're too dumb and feeble to open a door?

It would be nice if door-opening was for anyone, by anyone. But not too many women are ready to open doors for me.

Ladies: if you want equality, then stop whining that chivalry is disappearing! Stop expecting us to give-up our seats for you. Stop expecting us to move the couch for you. Women aren't feeble! Stop pretending you're feeble and useless! This is what you wanted, remember? Am I the only person that realizes this? Jeez!

Chivalry persists in other ways. Men still pay child-support for children their ex-wives disallow them to see. College men still attend women's studies classes, where they sit humbly as professors insult their masculinity. And despite that most victims of social ills like homelessness and on-the-job fatalities are men, most men smile and nod when municipal governments grant hundreds of thousands of dollars to offices that safeguard women's rights, but not men's. In every way, women continue to rely on male chivalry to grab whatever utility they can get.

The Ultimate Sacrifice

On the topic of chivalry: a lot of old stories depict ways in which men will do heroic deeds and sacrifice their lives to save the life of a woman. This didn't only happen in ye dayes of olde: on the Titanic, for instance, quite a few men let women and children go to the lifeboats first, so it's not surprising that most of the survivors were first-class women and kids. (And if you remember the movie Titanic, Molly Brown starts yelling at her female lifeboat occupants to go back and save a few men. Naturally, the women in the boat sit-around looking totally dumbfounded by the suggestion... someone points-out the survivors might be liable to swamp the boat. Better to not lift a finger.)

Even a few modern feminist writers have expressed a romanticized view of the days when men would sacrifice their lives for a woman... Linda Lichter once commented on the Titanic record: "Such men understood the essential and intimate links between Victorian etiquette and making the ultimate sacrifice (death) for the women society had taught them to revere..."

I think that this indicates something disturbing working within the feminine thought process. In earlier rants, I've mentioned how women consider male life to be cheap. Well, when a man willingly sacrifices his life to save that of a woman, all of a sudden he becomes virtuous. In the warped female line of thinking, the man is more valuable dying than when he is alive! Isn't that screwed-up? Using their romantic fantasies as a metaphor, women show near-contempt for the life of a man until he sacrifices his life to save that of a precious woman. No matter how much a woman loves a man, she would get some satisfaction if he sacrificed himself for her. That's probably one of the most perverse ideas of quid-pro-quo ever conceived.

In 1912, suffragette Lida Stokes Adams of Philadelphia noted: "Women passengers of the Titanic lost one of the greatest chances ever presented to aid the cause of suffrage when they did not assert themselves and prove they are as courageous as men." Well spoken, Lida.

Definitions

'Feminine wiles' is just another way of saying 'abusing the advantages we pretend we don't have' or 'I'll try to use my looks to connive what I want out of men.' In my opinion, 'Feminine wiles' is the anus of the female character.

'Women's Prerogative' is just another way of saying 'We can do whatever the hell we want and guys just have to put up with it.' It's a way to lie unaccountably.

'Chivalry is dead' is just another way of saying 'we prefer it when guys scramble to do stuff for us precious little princesses, preferably at the expense of their own lives.' Women don't like non-chivalrous men because non-chivalrous men can't be bamboozled. If a woman ever asks you to give-up your seat on a crowded bus for her, just retort: "I believe in equality for women."

Bah! This sucks.

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"Men, upon closer inspection, aren't half as bad as women think they are. Women, upon closer inspection, are almost as bad as women think men are." -- BusterB

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