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Quote Of The Day # 63
It has become so necessary to maintain power structures to benefit a selected few that it has become woven into our idea of reality.
You don’t need to be in love to count as a human.
When women do not have a partner, they are punished and mocked; but when they do conform and spend a lot of time talking and thinking about romance, they are called boy crazy. You are punished either way and are forced to walk an impossibly narrow path. The time and energy women have to spend on negotiating all of this is why it is a political issue.
To be fair, we are very motivated to imagine signals where they don’t exist. This society is so … basing women’s worth on their ability to attract men, that the existence of any person who’s not attracted to you in some way demeans you.
A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.
…young girls are taught to be boy crazy in the first place. No women can be logically persuaded to spend her life cleaning dudes’ toilet, raise his children, and being his living therapist for free. … the job, like working in Goldman Sachs, the hours are too long, the work is too stressful, and the industry is morally suspect…
Love is a real thing, but is love sustainable? After a lot of reading…chatting, observing people in parties, I come to the conclusion that love usually lasts several years…Biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher once said in hunter gatherer society, women usually gave birth every three to four years; in modern society, divorce peaks after three or four years of marriage. She theorizes that romantic love is a reproductive strategy designed to keep couples together at least long enough to raise a child through infancy.
There are many quotable lines in this book about how to date by Blythe Roberson, which is quite funny. The author doesn’t really hate men at all, but rather she loves men. Still, she often finds that it is an unequal relationship and she can’t help pointing it out. Despite the title “How to”, it doesn’t offer dating advice. It only describes what women are facing in flirting, dating, breaking up and what she has encountered so far. It is a conundrum that many are facing and a problem that cannot be resolved easily.
These may be my favourite quotes you have shared so far. I so agree with so many of them. No matter what a woman is punished or mocked. And yes girls are taught to be boy crazy because it benefits the patriarchy.
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Thank you for your sweet comment. Yes, whenever it benefits the system, it is considered a good thing. I have a snobby aunt (one of my mother’s younger sisters) who married the president of a kind of community college. She’s so unbearably vulgar. However because she talks about women’s look all the time, and she flatters men and boys all the time, she is considered the pillar of the society. If I describe what she says, readers might think I am crazy, but that’s just what she often says. And she just can’t stop talking and stupid words spill from her mouth like a big fountain. She worships men and despises women (except herself). And because she serves the system so well, the system awards her and she’s satisfied with the the awards, which makes her a rare content woman. I wish I could describe her well, but my writing skills are not good enough to bring out her vulgarity and her ridiculousness…
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I have an aunt exactly like that. And she pushes her daughters to be that way too. It’s so sad to see them turn into her and always criticise other women. I literally can’t talk to them anymore because I hate listening to them being so misogynistic.
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Haha, Oh, my goodness. My aunt too. She just poisoned my innocent cousin, her daughter, who grew up thinking exactly like her. Everyday they seemed to go out there to shame other women into depression and binge eating. I tried to avoid them as much as possible, but they hated me since they somehow guessed that I could see through them. They lashed their verbal abuse at me whenever they had a chance. You are so right that aunts like that are toxic misogynists and narcissists. And it is so ridiculous to watch that people like that are being a respected figure in an extended family or a close knit community. It’s really defying reasoning or are we prone to irrationality?
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I think it’s just that the world is a messed up place. Women like that are praised while women who think outside the box are criticised. It really is a cruel world sometimes.
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LOL. So true. I have to say more than half of the women praised by the society are either not deserving the praise or are praised for the wrong reason. In my own narcissistic family, the bad ones are always so loud while the normal persons are all repressed.
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Yes, women that are praised by society are often only praised because they fit patriarchal standards. It’s like that in my family too.
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Yes, you are right. Actually most men don’t fit in the masculine standard either. And for women, the standards are even more ridiculous. LOL.
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True, standards for both men and women are pretty impossible. But yes, worse for women.
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It sometimes begs the question–who set up these standards? It must be a historical misfortune that caused human being to think that there’s a need for such ridiculous standards.
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I always wonder that myself. Even as a historian I really don’t know much about this.
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I mean it takes a huge unfortunate event (events) or a really mad evolution to push human to set up these crazy standards.
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Agreed. The worst part is that it will take centuries to get rid of them.
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Haha, so true. We all have to make an effort to do that…
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A fair assessment of love and the judgments that are quick to precede it. 🙂
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It is a good relief just to read it, but there’s no solution …
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Thank you for sharing these quotes. There is a lot of truth to them.
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Thank you for your sweet comment. Yes, there’s a lot of truth in it and the author is quite candid.
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I am so glad I am old enough that I am married, it was bad enough when I was growing up. I don’t know how young women stand it today with social networking. Thank you for sharing this. Great read. 🦋🌹
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The whole thing is a trick of nature to get us to pass on our genes. It drives both sexes crazy but in different ways.
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Yes, especially when civilization is built on top of regulating or minimize human instincts.
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That’s what I thought too. I mean nowadays it is a new game of love and dating. Wish young people have a better time of getting what they want and staying away from narcissists.
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