Give, give, give

Women lose too much in pursuit of love and sex

Modernity defines ‘love’ as an open concept to be felt and desired by all without discrimination. According to history, love is one-sided and patriarchal—men can take whatever they need and women give up everything they have to offer. For many women, especially those in heterosexual relationships, love comes with conditions: servitude, silence, and sacrifice. Despite movements towards empowering women in recent centuries, despite all we do to liberate ourselves, the patriarchy of love and sex runs impossibly deep.

There is a thin line between sexual freedom and exploiting your own body. Such liberation may exist, but it means something different for a girl freshly turned eighteen who is going to parties wearing short skirts and shirts that are pulled too low. It is no longer freedom when she lets a guy touch her and do things to her that she would not say yes to while sober. The next morning, it is rarely mutual satisfaction, but his pride and our shame, our humiliation. With sex, there is often a connotation of ownership for men and sacrifice for women—we have to give up some part of ourselves in order to enjoy it. Sometimes it feels as though everything we do is intrinsically tied to male desires. Would we still choose to wear revealing clothes if it were not what made us appealing to the male gaze?

Our sense of beauty is vulnerable. They prescribe us words like cute, hot, or sexy, but we are never beautiful until we decide we are. Ever since we were young girls, they have catcalled us as we crossed the street and honked their horns when we dressed nicely on outings with friends. With every objectifying comment, the idea of beauty is pulled out of our hands. At first, it may feel nice. We may even seek it out. But over time, a man’s words can only warm us for a few brief seconds before we realize they are too good to be true, too good to be given out with no expectation of anything in return.

We can grow up and decide that we’re beautiful, but we will want to be young forever. More often than a man could ever know, we think about what we could do to look better for them. We imagine our appearance goals as a to-do list: bigger eyes, flushed cheeks, a perfect and innocent smile. To be his baby is a dream. Baby this, baby that. Endearing nicknames quickly become whole identities when he no longer calls her by her name. To him, she is innocent and pure, and if she dares to contradict him or to know just a bit more, she is no longer desirable.

I know too many smart women who feel the need to act less intelligent than they actually are when they are with a man. We diminish our own minds out of fear of threatening their masculinity, to feed their fantasies of superiority and providing protection. Even when we find an equal in academics, their emotional intelligence is found to be lacking. Our upbringings are fundamentally different—young girls are taught to be caretakers, while boys are told they can have anything they want. As a result, we often do not play the role of partner but the role of mother, setting aside our own needs to do so. Plenty of men grow into this sense of entitlement, steeped in presumptuous, arrogant attitudes, feeling no need for empathy—even when the pain they inflict should be searing into their conscience. They expect women to serve them, bear all their emotional burden, and constantly listen to their problems, yet they rarely offer any support in return. Usually, a woman’s problems are too nuanced for them to care enough to understand. We learn to hurt in silence, to rely on other women for support instead. 

“It’s not me,” they insist. And maybe it’s not. This is not a hate letter to all men——most perpetrators move through the world blissfully unaware, and that in itself is part of the problem. Even women who are ‘free’ do not realize how much of their energy is spent on men, because of men, in ways that feel inevitable or ingrained. Is there any escape? Where is the balance between giving and taking? Is it possible for a woman to experience love without also experiencing loss?