Life On the Rocks
Chaos, Angry Wrens and Lobsters... But Women?
MY son and I try to remain au courant with the popular ideas that seem worthwhile. He, being a young man, and realizing he must never again enter an elevator alone with a woman, was naturally drawn to Jordan Peterson, a brilliant and extremely well read and knowledgeable college professor, who has some very potent arguments against feminism and many other popular ideas that don’t quite wash. We both watched some Peterson videos on Youtube with great interest. Then, we bought the book, 12 Rules for Life – An Antidote to Chaos, and he could hardly tear himself away from the pages long enough to eat.
Very impressed that my son was so enthralled by the book, I began to read it, but just couldn’t get into it. When I couldn’t get beyond the lobsters and angry wrens, my son was somewhat hurt and puzzled. In an effort to explain, I tossed off the thought which had haunted me ever since the interview Peterson did with the TV woman, where he advanced one his pet theories that there aren’t as many female CEO’s of major corporations as there are men because psychological tests show most women score higher on being agreeable than men do and that being more agreeable kept women from getting ahead. That just didn’t seem right. As I blindly groped my way deeper into my uneasiness with Peterson’s theory, I hazarded my impression that in fact it had never seemed to me that women were more agreeable than men, not at all.
A deep furrow appeared on my son’s brow and as a dark shadow crossed his eyes, I knew exactly what he was thinking: he was remembering several previous girlfriends. I remembered them, too. Is it just because I’m his mother or did those young women all take an inordinate pride in always being as disagreeable as possible?
Realizing we were both having the same flashback, he leaped to the defense of his new favorite guru, saying “Well, he’s Canadian. Probably the women in Canada are different.” Yes. I do hope the women of Canada don’t take that the wrong way. I myself still laugh till I have tears in my eyes when I remember that moment.
Because, you see, if you’re not a professor and a scholar, and you haven’t tried to defend yourself against feminist rancor and privilege on the college campuses until you’re positively punch drunk, you’d know what all the rest of the world already knows: there is no such thing as an agreeable woman. It’s a contradiction in terms; it’s like water running uphill; it’s like the cure for the common cold. Impossible.
It’s just not in the nature of women to be agreeable. It’s not that they don’t occasionally act agreeably, but they always reserve the option of being thoroughly and completely disagreeable, should circumstances dictate.
Men can be agreeable. They have to be. They are physical creatures, given to expressing their feelings, sometimes even to the point of fighting, so if they didn’t know how to compete agreeably, they’d all kill each other in a day or two and that would be that. To compensate, men play games. Women play for keeps.
For women, life itself is life or death. Maybe it’s because women are young and beautiful and fertile for such a short time. I don’t know. But I do know that I worked in the fashion industry, a business dominated by women, and, let me be crude, you don’t fuck with women in power. When they say this is the way it will be, that’s it, the end. Women take no prisoners. And men in business know this and make allowances.
Woman may behave agreeably to achieve their purposes, but this is not because they are agreeable, far from it. There is nothing a woman won’t do to get her way. You have heard of Boadicea? Well, she’s the archetypal disagreeable women. And as a Canadian, Jordan Peterson should certainly be familiar with her. Or how about The Taming of the Shrew? The question is who tames who? And who ultimately wins exactly what she wants? Hint, hint.
Feminism is the extreme version of the disagreeable woman. Is there any human being, male or female, more consistently disagreeable than a feminist? And truly, they’ve got it all wrong. Only stupid women want to be 80 hour a week, nose to the grindstone CEO’s. The woman with even half a brain marries the CEO, and has all the perks, the status, the spoiling at the spas and none of the drudgery.
I’m a woman myself and think women are terrific, but I say to you, an agreeable woman is categorically impossible and would be a freak of nature.