Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Are Women Too Aggressive? Only When They "Nag"

So I log onto Yahoo! and see this news story front and center.

Okay, so the first thing that made me twitch was this little section:

One trend that men have been grappling with: Figuring out their roles in relationships as women have become increasingly financially independent, increasingly sexually liberated, and increasingly determined not to let their biological clocks dictate their relationship status. Before you hurl e-tomatoes in my direction, hear me out: All those things can be good,
(Emphasis mine)

Can? Can be good? In what instances are they not good? In the instance of being a dude who doesn't want women to be liberated? Well yeah, I guess it might suck then, but for the people it's happening for, well, it's ALWAYS good, kthx.

Still, I don't think this article is all bad. It relies on age-old stereotypes from time to time, such as "Women want to label me and trap me into relationships!". Still, the author of this article claims that the generalizations about men and their perceptions of female aggression comes from speaking with dozens of men about the topic, so perhaps they're not his views but theirs. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, I guess.

However, I had another problem with the author's findings:

Case in point: in the survey for Men, Love & Sex, the number-one thing that men said bothered them about their partners was how much they nagged. When a woman applies a lot of pressure on a guy-whether it's to fix his bad habits or convince him to have babies-it simply feels suffocating.
So when women are aggressive in the bedroom, which gives a guy more pleasure, it's okay with them. However, if they're aggressive in characteristics that they might like to see changed, then they're The Nag. I mean, geeze, don't you just feel the pressure on the backs of the poor men when women ask them to stop biting their nails while they're spending most of their time vacuuming them up?

Sorry dudes, but saying "Hey, I'd like for you to stop leaving the toilet seat up" or "You know, it'd be nice if you washed the dishes once in a while" or even, "Hey, why the hell do I always have to get up in the middle of the night to change little Johnny's diaper?" isn't women being too aggressive just because you don't like it.

2 comments:

FEMily! said...

See, if guys were more accomodating and nurturing, they wouldn't let women who assert themselves against some truly bothersome things get in the way of being men.

FEMily! said...
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