Fifty Shades of Stupid

The letter writer in yesterday’s Ask Polly column, in New York Magazine is so stupid it takes your breath away. Naturally, Polly doesn’t have the least clue about what is wrong, because Polly offers the same advice no matter what. So, add one stupid to the 50 shades exposed by a woman who calls herself Eating Lasagna Alone Forever.

Of course, this blog does not exist to regale the world with idiocy. It exists to expose hidden truths. This time, the truth is so flagrant that it smacks you in the face. Of course, Polly misses the point, but what were you expecting?

ELAF is a rabid feminist. She is an uncompromising zealous fanatical aggressively hostile feminist. She wakes up every morning and douses herself with her favorite fragrance, Essence of Man Repellent. Somehow or other, it works. She repels men, except for those who are willing to partake of the only thing she is offering: free love.

She finds men. She has sex with them, with dozens as it happens. And she is still alone. She cannot figure it out. Score one for stupid.

But, score one also for the truth about radical feminism. It is not designed to produce loving caring relationships with men. It is designed to protect women from any and all relationships with men… good, bad and indifferent. But, since women have their needs— did we need feminism to tell us that?— these women do insist on having sex with men. To be blunt about it, if they were not giving it away for free, no man would ever want to deal with them. So, they put out, they have sex, and one suspects that they are rather accomplished at it. And then the men disappear. The men feel used because they are being used. She uses men and allows men to use her. It is not a formula for a relationship... at least not one you can take home to Mom and Dad.

If ELAF were the only woman offering free love, it would be one thing. In truth, she is making imperious demands. She will give some sex, but what she wants in return is her man’s mind. It’s a Faustian bargain. Happily enough, no men have yet taken it.

She demands that a man thinks what she wants him to think, that he toes the feminist party line. No deviations allowed. No dissent allowed. He must do exactly as she says and think exactly as she does. Here again we have a cultural symptom, a young woman who is incapable of dealing with anyone who holds to a different point of view. Otherwise she gets triggered and throws a tantrum. This becomes yet another reason for sentient males to run for the hills.

So, ELAF opens her letter by complaining about Polly. Did I forget to mention that she is a whiner? Please forgive me. Here is the evidence:

I’m sick of you accepting letters from women who are messes but have “a loving husband who always supports my decisions” or women who are in perfect relationships but are haunted by guilt about their exes. We single ladies are messes without the built-in safety net of a partner, and we need your help, too — even more!

In that spirit, I write to you with my sad single-lady problems about how I can’t find the loving husband who will support all of my decisions because I am too weird and difficult (exhibit A: the above, very rude paragraph).

I think lots of people are weird, of course, and still manage to find their people, but I’m worried my particular flavor of weird is so internally contradictory that finding somebody who also embodies those clashing values and interests is nigh impossible.

So, she has no manners and no couth. She wants to find a husband who will support all of her decisions. She suspects that this makes her weird and difficult. To say the least. Polly is too nice to say so but ELAF is a pathetic fool. Weird can be charming. Difficult can be charming. Fanatical zealotry is neither.

She continues to display her feminist bona fides. She is not just a feminist, she is aggressively feminist. How many men do you know who are looking for an aggressive woman who insists on imposing her will on them.

I am aggressively feminist. It is not enough for me to date a man who doesn’t actively catcall women; I need someone who will validate me when I complain about mansplaining at work and understand that asking me to tell him what chores he needs to do his 50 percent share of is itself emotional labor that I’m not here for. I’m kinky and find vanilla sex utterly boring; I’ve tried to be more open to it, but it just doesn’t turn me on. These two things are already somewhat contradictory: someone who won’t devil’s advocate me about the gender wage gap but then finds the idea of slapping me (even consensually!) abhorrent kind of makes sense. Then on top of that, monogamy: People who are “alternative” in these ways — kink, leftist politics — also tend to reject monogamy (doubly so in the Bay Area, where I live). I do not want to be polyamorous, ethically non-monogamous, in an open relationship, monogamish, any of it. So here we have three core, relationship-foundational pieces that are already in conflict with each other.

As for her sexual proclivities and propensities, they are best ignored. It is worth noting that her peers in the Bay Area, that would be San Francisco, reject monogamy. In that case, the words we would use to describe her female friends might seem improper on such a decorous blog.

And yet, she got completely torqued over the man who did not wash his hands after relieving himself in the restroom. Why so torqued? Because, she says, telling him to wash his hands made her feel like his mother. Considering what she is putting out, what kind of man was she expecting to find? Why was she so worried about his hand-washing habits? You guessed it, or maybe you did not— because he was going to stick his fingers inside her. One assumes that she demanded it.

This romantic encounter does not register on the weird scale:

“Um, so sorry if this is weird, but I don’t think I heard the water run and then I noticed the sink was, um, dry, and I was wondering if maybe you, like, forgot to wash your hands?” My voice rising several octaves with the discomfort of having to play mother to a 31-year-old man and remind him to wash his hands after using the bathroom. Taken aback, he got defensive. “I did!” he said. And I didn’t really know what else to say so I changed the subject and asked if I could get him something to drink. We had sex and his pizza fingers were inside me and I didn’t die but I also didn’t see him again after that.

Afterward, I realized that he was the 50th person I’ve had sex with and I cried. I’ve put myself out there so many times, shared my body with so many people, tried to imagine myself loving strangers over and over again, and I’ve only been in one real actual adult relationship, and the person it was with was emotionally abusive and told me to kill myself to spare the world my craziness. Not exactly a confidence booster.

So, her number, as the saying goes, is 50. She has only had one relationship, with a man who lacked a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. Then again, she might have discovered that knowing her and trying to live up to her demands did not bring out his best.

What should she do?

She should close up shop. She should read a book called The Rules. She sounds like an aficionado of Tinder… and this sends a certain message all by itself. It does not make her feel good about herself. Feminism will tell her that these men are toxic pigs… but seriously, what does it take for her to figure out that her ideological commitments are an obstacle to getting married. That she has not yet figured that out that her serial relationship failures are to be expected speaks ill of her and of the other members of her coven. Do you honestly believe that no one, in her family and among her friends, have ever suggested that she needs to abandon her fanatical zeal and try being a real human woman?

If she refuses to listen and if she refuses to change her ways after serial failures, there is very little that anyone can do for her.