"call me selfish, but..."

[donnaidh_sidhe]

I was reading in childfree today, and came across an introduction post that used the phrase, "Call me selfish, but..." and it occurred to me how many people have accepted that they're selfish and therefore bad when they've made a decision in their lives for more happiness or convenience that actually doesn't negatively affect other people much, if at all. (

Comments

[zer]

My thought is, expectations are made based on (ideas of) traditional gender roles: A woman is to subsume her selfhood to a man (performing domestic work, getting fucked), and to the family (in the role of a mother, wrangling children).

From a man, a level of selfishness/self-orientation is of course expected and admired-- "He's independent! He's assertive! He's focused! He's strong!", but a women acting with that same self-orientation suddenly becomes "cold-hearted", "doesn't care about family", so on. ... or if she gets away with having some degree of selfishness, she's probably also expected to be the primary domestic caretaker still, and has all the more work piled on her.

(Really, my /rock-solid/ anecdotal evidence comes from being horrified at men expecting women to act like their mother and pick up after them in a relationship, and do their laundry and shit. Like quit being a baby dude, wipe your own ass.)

... um, point is, I'm thinking women are called selfish because they're not (really) supposed to have a 'self'.

There's probably a whole world here of subject-object, hierarchy... could probably work in an art history / media theory angle, too..

[donnaidh_sidhe]

Goodness. Aren't I supposed to be the bitter feminist of the two of us? ;)

But yeah, there's some good points there. I haven't noticed a lot of CF guys posting about getting the "you're just selfish" line, but that could be because they're less wont to ask for support, or simply outnumbered on LJ, or what.

Hear Hear

[willdew]

(Really, my /rock-solid/ anecdotal evidence comes from being horrified at men expecting women to act like their mother and pick up after them in a relationship, and do their laundry and shit. Like quit being a baby dude, wipe your own ass.)

Sweet pissing Christ, yes. It's always disheartening when they start off seeming all enlightened and progressive (I'll do *all* the chores/ half the chores, really, I'll help cook and do the laundry, I don't mind) and then slooowly revert to type. First the excuses come (but you have all those *bras* as well as underpants, so you it makes sense for you to do the laundry, you have more than me!) and then the verbal abuse, etc.

Please see: my giant list of reasons for being gay.

Chicks aren't perfect, but at least society hasn't indoctrinated them to think you aren't their equal.

[donnaidh_sidhe]

Chicks aren't perfect, but at least society hasn't indoctrinated them to think you aren't their equal.

Not based on sex, anyway. They can always think you're less than them based on class, race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, education level, and other things.

[willdew]

Enh, I'm just being an immature, selfish bint I suppose. How ironic given the subj. matter of the post. My apologies.