Editor’s note: Original title – Jumping Through Hoops: A Criticism of Modern Woman.

I will begin at the place where the idea started, shivering to keep itself alive; wrapped in a newspaper like a thrift-shop gift. I was reading an article one day, not too long ago, the kind of sensible, instructional, “for-your-own-good” piece of printed charm. The content? Nothing other than the slightly insistent, slightly nagging, slightly droning voice of feminism, a voice that is so misunderstood (and, more tragically, so misnamed) by so many smirking, self-righteous women and men, that it is beginning to breed confusion rather than liberation. Just as the author, Wallace Immen, was stumbling through the tirelessly saturated topic of women in management, a punch-line quote cooked up by a certain consultant named Elaine Allison was suddenly presented on a fool’s gold platter of wisdom: “If women are nurturing we are called weak. If woman are too forthright, we are called the B-word.” Then she delivers the steaming nugget of precious advice, “Women have to learn to lead with grace and elegance but still get things done.” Are these ideas effective for top-line management? Even though they are a tad simplistic and conformist, I have to admit that the answer may be a yes or a no; conveniently enough, the article did not mention any research done around the evaluation of such strategies. But my object of debate is not concerned with women in management, but with women and their relationship with those destructive connotations that have become attached to the notion of feminism. Like I mentioned earlier, the above example is just a place where a question cracked, giving birth to an idea. What was the question? As I read the article I asked myself, “What does this say about how women view themselves?”

The kind of self-scrutiny that is embedded in the quote, “If women are nurturing we are called weak. If women are forthright, we are called the B-word,” hints not only at the obvious stereotypes attached to women, but also at the reality that, despite their courageous claims of independence and self-actualization, women are still jumping through hoops in order to please. Who cares if someone calls you a bitch? What is more important: your label or the freedom to be who you truly are? What do I mean by hoops? The hoops represent the boundaries that greatly restrict how women are defined and how women are allowed to define themselves. As a woman, you should not be too gentle or too loud, you should be good-looking but not too vain, you should be sexy but not raunchy, you should have kink-free sex. Nothing is ever good enough! Therefore, these hoops are not simply circular in nature; instead, they defy the laws of metaphysics and result in endless contradictions. The reality is that women do not have the freedom to define themselves. Why? The fact that society doesn’t give them that freedom is only half of the story, the half that we have been so good at whining about. The other half is that women do not allow themselves that freedom; they do not take what they truly need.

But let’s start at the beginning. Rather than defining the status quo, let’s examine how women perpetuate it. The overcooked truth is that the hoops mentioned earlier have always existed, created by society but maintained precisely and unconsciously by women themselves. Before the time of feminism, women were constrained by societal ideals of virginity, innocence, and passivity; there existed a clear divide between the roles of men and those of women. Then, stage left, here comes feminism. There is an enormous disparity between the theory of feminism and the way in which that theory is put into, or rather fails to be put into practice. While feminism preaches independence, self-definition, and self-respect, women are still waiting for men to define who they are; they compete with other women for men’s attention, they incessantly attempt to change themselves in order to emulate what they think is desirable, and when all else fails, they finally resort to lies and deception in order to get what they feel they are so completely entitled to. They strive to be accepted and approved of; to be told that they are beautiful and of value. These types of behaviors contradict the theoretical ideals of independence, self-definition, and self-respect. Expecting someone else to lead you by the hand and tell you who you should be is a swift blow to the entire notion of the free-will individual; sinking to the level of becoming a manipulative person flies in the very face of the dignity that we supposedly hold so dear.

What makes matters worse is that often, women not only create a contradiction between who they claim to be and how they act, but also that they often use the advantages provided by feminism, in unfair ways, to manipulate and punish men for supposedly failing to give them what they want. They file bogus sexual harassment suits, lie about physical abuse, and extravagantly label themselves as “victims.” It is true these things do actually take place in the real world, however, some women give in to the temptation to use other women’s real suffering to their own advantage. So why are women so dissatisfied with men, so unhappy with men, so disturbed by their inability to “get what they want” from men? The answer is that men cannot give them the very things that, by definition, women should be able to give themselves. Sure, we should expect men to encourage, protect, and provide emotional support, but it is unfair and illogical to expect men to define us; to expect them to deny the fact that a relationship is composed of two authentic beings rather than a muddled mixture of one dominant component and one dominated one; it isn’t only futile and impossible, but it denies the claim that women are indeed individuals. I suspect that men feel a certain dread when they suddenly realize that they are expected to think not only for themselves, but also for their “significant other.” Some weaker men in need of a heaping spoonful of self-esteem do indeed find this weakness attractive. However, most men, I hope, want to interact with a whole person rather than with half of one.

So how have times changed? Whereas before, women were prisoners of society’s expectations and stereotypes, they are now incarcerated in a prison created by themselves. Their display of contradictions has contributed to the formation and maintenance of the many new expectations held by the Western world today. It is not enough to merely talk of a different world; one has to plunge one’s hands and mind into the dough of life and cause the materialization of change.

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