Bad Girls Who Think:
How Feminism Hurt Our Love Lives

Let me make this clear from the onset: I think feminism was (and is!) a good thing. I may not have had a career in television, nor been able to write books with such provocative ideas, had the feminist movement and the women who pioneered it, not led the way for me. I am indebted to feminists.

But, I do think feminism has screwed up our love lives. We’re now unsure of how to turn off this new power when confronted with a romantic suitor in a candle lit restaurant. We act like he’s one of the boys from work. And then we get upset when he treats us like one of the boys from work -- achieving his goal (in this case, sex) and then moving to a new project. Feminism also gave us an easy exit door from relationships. That’s a good thing if it were a truly bad relationship, but too often our economic clout sends us fleeing out the back door of a “good enough” relationship, instead of learning to work through conflict in a loving way. In all my years of earning money and dating many men, I never thought I’d be saying this: In some ways, we are too independent. For, we have lost the art of being interdependent.

I think the whole feminist movement is a bit of a misnomer anyway -- feminism didn’t liberate femininity. Feminism liberated masculine energy in women. It was a masculinist movement. This is a good thing. Because of masculism, er, I mean feminism, we can now procure income in the male dominated marketplace and buy ourselves any kind of life we want. Those of us who aren’t completely fulfilled baking cookies can now choose to fly jets, put out fires, or handcuff bad guys. We can also look for a cure for cancer, design computer programs, and sink basketballs, if those things suit our fancy.

But make no bones about it, feminism did not liberate femininity. In fact, I think it did the opposite. It pushed femininity in the closet, turning feminine traits into embarrassingly weak elements of our personality -- a side that we began to show to fewer and fewer people. Remember the chick you once broke down in tears in the office? How embarrassing, you thought. You vowed then, to never, ever act like a “girl” at work, right? By the way, I was that girl and made an even stronger vow that day. I swore that no one would ever see me as weak again. And, so I trashed my authentic self -- the girl who used to be vulnerable, honest, and aware of my feelings -- and I even began to distrust my own intuition. Intuition, a primal gift to women, now somehow seemed illogical in the workplace. And, maybe everywhere else.

Finally, feminism did a disservice to many women who weren’t (and aren’t) unhappy with traditional gender roles. Feminism robbed them of their identities by devaluing their job description. Millions of women whose self esteem was derived from their role as a great mother or supportive wife were suddenly left with a low-ranking title. There are still many women, (indeed, the backbone of our country) who cringe at a cocktail party when that inevitable small-talk query pops up, “And, what do you do?”

Somehow it seems awkward to say, “I take pride in my soufflé, kiss plenty of boo boos, find joy in my garden, and I spend a lot of time helping my family with their emotional struggles.” No, instead, the woman who does those very things everyday is forced, in public, to extol the merits of the part-time office job that brings her income and not much more. And, if you think that a married woman who is in touch with her femininity is a pariah in public, imagine a single woman who is developing hers: “Well, I read a lot of parenting and self-help books. I’m currently dating and hoping to encourage emotional intimacy in a man so that we can form a warm union and grow together.” That statement just wouldn’t fly, would it? Yet, I think this is what many of us are secreting hoping for. We Threw the Baby out with the Bath Water.

It seemed with all the effort to conform and succeed in a male world we unknowingly threw out a crucial, feminine skill -- the ability to be the emotional conduit for a logic-locked man. For centuries, women have held the keys to the emotional locker in relationships. We come by emotions naturally, through hormones that help us bond, be empathetic, and intuitive. Our female ancestors had to decipher the meaning of an infant’s cries, or decide in an instant if an intruder was friend or foe. To do this we developed a keen ability to read faces, sense emotions and respond accordingly. None of these talents have anything to do with logic of thoughts. They are the female gut reactions to life and I think we’ve begun to ignore them.

In relationships, our retreat from any behavior that might be deemed submissive has caused us to throw out the baby with the bath water. We are so afraid of submission that we have forgotten how to be supportive. Indeed many of our Mothers, so inspired by the feminist ideal, deliberately forgot to teach us about love, relationships, nurturing, or -- God forbid! -- the power and creativity derived from running a loving household. Martha Stewart reminds us of what’s missing in our lives, as we manage our hectic schedules, eating from take-out boxes, in our immaculate granite kitchens, wearing our own purchases, and juggling would-be suitors who don’t happen to suit us this week.

In love, we women are just too competitive. Our sex lives have become a series of sporting events providing plenty of material for the writers of “Sex in the City.” Traditional notions of love seem to gag us. How uncool, it seems, to get all teary-eyed over a guy. I know one women who, after being dumped by a gorgeous, successful man --- whom I’m convinced she coveted because she mentioned his name in every conversation -- seemed too cool for words after the rebuff. When I offered my condolences over the loss of the relationship, she brushed it off with an, “Oh I’m fine. I wasn’t that attached.” -- as if, staying detached in love is a goal. The game of love, it seems, has become a game of who can feel the least.

In short, love has become a mystery. Relationships have an arcane quality that puzzles both genders. I personally think that most single men keep hoping that the right woman will come along with the keys to his emotional locker. Unfortunately, most of his peer women are trapped in an adjacent locker, walled away from their own feelings, afraid to let down their guard to reveal the soft side of love --- the tears, the joy, even the fear. We are terrified that rejection in the face of authenticity would be a lethal wound. But I assure you the opposite is true. When we are honest and emotionally available, rejection hurts less because we have our authentic selves as support, as another kind of love mate.

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