Peer pressure on a recovering cancer survivor to participate in a march she's too weak to handle because they might think poorly of her.
I see. Can we try it this way:
That is your first presumption ... why?
I just find it interesting that the first response is to attack other women.
In a way, I suppose, it kind of makes sense. Or we might suggest, simply, that you don't really know a lot of women, or perhaps don't know much about women, or something like that.
Because it is also true that if a woman drags herself out to care for the family when she doesn't feel well, we generally don't worry about peer pressure. Generally speaking, nuclear families do not regard wives and mothers as peers; if they did, she could focus on recuperating with the confidence that other people and needs will be attended. There is as such, underlying pressure, but I think we are too kind to call it peer pressure.
This could be the revolution women have been waiting for since ... er ... well before I was born. Let's go with sixty-two, then we can say this is fifty-five years into wondering when it finally happens. Every time circumstance presents this opportunity, it will also be some woman's potential last chance to make this stand; if you think
cancer is going to sit her down, well, that's the point, we want her to live through this, but she will not be seen sitting this one out because it means this much to
her.
Generally speaking, she will answer the women according to how she perceives them perceiving her; she will answer the men similarly. "Peer pressure" isn't the proper term except in specialized application, such as age peers, which some men are.
So, between those who want her to live long enough to witness and experience liberation, to the one, and those who would dispute her liberation because, look, not all women agree—or some similar desperate traditionalist slings and arrows—the pressure most likely isn't coming from her sisters.
And the most difficult thing about explaining this to you is trying to figure out how to explain the blatantly obvious in response to what ought not be so predictable.
Let us try it, but only for a moment, with harsh style:
A guy who doesn't like or respect women looking for a reason to complain? I would say surely the world has not come to this, except, come on, that is how it has been for a long, long time.
Or, you know, maybe that's not you, maybe you're not wrong; maybe that's how your community raised people. But, honestly, out here on the west coast of the United States—and even in my corner of too-proud-to-be-a-suburb exurbia, where you can see the gun racks for the gun racks while waiting in line at the drive-through coffee stand—your poor characterizations of women read like the inherently hostile and denigrating bullshit we hear from Christianists and other traditionalist American moralists.
There
is something macho about your proposition, though. Before a recent transitional period in which men of my age began forgetting their lives, there would have been a bunch of men I could have chuckled
sympathetically if I said, "It's cancer, you don't just walk it off." These days, not so much. (Hint: It's psychological.)
†
And speaking of forgetting our manly lives, I actually had a #WhatAboutTheMen moment, yesterday. I thought about a man a bit older than me, who once responded to a critique of sexual harassment and violence in cinema by saying he had never seen rape glorified in movies. And, you know, I'll even accept his term, the glorification of rape, because there always were obvious examples, and Retroplex ran
Revenge of the Nerds yesterday. I'm guessing it's a sad coincidence to run a rape comedy coinciding with a nationwide women's protest, but only because the people who might actually do so intentionally generally pretend themselves so stupid, and so persistently, I've decided to believe them, and that would preclude them from knowing to set it up as such. But, yeah.
Revenge of the Nerds. It really is a strange notion to think an entire cinematic period could pass and someone who lived through the period and shares the same values that made such "comedy" laudable would not have noticed. Such are the things we are expected to believe.
But, yes, I did take time to think about the men, yesterday, in part because I happened to notice Retroplex was running
Revenge of the Nerds.
