Image by Flickr user pikerslanefarm.
In just a few short lines from a song, and a few more from her heart GeekyVamp reveals the complete, bleak, and total lie that is "women have all the power."
I’m in the corner watching you kiss her, oh.
I’m right over here, why can’t you see me? Oh.
I’m giving it my all but I’m not the girl you’re taking home.
[I keep dancing on my own]I hear this and I am suddenly a gawky girl again on the dance floor, dancing my little hormonal heart out, desperately trying to attract a boy’s attention, and trying to hold my head up high and swallow the boulder in my chest, as I see him leave with some gazelle-like creature.
Source: Interpretive Pants
I'm not sure who started the lie but it's mostly us men who completely, 100% don't realize the only "power" women have in standard hetero dating is the "power" to answer if asked! No ask, no power. None. Period. At all. In other words no matter how gawky a boy you were, or a man you are, 100% of the "power" you might complain women have over you is power you give in the first place.
This realization, which only sank in for me back in 2007 (I first started trying to date in 1973!) was the moment I realized all the attempted "men's rights" alternatives to women's rights movements I'd been trying to get my heart into (since 1974!) weren't ever going to work because they located power where it wasn't and then complained about it. Just a little later I decided to not only drop all the variations on men's rights, men's studies, men's advocacy, etc., and even drop all the variants on "feminist allies," supporters, sympathizers, etc., and it's later variants -- especially "good men" -- and just call myself a feminist. Because that was the point when I realized men and women are both indoctrinated to the same set of artificial constructs that nominally advantage men and certainly disproportionately disadvantage women, but really continue to persist in order to control all of us.
I happen to believe, as do many others, that feminism doesn't have all the answers. But there's a giant flipping difference between "not all the answers" and "wrong." Which is why I see the work for men like me -- and I'm obviously proposing for men like you too -- as extending feminism by analyzing and challenging the consequences and not just the nominal advantages of Patriarchy for men.
And it can start with something as simple as listening to little snippets of song lyrics.
I’m in the corner watching you kiss her, oh.
I’m right over here, why can’t you see me? Oh.
I’m giving it my all but I’m not the girl you’re taking home.
[I keep dancing on my own]
Oh!
