Independent Women - An Important Piece of Feminist Mythology

"I am a very independent woman."

Who hasn't heard this? In fact, who doesn't hear this 18 times if the TV is turned on for only 15 seconds? And who doesn't hear it an additional 18 times during the day, from all three random women that one might run into and converse with during the course of the day?

But you know me... I very seldom accept things at face value. I have found that if you just ask one question more, all pretense gets blown away.


Woman 1

... is an attorney. Whenever she writes me a personal note, or wants me to relay a something to my wife, she phrases it as if she were channeling the spirit of Bob Dole. Instead of "Bob Dole says" she says something to the effect of "This INDEPENDENT woman says...."

Yet, I seem to remember a day in which her husband came to the office and the two of them managed to have a very public argument about money. He owns a business in a field which has been hit very hard by the recession, and needed a bit of an advance to make his books balance out. In the middle of her assertions that he was asking her for "her money," he sputtered:

Your money? You didn't have any money when I found you! You only had a passle of kids to feed and no money and no job! I put you through college and I put you through law school! Your money? You wouldn't have anything at all, money or otherwise, if it wasn't for me!!!

She admitted that this was true. She still refused to "lend" him "her money."


Woman 2

... is a medical functionary that I had occasion to meet. She, more than being "independent," was also "strong" and "capable of meeting men on their own terms" and "kicking life's a$$."

"So what do you mean by 'independent?,'" I asked.

"I mean," she answered, "that ever since I got off welfare and food stamps I have paid my own bills, clothed my own children, and advanced in my career."

"Food stamps?" queried I. "Welfare?" Follows, a story on leaving her first husband and being on welfare and food stamps for two years while she completed her education, with these two additional tidbits thrown in: her parents lent her $15,000 as a downpayment on her house, and she received government grants and a government job while in college.

"So you are 'independent,' just like a man?" asked I (always the master of the inconvenient question).

"Yes," said she.

"But," I said, "has it ever occurred to you that your male peers never had welfare or food stamps or a government job while in college? And most of them didn't receive government grants [in fact, based on the specialty, NONE of them had government grants]? And all but a miniscule number would have been mortified to go to their parents and ask for a sizable loan so that they could buy a house? And besides, none of them ever received alimony or child support, either!"

"How did you know I received alimony and child support?" she asked.

"Lucky guess."


Woman 3

She was an "independent single mother." She took great pride, the pride of a victim, in being an "independent single mother." She said it all the time. Once, she said it at a poker game, to the amusement of some, and the mortification of others.

"So I had Charlie come over the other day and fix that old motorcycle that was in the shed," she said.

"Charlie?" queried I.

"Yeah, some guy I used to date. He likes spending time with me."

Knowing her personality, I doubted that. Knowing her bra size, I suspected it might be something else entirely. "Maybe he is hoping his act of kindness will encourage you to date him again."

"Oh, no, I'd never do that. He's not my type," she said, smugly.

"I see. He's not your type, but he is the type who... fixes motorcycles?"

"Well, I had to sell it. I needed the money and it was just taking up space out in the shed."

"Wasn't that your husband's motorcycle?"

"EX-husband," she snooted. "And if he weren't three months behind on his child support, I wouldn't have needed the money so badly to begin with!"

Closing in for the kill, I said, "But I though you were living rent-free in a house he owns? Doesn't he get any credit for that?"

"The judge said that was entirely separate and did not relieve him of his duty to pay child support," she replied, with all the confidence of a woman who had been through the judicial system enough to know that it was firmly on her side.

"So, uhhhhh, how's that new car your parents bought you working out?" I asked, changing the subject, but, I thought, making a valuable point.


Now, these are certainly only a few women - all of them real and all of them personally known by me - but I have chosen them because they are representative of the entirety of the group of women who have crossed my path. I can confidently say that I have never in my life met an "independent woman," if "independent" means the same thing for a woman as it does for a man. I have never met a woman who, at some point in her life, was not wholly dependent upon a man for income, child support, or alimony, or who has never been on welfare of some sort, or who has managed to pay her own bills without the aid of a friend, boyfriend, parent, or ex-husband.

Women convince themselves, because women have the innate ability to re-define words in ways that suit them, that they are "independent" because they truly value independence in men. Yet there are precious few, if any, women who have made it through their adult years without being dependent upon a man, a parent, or the government. But such lack of dependence in men is the rule, not the exception.

Feminists, because they hate men and children (and truthfully, they hate women as well, but that's another blog entry), and thus the family, have tried to convince women that they can be as independent of men as men are of women. Yet in convincing them to abandon their families, they have merely convinced women to exchange the natural dependence that women have on men for a much greater reliance - bordering on slavery - upon government. And, let's be honest here, this option for such reliance is not available to men. So much for the famed femtard concern about "equality."

I know many men who have managed to make a life on their own without any sort of assistance on women, parents, ex-girlfriends, or the government. I have even known many such men who desperately needed the kind of help that "independent women" expect to receive, and receive, as a matter of course.

And I have learned that there is a special term for a man that needs the kind of help that women get routinely: homeless.