Wednesday, February 17, 1999
Women exercise right to stalk men
WOMEN: Lovestruck yet aggressive ladies prove anyone can be
psychotic
I’ve been worried about some sisters of mine for a while now,
and I believe the time to confront the elephant in the room has
finally come.
But let me clarify a few things before we proceed. I don’t
actually have any sisters as far as genetics goes; rather I am
using the term "sister" in the broadest sense. You know the
feminist rhetoric; we are all bonded together in the name of
womanhood, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Furthermore, in case any of you get so huffy that you have to
stop reading before figuring out what I am actually saying, please
remember that I suffer from the very same affliction that plagues
so many of my sisters. (Don’t you love columns rich with
disclaimers?)
And now, on to the pestilent elephant that has been hovering in
the shadows for years, and that has been showing itself to me with
a marked accession, especially over this last week.
It came to my immediate attention a few days ago while I was on
the phone with a good friend of mine from high school. He was
frustrated because his attempts to end his association with an
obsessive girl were failing miserably. Seeing the nice guy that he
is, I would venture to say that it was troubling him to watch an
otherwise intelligent and attractive girl degrade herself over a
guy she hardly knows.
The elephant reared its unsightly head once again the next night
when I was at my boyfriend’s house. You see, he has been screening
his calls for the past week because several silly females are
currently stalking his roommate.
While I was there – a matter of hours – there were five hang-up
calls and one tearfully hostile, slightly tipsy message left on the
answering machine. It was almost enough to make me pick up the
phone and yell for those girls to stop their pathetic antics in the
name of women everywhere. So, if any of those girls are out there
reading this right now, it is very important that they trust me
when I say that I know the guy, and he is definitely not worth it.
Just ask my roommate.
So there it is, the elephant has been unveiled. This leaves us
with a very important question – why are there so many psycho girls
out there? Seriously, I am curious to know whether there have
always been so many girls willing to humiliate themselves in the
name of love. And truthfully, I don’t think that love even figures
into the equation in many cases.
So what is going on with us?
Maybe it is because our generation is caught in a precarious
position, as we try to make sense of the aftermath of the civil
rights movement. We have all reaped the benefits of that watershed
era in one way or another. But a pendulum must swing to both sides
before it can rest in the middle, and unfortunately, not everything
has fallen into place on its own.
Never before has it been acceptable for women to pursue men, but
now that we are strong, respected, independent women we do not need
to sit by the phone for three days straight with a box of tissue
waiting for them to call us.
Instead, we finally have the right and ability to actively stalk
any guy we want. We can now choose whether or not to stay in a
relationship and tough it out, no matter how dysfunctional it may
be. And we now have the power to throw ourselves at any guy who so
much as looks in our direction.
We’ve come a long way, girls. OK, OK … calm down. I am
exaggerating a bit, and I do realize that there are also those of
you women out there who are not affected by this sort of emotional
mayhem. But unfortunately, we are not all that lucky.
I fear that there is a disproportionate number of young women
stuck on the destitute side of this emotional range. And yes, I am
also aware that there are needy, obsessive men out there. But,
thankfully, it is a lot easier to have them put in jail.
I just cannot shake the feeling that women in our generation are
quickly attracting the label of being psychotic because of certain
disturbing tendencies. Just about any guy you ask will probably
have a story for you about some girl who spent six months calling
him up in the middle of the night, crying and pleading for his
affection. Perhaps he may even have another story about the girl
who bypassed the phone and showed up in his bed in the middle of
the night in her underwear.
So, what is the real story? Are women really that much more
needy and emotionally unstable than men, or is it just that women
get a worse reputation for it?
Lord knows women have been getting the short end of the stick
when it comes to stigmas in this society for awhile now. To
summarize, I was pretty sure that I had uncovered the three
categories which many young men felt all women could be classified:
a prude, a tease or a slut. But I guess it is now time to add a
fourth to the list: a psycho.
Now wait a minute, guys, don’t get testy. I am aware that there
are many wonderful men out there. But unfortunately you aren’t as
vocal as the other half of your gender, and so you are often
overlooked when women start ranting about the patriarchal hegemony
of swine.
But we do know you’re out there, and we’re rooting for you.
So perhaps I could instead take the easy route and blame all of
this on my favorite scapegoat – the media. In one way or another
women have been conditioned to depend on male affirmation to feel
good about themselves.
We all know that Disney’s gals only found happiness once they
were swept off their feet by their princes, and we have also been
taught that the closer our measurements are to 36-24-36 the better
chance we’ll have of attracting that prince. Once you combine this
mentality with that of the feminist movement, which told us that we
should all be empowered and independent women, it is easy to see
where all the confusion and vacillation has come from.
Thanks to the Anthropology 7 class I took, I am able to proffer
yet another explanation for this irritating conundrum. (Wow, G.E.
classes actually do teach us something.) It cannot be denied that
throughout evolution, until very recently, men and women’s roles in
society were relatively established and inflexible.
Women were traditionally caregivers and homemakers, whereas men
were hunters and philanderers – uh wait, I meant protectors. And it
could even be argued that on some neurochemical level, women have
developed a greater biological impulse to find a mate and settle
down than men have. Perhaps because of this normative heritage, to
this day it continues to be less acceptable for women to be single
in this society than for men. Thus there is an incredible pressure
on young women to find a man and keep him, at whatever cost.
Those are the only clues I have to add to this troublesome
puzzle. But if anyone out there has any other answers, I would be
eternally grateful. Having a little more insight could have
probably saved me from a few of the more self-effacing moments of
my life, and would have probably prevented me from committing a few
minor, insignificant felonies also. OK, I’m joking about the felony
part, really I am. You believe me, don’t you?
Katie Snow Bailard
Bailard is a third-year communication studies student with a
minor in Native American studies. Comments can be sent to
[email protected].
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