Who The Fuck Is "We"?

Sisters of the Staircase, take a moment to reflect on how often some insipid book or article by and about an individual woman's unique experiences overuses the word "we."

As in the article below, where a young woman writes about her life and sexuality by applying a breezily condemning universality to her experiences. "We are vessels to be filled" she says....To which Wit replies "Who the fuck is we?"

Whether I agree with her or not, I don't like the automatic assumption that I think like the writer because we accidentally share a gender. It's a kind of insidious hypnosis this "We...We...We" directed at women.

The author describes her sexuality as swinging from promiscuity, which she seems to think Germaine Greer somehow told her to do, to complete chastity because in her opinion that's the fastest way to get a husband. She also frets, just like so many brainwashed magazine propagandists before her, because she is unmarried at 37.

There's a ton of talk like this from even smart women, I'm sorry to say. This particular specimen wants to pawn off her problems on some cozy biological quirk that "we" share, but to me she seems uniquely immature, first wanting Germaine Greer to be her mummy and then desiring some outline of a "husband" to serve as Daddy. It is sad that our culture encourages this helplessness and lack of differentiation in women.

Wit encourages the author to learn to say "I" so that she can finally take responsbility for herself and figure out what her real problems are aside from the stupid false measure of how much or how little she is fucking. This will help her realize who she wants to be absent some propagandizing internal voice that tells her she isn't anybody if she's not attached to "us"--whether that means a gender, a Mommy or a man.

And that's not what "we" think sweetheat, that's what I think.

"Whatever Greer and her ilk might say I’ve tried their philosophy — that a woman can shag like a man — and it doesn’t work. We’re not built like that. Women are built for bonding. We are vessels and we seek to be filled. For that reason, however much we try and convince ourselves that it isn’t so, sex will always leave us feeling empty unless we are certain that we are loved, that the act is part of a bigger picture that we are loved for our whole selves not just our bodies."

Link: Casual sex is a con: women just aren't like men - Sunday Times - Times Online.