The Female Over-identification with Victimhood

It is time for you to take absolute responsibility for your life.

I would not describe myself as particularly charming, but I have this uncanny ability to get people talking. Maybe it's my radical shamelessness that makes people feel like they can open up to me, or maybe it's because I'm always the first one to rip off the band-aid and bare my soul. Without playing armchair psychologist, I've learned that to speak to men, you just need to feed their ego with a well-placed compliment - and BTW, I'm not speaking to men in any romantic capacity. I just give them enough rope to yap themselves into oblivion. As for women? It's like being a veteran in the Veterans Hospital waiting room, swapping war stories about surviving the dating market. From these conversations, I've learned two brutal truths. First, the sheer volume of horror stories from women of every goddamn background is soul-crushing. I know I'm the problem here - I'm a great person, but a 'terrible woman.' I'm highly disagreeable, hyper-productive, and an engineer. Everything society says a woman should be, I am not. But watching women of all different hair colors, skin colors, and backgrounds still getting dogged out by men's bullshit? That's its own special kind of hell. Second truth? It's painful realizing how much of women's camaraderie is built on our shared trauma. We bond over being victims, not victors. And that's the real tragedy.

Do you remember my friend who started dating a man who she had to send a possible alias for and ultimately decided to get engaged to him? When all this shit hits the fan - and trust me, it will - the story she will tell herself and others will have her be the victim. The victim of his lies, his manipulation, his abuse. The version she tells herself won't include the uncomfortable truth that her college friend, pastor, and cousin all warned her this was a train wreck waiting to happen. Even if she's willing to admit that she did stupid things, it would all be because of her daddy issues. She would be a victim of another man because god forbid she's the author of her own misfortune.

I might launch a series called 'Woman-ese' - a bullshit-free translation guide for all the ways women lie to ourselves. You know what I mean: when a woman says 'he's wasting my time' or 'he's playing with my feelings,' what she really means is 'I'm voluntarily giving this man more opportunities to disappoint me.' The same translation applies to classics like 'I just want closure' and 'we can still be friends' - all that self-deceptive nonsense we feed ourselves while knowing damn well what's really going on.

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Ever since I was young, I always identified with the hero, even when they weren't female. Maybe that's why all this forced inclusion bullshit never made sense to me - I was already seeing myself in the hero's role regardless. It's wild to watch women navigate life with victimhood as their north star. Look, I get it - we're physically the weaker sex. We have to deal with male violence and threats that men don't. I'm not denying the biological reality of being the smaller sex. But for fuck's sake, we're not living in the stone age anymore. Most women reading this newsletter live in developed countries where they have the freedom to manifest their fullest potential. Yet they're still acting like they're powerless cavewomen waiting for a savior.

Does this mean I completely disregard the inherent inequalities of existence? Absolutely fucking not. In fact, these very inequalities are precisely why you need to develop a high-agency life. Let me tell you about rats - the ultimate survivors. These disease-carrying vermin have conquered every continent, and we can't get rid of them no matter how hard we try. Rats live a brutal life, but they're thriving. Just like every animal in this kingdom, we've got to work with whatever skills, talents, and gifts we've been dealt.

Some people will be as majestic as the great African elephant - but even those magnificent beasts are being hunted to extinction. Then there are those who'll be as scrappy, determined, and ruthless as the New York City rat that billions can't eliminate. Here's the thing: both the elephant and the rat are 'victims' in a sense, but they survive by adapting and using whatever advantages they've got. You need to develop that same personal agency to navigate this brutal world. Leave victimhood alone - it doesn't serve you. So how do we exercise full agency over our lives?