Women, gym bros and hormones' dictatorship
I do not know how this happened, but there are now 715 people on here. A few weeks ago, in perfect boomerish manners, I prepared a form, felt very cool about it and then realised that after 20 replies, it needed a payment. So here I am, humbled by technology, with a simple Google form. The 20 replies I got already were super juicy.
Most of them said I should post once per week, which makes me realise you think writing is easy. And it is, writing for me is like breathing, but it would be easier if I did not have a 9 to 5 and a terribly strong need for sleep. Anyway, your wish is my command.
The only one I cannot comply with is “I wish one could understand immediately what the article is about”. Yapping before going to the point is actually like preliminaries before sex. Preliminaries are part of sex. Sex not being just a penetrative act for me is what confirms me that I am still a woman. So, I will keep yapping about where I am, who I am talking with, and what I am eating and feeling before I get to the point.
As a matter of fact, this article was written about Nice and Barcelona.
In truth, what brought most of you here lately is the last article on men being the biggest form of distraction from ourselves as women. I did not expect this much success from that article, but apparently, it has touched an open wound for many. And one of the reactions I got made me think of another topic I have wanted to discuss for a long time: hormones.
I once asked a friend, “Why are we expected to work with the same rhythms as a man when we function at the same physical capacity for about five days a month?” She looked defeated and said, “I know, but please Vilma, don’t say it again out loud. They already consider us less capable in the workplace. Let’s not add this fact to the burden. They wouldn’t get it.” I even said it to my HR while we were on a work retreat and immediately regretted my stupid mouth when she said “I will add a bonus for the fact you still deliver” and she smiled. But she is a cutie patootie, to be honest.
I am not known for delicacy or omerta, and I won’t start now. It is precisely the things we are afraid to say that we must say. Also, it is not because they wouldn’t get it that we should relieve them from the burden of trying. This is exactly the case of “he is intelligent but does not apply himself”. Men need to know us more. As I said last time, we women, unfortunately, spend an awful time trying to get you, to the detriment of knowing ourselves first.
Mind you, I am not advocating for men starting to talk about periods, hormonal fluctuations and so on as if they had a medical degree, nor for them to become super experts. I am the kind of person who wishes to be rich enough to have separate toilets. I wouldn’t want my man to be de-sensitised to my nudity, nor for him to know I am a human being who farts. I want him to think I am some sort of demi-goddess. Until now, sadly, the only man who knows about hormones is my old gym trainer, Ivano, a middle-aged man who resembles Mastro Lindo and my brother, who studies medicine. It would be helpful to have more of this kind of man.
I know some of my friends find it nice and intimate to explicate your bodily needs while your man is around. For me, peeing while your man is there is the ultimate step to becoming bros. For me, a relationship can be maintained only if there is enough mystery. We have to know each other, but never that well. Seduction is at stake. Don’t come at me with, “Oh, she is a playbook Eastern European woman”, because I grew up with a mother and a circle of aunties who believe a real man should want you even if you haven’t shaved since 1994, and you are dressed like someone who is bringing out the trash. It is not about vanity or needing to please the male gaze, it is about knowing each other enough to love each other and not knowing ever enough to be eternally in search of the other.
But what I am advocating for here, is for men and society to give us some slack but most of all for women to give some slack to ourselves, too. Of all the battles we are fighting, I increasingly think we are not fighting the right ones. Like fighting to be equal to men. Why and how? Why would you want to be equal to a man? We give birth to them. It is a skill they don’t have. For now! As a male friend once reminded me, an “artificial uterus” is something that, at some point, will become a reality. In the past few decades, we have fought so hard to enter and master male-dominated domains. In that process, we have somehow undervalued what women and their way of working bring to the table. I am afraid that in a hurry to prove we can endure male rhythms, we will make ourselves redundant to being women in ourselves. But then again, perhaps egg freezing will become more and more common, creating a more equal playing field, at least in the reproductive sense.
But this below is among the messages I got. The elephant in the room is palpable and huge in these 200 characters. It made me shout bingo.
I don’t even know where to start on this one. But questions come to my mind while reading it.
If hormones dictate so much of who are and how we act,
Does that mean our womanhood is limited to motherhood because of hormones?
And if so, how do we protect ourselves from the overbearing power of hormones?
My experience has been different. Until I hit thirty a few months ago, I was constantly thinking I was abnormal for never having regular relationships like some of my friends did. Or for not enjoying at all this carefree sexuality. Everyone seemed to be boyfriend-equipped, and I seldom was. Everyone seemed to enjoy sex without commitment, while I found it worse than cardio and dehumanizing.
What helped me and doomed me, at the same time, is that I was so honest about this fragility of mine that a lot of people have been honest about their experiences with me in return. And I finally could see that 80% of these relationships were trauma bonds or people trying to respect social clauses. There you go, I said it. So I have calmed down. I am just playing a different game, and I have to assume the risks of playing such a game.
And then motherhood. When I was younger, I wanted to become a mother so bad. I used to think about it constantly while my girlfriends were like, “Omg, why? I do not want to give up on this or that”. Now, they are thinking of becoming one, while I increasingly think it would be the death of me. I want to focus, on another article, on one of the reasons why a lot of people are not having kids: they already have parented people around them all their lives. I am one of them.
The point is, what are the premises of our life choices as women? Is it our body and the fear of it decomposing and getting old that leads us, at some point, to pick any man, even the most mediocre one, to just procreate? I do not judge if that is the case. I know how irrational fear is. I have been poor, and I have been a woman all my life, two characteristics that combined provide a lot of fear. But what helps with fear is always knowledge. Knowledge is a shield and a weapon. Especially in this aspect of our lives.
How can you want a man to make you orgasm when you don’t yourself? How can you expect a man to be delicate with you when you keep working like crazy in your luteal phase, where you are in a mass of fluctuating moods? What kind of mothers can we be if we do not extend that care to ourselves first? A child is a little dictator, he will bring you to your knees, and you will be pushed and teased in the most hurtful angles of your being. Are we sure we want to have hormones guide us in having them?
This is also why I used to say to my friends, “Friends with benefits” is a recipe for disaster for women. If you manage, lucky you. But it is long known that when we women have sex with someone, we desire to get closer to them afterwards, while they have what they call “post nut” clarity which basically wants them to run miles away from the woman they just shagged and they told any kind of beautiful lies to get in that bed in the first place. I personally have never regretted waiting to go to bed with someone, but I did regret not waiting for 100% of the cases. Because the equivalent of “post nut” clarity is to women the “ovulation fog” where we would have sex even with Shrek if he was in front of us. We see beauty everywhere, in our desperate act of creation.
Theoretically, we all are creatures of reason. Practically, we are subject to a subtle hormonal dictatorship. The graphic above should be part of school teaching. School has to become a place where truly students are equipped with knowledge about themselves. Why should women cringe at the prospect of acknowledging that, as it is right now, the workplace and work culture are built against them? Most women's shame is misplaced. Most women's battles are wrongly pointed at. Women need to get out of their minds and remember they have a body to tend to. Not as an instrument of seduction only but as a channel of their energy. I think one way to become more free as a woman is to turn into a gym bro.
Vilma Djala