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A friend in her mid-30s who earns quite nicely puts her troubles this way: “I earn a good wage, I look good, I’m good company, and I own my own place. If I were a man, I’d be the hottest property in town!” She’s got a point. But many of the men she meets, who say they’re looking for a strong and independent woman, retreat as soon as she behaves in a strong and independent way.
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Perhaps that’s because young men who are trying to work out who they should be are told that they’ll have to stand aside while young women reach equality but castigated if they give up on ambition. It’s easier to be with a woman who doesn’t challenge them. Or no woman at all.
Young women, who are also growing up on a confusing cultural diet, confess their desire for traditionally tall, educated and professionally stable men on dating apps. They have, after all, been upholding their side of the gender bargain by spending too much time worrying about their looks. But they also want the dividends of gender equality. Men are being told to be and not to be the traditional thing at the very same time.
Pop culture has a way of summing up this confusion, from Amy Winehouse singing to her boyfriend, “You should be stronger than me”, to Ken’s song in the recent Barbie movie, lamenting that “it doesn’t matter what I do, I’m always number two … all my life, been so polite, but I’ll sleep alone tonight”.
It’s tempting to scoff at Ken – indeed, it’s tempting to scoff at men who are, as a gender, still culturally dominant in some ways. But as more and more women I know struggle to find fulfilling relationships, it seems antifeminist to be thoughtlessly cruel about the male malaise.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.
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