Initially this was going to just be an article about our history of being competitive for sport, money, status and prestige. That we hold competitions to judge people on their beauty, strength, agility and physique.
We have the Olympics, various sports, strong man comps, Miss World and universe, body building and weight lifting competitions, modelling of all kinds, awards ceremonies and so on. All to decide who is the best, brightest and most talented and beautiful, according to a panel of hand selected people.
But something has changed recently within those industries and public face of them, and one can’t help but notice, but I will go into that shortly. Firstly, I will talk about competition and the idea of being competitive in the social arena, from my view and how I have perceived it growing up from a girl into a woman, and the expectations and limitations that surrounded it. For starters, it really isn’t a myth that men are afforded more opportunities than women, in most settings, although there will always be an exception to the rule. But you won’t get paid the same usually, you won’t get the same promotions, and you won’t get the same respect. Mostly those things are obvious as you go through life experiencing it first-hand, despite what some people may say. Overlooked because you ‘might breed’ or distract the other workers, or because you might ‘get emotional’ (not because you actually do any of those things, but because you might, and you just have to suck it up). Told what you can and can’t wear, as it will ‘encourage men’, or regardless of what you wear, someone will still find something to be wrong with it. Your makeup and how you present yourself will be judged and scrutinized, by teachers, parents, employers, friends etc. You know you’ll always be second rate, and yet will still have to work harder, do more and push yourself to compete in a world that you will never be seen as good enough in by those that set the standard. Because you aren’t them, and never can be – and they know it. So, the best you can do, is to be good enough to yourself and for yourself, and realise that society ‘deciding your worth’ does not make it so, that’s part of the whole illusion so they can rate you and put us all into their little systems and categories. But it is a system that is quite well set, or at least was until the last few years when something odd seems to be occurring.
Now, after years of being told what and where our place was and goalposts being quite defined, and fighting for a basic acceptance of at least to be viewed and treated equally as a human, and to have opportunity to do so, a rather strange curve ball has hit the scene. Or curve balls should I say.
Large corporations have chosen to employ a man to act as a woman in commercials, adverts and quite a large online campaign. He is portraying the most exaggerated, overdone version of what I presume they view to be a woman and ‘feminine qualities’, which is quite painful to behold and watch someone put on the most cringy display while overacting a part. Covered slightly in my article The clothes do not maketh the man, but it’s getting even weirder out there now. He is being used to represent multiple women’s products and being highlighted and put forward as the face of their campaigns – just one person, not even a few, or even someone who has genuinely transitioned and is trying their best to be and live as a women, no. Men are being allowed to compete in sporting competitions, just by saying they feel like a woman, or going into schools because they can say they identify as a child. And the prison debacle, well, that speaks for itself really but is another dangerous step towards dismissing women, their concerns, rights, ideals and future. Does that work in the payroll department I wonder? That man gets paid more than me, I feel like a man today so want to be paid the same now, so up my wages please or that is discrimination. It’s a slippery slope we are on with a bit of a void at the bottom, as there doesn’t appear any logical purpose for any of it, other than to obliterate everyone rights, but one small piece at a time. They know most men won’t care about women’s or children’s rights on the whole, as it doesn’t affect them much as women aren’t just walking into their bathrooms, or winning strength based sports, or flashing their bits to children, or taking their awards or jobs. It will be a different approach for theirs, and I guess we’ll have to watch this space for what that is.
Along the way, I have heard and seem that men are more competitive than women, although they will compete with each other, and do have a drive to succeed, it is not geared up in the same way as men it would seem or towards the same things. Men are (or at least were) much more bullish, demanding and aggressive it is said (again always exceptions to the rule), but that does seem to have been accepted for a long time and ones with that type of drive went into competitive areas, whether it be sport, industry or academia etc. There is also a good reason we have kept women and men separate to a point in certain areas too, and it isn’t because we weren’t being progressive, it was because we were being practical and a little thoughtful. Would you expect a young or teenage boy and girl to share a bathroom at home at the same time? Or a man and teenage girl, would you expect them to shower at the same time in the same facilities, related or not? No? Things are kept separate often for many reasons, privacy, decency and respect I thought – for yourself and others. And those are the things being chucked to one side for one large group, so another small group can ‘feel included’. But that inclusion has a price tag it would seem, and that price is the exclusion of how everyone else feels, especially girls and women. And that’s the strange thing, we haven’t had to compete in these arenas before in recent generations as much, we campaigned for acceptance, for jobs, for safety, for inclusion – and got those things as much as we could. And now we are having to compete to not have them usurped, by imposters parading in the public eye for purpose. The ones who are being pushed as the face of the agenda are part of a bigger picture, encouraging other to follow like children entranced by the pied piper, leading them astray. Everybody is being caught up in this strange shift in society, where they would like you to think they are there to help, and only want what’s best for you, not in a best friend kind of way though, more like a Kathy Bates in Misery kind of way.
And of those competitions I mentioned above – “various sports, strong man comps, Miss World and universe, body building and weight lifting competitons, modelling of all kinds, awards ceremonies and so on” – it seems that they have been the podium for this ‘new one world order’ the want us to believe is the future. To try and blur the lines between there being two, because you can’t have one, if there is two now, can you? Personally, I don’t believe they care one jot about if someone feels they were born in the wrong body, or does not feel like who they should be, or they would address the rather odd and strict parameters, conditions and substances of society that feed into that. Instead, they view that type of confusion and wondering as a vulnerability to be exploited and a potential weapon for their cause at the time. But as I have previously stated, each section of society will be used when needed, and cast aside when the next fad rolls out to move closer to the goal of breaking down identities, personal boundaries, networks and stability. Making it seems so desperately chaotic and fractured that the only answer will be the ‘The One’. Remember how they have that running as a theme through many a dramatic and heroic movie, where only ‘The One’ can save humanity? Where only by uniting as one can people be saved. My article Prepped for disaster, or clever programming? goes into that idea and maybe my piece There was always going to be two, about society being separated and not becoming one as they would like. But this is something else happening under our feet, behind our backs and in front of our faces, a change where not all is as it seems…
