On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

by Elise Loehnen

I was trying to be good. I had always been trying to be good. I ran myself ragged; cared dutifully for my family, friends, and colleagues; punished my body so that it stayed a certain size; kept my temper in check. What would happen if I just…stopped?

We can denounce religion and reject its beliefs at a literal level, but its traditions, these tenets of “good” and “bad,” are woven into the fabric of society. They don’t need our approval or subscription to hold us captive. They operate in us on a subconscious level.

We have been trained for goodness. Men, meanwhile, have been trained for power.

We are not pawns in a battle between the dark and the light. We are human, a bridge between matter and spirit; we can find the middle and hold the line. We can sense that we are on a seesaw that’s bending out of control and that unless each of us comes into balance we will struggle to survive.

Our culture has little tolerance for or interest in women past their procreative prime, and certainly we have no reverence for them. While we have sanctified old men and propped them up as the ultimate authorities—the priests, lawmakers, judges—we have exiled their counterparts.

Peace will come when we get into the river of life together, when we accept that we are all bound to each other, when we share the burdens—and beauty—of care, for a more balanced future.

She’s not concerned with fitting in or staying one with the group, a group defined by its reliance on not being all that. Her power doesn’t come from indirect sources: It’s based on herself, not the approval of others.

“Women who have succeeded too well at becoming visible have always been penalized vigilantly and forcefully, and turned into spectacles.

We are coached, above all, to prioritize our likability as the surest path to safety and survival.

They acknowledge that they know they’re better prepared and more competent than most of the men with whom they work; they just know better than to show it.

In female sports, we get uncomfortable talking about ourselves and always bring it back to the team, no matter what.

In essence, we’ve agreed to be valued for less because we’ve been sold a story of shame around money, and we don’t know how to ask for it, get comfortable with it, or demand it.

“I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled.’ At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realized every man I was working with definitely didn’t worry about being ‘difficult’ or ‘spoiled.’

We are at the mercy of other people—obligated to prove our value and worth to them, while simultaneously perceiving everyone beside and behind us as a threat.

One of Samantha’s best lines: “If I worried what every bitch in New York was saying about me, I’d never leave the house.” Too many of us continue to abide in that opinion prison.

We’ve been acculturated by fairy tales and rescue fantasies—Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rapunzel—to believe life begins when a boy chooses us, picks us out of the crowd, anoints us as worthy, redeems us, saves us. These stories present love and marriage but skip right over what happens to get to the baby carriage.[*4]

Instead, we back-channel our desires, or dump them into diaries with flimsy locks, and then wait until we are picked—a process where our worth is then confirmed.

Women are always deemed less essential, less important than men, even when these men are abusers.

There is no greater lever for keeping women in poverty, in subservience, than to deny them the ability to determine their procreative future.

Accepting anger as essential, we can better recognize our individual and collective needs, and forge a more equitable future.

dominant,