Strong Women & Male Insecurity

Greetings, dear readers! I apologise for my absence—as a law student studying in the UK, December through January is a time reserved for essay writing. And after more than 10,000 words written and submitted, I am happy to say that I am back and excited to share more feminist insights with you. Thank you for your patience with me, and I look forward to another great year of writing for you!

Let’s get into it.

The other night, J and I shared a fantastic bottle of wine before meeting friends for a small NYE celebration. When we arrived, we noticed that our friend was visibly estranged from her boyfriend. There she was, sitting in the corner; tears in her eyes.

“What’s the matter,” we asked.

She was silent.

Her boyfriend walked through the door shortly after and greeted us warmly so as to ignore the painfully obvious elephant in the room. Her partner continued to pretend like all was well—he barely noticed his girlfriend crying in the corner. When he finally confronted her, he did so with such underwhelming disposition.

“I’m not upset with you”

“You’re overreacting”

“You’re acting crazy”

Nothing changed. She remained upset and he, painfully avoidant. The problem in this scenario is that the boyfriend manipulated the situation to make his girlfriend feel as though her reaction was unjustified. He made her feel guilty for her seemingly valid reaction. He discredited her emotions and construed her reaction as irrational behaviour.

The evening ended shortly after. On our drive home that evening, up the winding mountain road, we discussed the situation that unfolded before our eyes.

This started a series of conversations we’ve shared over the last couple of weeks considering female guilt and the way which insecure men source their false sense of power by making women feel small and insignificant. Too often, women are at fault for their rational reactions. They are either good or bad, passive or overreactive. In all cases, women are made to feel guilty for objecting to insecure men and their attention.

Rejection is an interesting phenomenon. Of course, no one enjoys rejection. However, I argue that insecure men overcompensate when they experience female rejection as they perceive it as a threat to their masculinity. When insecure men are rejected or vulnerable, they rely on women to make themselves feel strong again. Insecure men source their false sense of confidence from degrading confident women. Insecure men make women feel small so that they can feel powerful. But this need not be the norm.

“Have you ever been rejected?” I asked J.

J shared a story with me about a night out in LA years ago when he approached a beautiful woman and invited her out for a drink. She politely declined; he smiled and wished her a lovely evening and that was that. I’m almost frustrated by the fact that J’s polite response is rather unusual to me. He dismissed my praise for his behaviour. For J, this interaction was nothing more than a polite conversation between two people.

In my own experience, I’ve endured countless times where men have approached me, offering what they consider their greatest gift of all: their time. About a year ago, a guy invited me to have lunch with him. I wasn’t particularly interested and had communicated this countless times before.

“Are you free at all tomorrow”

“I’m working for most of the day and have a meeting at 3pm,” I replied.

“How long is your meeting? Could bring your laptop to lunch?”

Could you bring your laptop to lunch? What a ridiculous proposition. I didn’t reply.

The next day he proceeded to press me again.

“What time works today?”

“I’m pretty swamped with work today. I’m sorry” I replied.

“Okay, so you don’t want to see me?”

Did I say that I wanted to see you, I wanted to reply. Did I somehow miscommunicate my lack of desire to have lunch with you, I wanted to say. I didn’t even entertain the idea of having lunch. I didn’t even agree to it!

I wanted to reply sharply but chose to not respond. Don’t engage, I thought to myself. Ignore his behaviour. The problem with this kind of interaction is that this individual did not want to accept my answer; my objection was invalid and irrational in his eyes. While I explicitly declined his invitation, he took this as an opportunity to belittle me for my reasonable response.

In the end, I didn’t respond.

Thirty-minutes later, he writes: “I can pick up food and drop it off if that helps?”

“Nope, that’s thoughtful but I can manage on my own. I have a lot of my plate today” I replied.

*Three missed calls*

“Ginny. I would really like to see you. The least you could do is have coffee with me. Having coffee with someone who is willing to travel an hour across the city isn’t really too much to ask. It’s the least you could do. If you don’t want to see me, be straightforward about it.”

In an attempt to be more straightforward, I replied: “I am being straightforward, and I’m sorry that this is disappointing for you.”

This was not the response he apparently hoped for.

“It’s cool. I get the message.”

Great, I thought to myself. This is over.

Ten minutes later, he writes: “If you wanted to see me you would be happy to have coffee with me. It’s cool Ginny. Don’t worry about it. Message received LOUD AND CLEAR.”

I chose not to engage with this childlike behaviour. I didn’t respond. In all honesty, I might have blocked his number.

I share this conversation to illustrate the way in which a women’s ‘no’ is somehow interpreted as a ‘maybe’ at best, and an insult at worst. The fact of the matter is that when women say no, insecure men get offended. If this conversation occurred a year or two earlier, I would have felt guilty for disappointing this individual; I would have interpreted his disappointment as an appropriate response to my rejection. I would have appealed to his unkind and selfish behaviour. I would have gone to that stupid lunch or stupid coffee for the sake of being stupidly agreeable. I would have made myself small to make this ignorant, insecure individual feel empowered in his false sense of confidence.

Since this encounter, I’ve heard similar stories from female friends and loved ones who have declined invitations from men, which is almost always met with similarly unkind responses. I've since realised the reality that when a woman declines an insecure man's attention, she is reprimanded for it.

I remember my mother sharing a story with me when I was young. She was a sophomore or junior in high school when the ‘popular guy’, Paul Noble, asked her to accompany him to Prom. Paul was cool in the way that something insignificant makes someone appear cool in high school. Paul’s invitation caught my mother off guard. She was so surprised. She couldn’t believe that this older, cool boy whom she had never spoken to would invite her to Prom. In shock and partially at a loss for words, she declined his invitation. She had never spoken to this boy in her life, she told me. For my mother, it didn’t matter how cool this guy was—she had no interest in him or his ostensibly appealing allure. She had great friends and didn’t need to spend an evening with someone who she didn’t know. Paul was less than impressed by her response.

The next day, he walked over to her table in the lunchroom and proceeded to pour an entire bottle of Coca-Cola over her head. While Paul sought to relinquish his power from this act, I can only imagine the look on his face when my mother sat there—poised as ever—with sticky, sugary Coca-Cola dripping through her hair. She held all the power in this instance. Paul was seen publicly for who he was (and is): an insecure coward.

Paul, like many insecure men, are weak and vulnerable. Make no mistake, Paul is like all the insecure men that came before him, and who will come after him: these small, measly creatures use their toxic, masculinity to disguise a deep-rooted longing for a sense of confidence. Beneath all of the the smoke and mirrors lies an insecure individual who seeks to derive power from strong women, like my mother, and individuals who threaten to expose them for who they really are.