So I've been watching The Bachelorette lately, and if you keep up with the show at all, you know that one of the guys has mentioned he has a girlfriend back home, and is only on the show to promote his musical career (pssst... it's Wes). Even though several of the guys have mentioned this to Jillian (Bachelorette), none of them will tell her who the guy is.
Now that's interesting.
If this was The Bachelor, you know the women would be telling all and sundry who said what and when, and explaining to the guy exactly what he should be doing about it. There is no freaking way they would keep that information to themselves. But with the menz, apparently "group think" and solidarity trump everything else, even being kicked off the show while another man who clearly doesn't deserve it gets to stay on.
I can't help but wonder if this is an example of why it took women so long to long to get equal rights (well, takes, since not all women have equal rights yet). I think we've all known girls who will cheerfully throw other women under the bus, especially if there's a man involved--maybe some of us are that kind of girl. And then there are all the women who dictate how a "proper" woman should behave or act.
This kind of adds to a personal theory I've had for a while that women are not, for the most part, subjugated by men but by themselves. Do men really care what we do? No, they don't. There are have been plenty of powerful women in history, but do they help other women obtain the same power? Heck no! Some of them, like Queen Victoria, even make it a point to hold other women down. And is it a coincidence that women's suffrage only started to gain a foothold when women-only groups began forming in the late nineteenth century?
Meanwhile, the men folk apparently keep up a wall of solidarity, even when it results in personal cost to them. No wonder they've managed to maintain a power base for thousands of years! Strength in numbers, my friends.
Do you think men have more of a group mentality than women do? Or am I completely off-base in my pop-sociological assessment of this reality TV show?
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