Ours has always been the gender of endurance, of courage, of resistance. Not that we had a choice.

The eternal feminine is a huge joke. It’s as if men’s lives depend on preserving this lie … femme fatale, bunny girl, nurse, Lolita, whore, devoted mother, or ball- busting bitch. It’s all a performance. A series of precise moves and costumes.

They never mention the logical conclusion to the phrase “being-a-woman-is wonderful”: as long as you’re young, slim, and attractive to men. Otherwise there’s nothing wonderful about it. It’s just twice as alienating.

A hostage is released and in her first radio interview, she says: “Finally, I’ve been able to shave my legs, put on some perfume, rediscover my femininity.” Or at least that’s the snippet they decide to broadcast. She doesn’t want to go out on the town, see her friends, read the papers. She wants to shave her legs? That’s absolutely her right. But

We have a better sense of what defines our sex: other people’s dirty laundry and cute little looks.

It hasn’t really changed—the only notable progress in the past forty years is that now we’re allowed to support them financially. Because working to pay the rent is too limiting for men who are artists, thinkers, complex, terribly fragile creatures. Minimum-wage work is for women.

The more a guy lacks masculine qualities, the more he obsesses over what women can do. And conversely, the more self-confident the guy, the more easily he accepts a diversity of attitudes in women, including their masculine side.

Because the rest of the time, all the women we see—the writers, the journalists, the sportswomen, the singers, the CEOs, the producers—feel obliged to flash a bit of cleavage, a pair of earrings, a fancy hairdo, proofs of their femininity, pledges of their docility.

What great benefit do women derive from the way the world works that justifies our meekly rolling with the punches? The reason is because those of us with front-row seats are the women who’ve allied themselves with the powerful.