What's It Worth To You?

Please hold your stomachs for a nauseating ride through a recent email I received (I make no apology for the lack of formatting):

In a brief conversation, a man asked a woman he was pursuing the question...... "What kind of man are you looking for?" She sat quietly for a moment before looking him in the eye and asking. "Do you really want to know?" Reluctantly, he said, "Yes." She began to expound... As a woman in this day and age, I am in a position to ask a man what he can do for me that I can't do for myself. I pay my own bills.I take care of my household without the help of any man. I am in the position to ask, "What can you bring to the table?" The man looked at her. Clearly he thought that she was referring to money. She quickly corrected his thought and stated, "I am not referring to money. I need something more." I need a man who is striving for perfection in every aspect of life." He sat back in his chair, folded his arms, and asked her to explain. She said, "I am looking for someone who is striving for perfection mentally because I need conversation and mental stimulation. I don't need a simple-minded man." I am looking for someone who is striving for perfection spiritually because I don't need to be unequally yoked... believers mixed with unbelievers is a recipe for disaster. I need a man who is striving for perfection financially because I don't need a financial burden. I am looking for someone who is sensitive enough to understand what I go through as a woman, but strong enough to keep me grounded. I am looking for someone who I can respect. In order to be submissive, I must respect him. I cannot be submissive to a man who isn't taking care of his business. I have no problem being submissive...he just has to be worthy. God made woman to be a helpmate for man. I can't help a man if he can't help himself. When she finished her spill, she looked at him. He sat there with a puzzled look on his face. He said, "You're asking a lot." She replied, "I'm worth a lot." Send this to every woman who's worth a lot and every man who needs to know that.




Right, when you've finished throwing up - what kind of crap is this to be storing in your brain, people?

(Quite apart from the obvious bullshit-markers of words like 'unequally yoked' and 'submissive', which mark this as an evangelical Christian attempt and the young lady who sent it to me should have bloody known better!)

For about a minute, I wondered why I was so immediately offended by the email, and then I got it: you're being encouraged (you're still being encouraged, after all the Sisters who have fought and died) to consider yourself in terms of your fucking worth, either to some man, society as a whole, or to YAJ.

(After all, he sacrificed himself to himself just for you, you know – what a great worth you must have!)

We’re expected from childhood to strive to increase our worth - through being a good student, playing by the rules “contributing” to our society, Being a “good parent”, “good daughter”, “good citizen”, i.e. not operating outside of the cultural boundaries which ensure we’ll never look up, from the day of birth to the day of death, and really see the Machine.

Just look around you and try to evaluate the ways you’re being encouraged to be worthy.

Advertising/Marketing is a pervasive evil message that we don’t quite measure up, can never measure up, to the ideal standards being portrayed in glossy mag and screaming billboard. But you knew that.

Look at our relationships and the words we use to describe them, often: “he wasn’t good enough for me”, “she was more trouble than she was worth”, “this was a valuable partnership”. Then ask yourself: valuable to whom? Good enough in terms of what?

Are we so used to evaluating everything in economic terms that we put prices on interrelationships, too? Of course we do. When it's the relationship itself which is the thing, not its value on some hierarchically determined scale.

A human or nonhuman animal, mineral or vegetable is not defined in terms of its worth to another – or shouldn’t be, rather.

We have no price. Price is an insane concept born of a society which thinks wealth is the name of the game. We are. We have been. We shall be. World without end.