Living at his expense
Women tend to rely on men financially, making couplehood a money-for-sex relationship
All women are whores, my guy friend claims. Whores incapable of truly loving and who, under the guise of teary victimization, take advantage of men.
The woman-hater in question is a third-hand friend, whom I usually end up meeting in bars, where we can't really hear the insults we hurl back and forth at each other.
Since we have a lot in common, and mainly because we tend to like to argue until our kidneys give out, we decided to meet for coffee in the middle of the day.
As empirical evidence in support of his claim that all women are whores, he recounted a newspaper interview with a woman who admitted publicly that she takes economic advantage of men.
At first he was disgusted, until he realized that the only difference between her and other women is that she admits that economic exploitation is a legitimate part of a monogamous relationship.
Few women truly financially independent
And then it hit me. Women are an entire sector in financial crisis. Just like there's hunger in Biafra, women have no money – a situation caused by too many factors to enumerate.Regardless of the reason, women make less. Maybe it's because women know that when they get married and have kids, they'll stop working anyway so they invest less in their career.
Perhaps because of these hormonal hiatuses, the end result is that women who are not supported by their husband/boyfriend – or aren't characters on a tellanovella – end up subsisting on welfare and feeding the neighborhood cats.
There are few women of my age, thirty and up, who rely on no one and still maintain a reasonable quality of life, where they can allow themselves to live truly by themselves. Most women go from being supported by daddy to be supported by their husband or boyfriend.
Every woman I know, including myself, has ended up living at the expense of a man, while out of work for a time or because of an unexpected financial problem or even living in an apartment where only he paid the rent.
Money for sex
Taking money for sex is inappropriate, yet this equation is repeated again and again.It's sad but legitimate in our eyes to live at the expense of men, to have sex with them in an uneven relationship of give-and-take (i.e. give money – take sex), and even to formalize this relationship in the ceremony of holy matrimony.
Men pay, women put out. That's how it works. Maybe she's a whore, but at least she's aware of it. Most of us are latent whores.
This leads to a slightly dangerous natural progression: There's a direct correlation between monogamy and women's financial dependence.
There's a reason you won't hear many men harping on commitment. There's a reason the woman is the one who pushes for monogamy. I myself was much more accepting of a male presence in my life when I needed him for survival purposes.
It's possible that our requests for monogamy don't derive from loyalty, but rather from smart consumerism. It's possible that couplehood works only when it functions to alleviate fears, and nothing more. Perhaps this is the reason that couplehood is starting to die out.
I have the feeling that once true egalitarianism will take effect, many fewer couples will survive, even fewer couples will get married and this dogmatic establishment called marriage will finally fade out of existence.
Not that I have anything against it, on the contrary – a number of my best friends are married.
But, only by the process of elimination, by getting rid of opportunistic motives, will love remain on its own and maybe, just maybe, then we'll see what it's really worth.
Whorish?
Photo: Erez Erlichman
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