Money Is the Only Power You Have if You Are a Woman

I dreamt of it vividly, night after night, that I’d drive past him in his dream car, and it would feel so great because for men who associate their masculinity with financial success, crushing them as a woman becomes so easy. After all, money is blind to who its master is.

After what he did to me, night after night, I could curl up in a ball and scratch my legs until they bled; disgusted at myself, hating my body, I would sit in the shower box for hours, hoping the water would wash off the stains and dirt and filth from that night, hoping that overpriced perfumed soap could wash the violation away.

I wrote on my vision board what my friend told me that night. I confided in him that I wanted to end my life. I couldn’t bear the existential humiliation of being a woman anymore.

I want to disappear like a puff of cloud, dissipating in the wind, to exist without a corporal body, to be a mind in a vat, where I could be untouched by gross, disgusting hands. I wanted to stop being a woman, but no matter how short my hair was or how oversized my jeans and blazer, I’d never stop feeling like a woman — powerless.

I want to stop being powerless, I said, but I feel this existential burden that I cannot escape because no matter how much I scratch my skin off, it will never change the marks he has left on me, how he has fundamentally changed my relationship with my body.

My friend said:

“Nobody will mess with you once you have economic power. You will be the strongest. Every day, I realise how there’s a limit to your physical ability. Because that’s very dependent on a genetic lottery. But wealth — that’s different. Making money exists in more varied ways than physical strength. There are so many ways to make money. I know you must be able to do it. I believe in you.”

It was ironic that advice from a business bro whose life philosophy is almost entirely informed by things he heard from Joe Rogan’s podcast was the only thing that brought me solace, amongst other things I heard, such as that it was not my fault, that things would pass, and that I would move on.

What I feel frustrated about in people interacting with me as a woman is that they assume we should forgive and forget, whereas men are believed to have an innate desire for retribution. In truth, the only scenario I imagine myself letting go is after I have beaten my enemy. I fantasise about seeing him humiliated.

“I will beat him up when I meet him in person,” my male friend said, angry, when I told him about what happened to me the first time. I expressed my gratitude for his support, but deep inside, I felt resentful that it was reasonably possible for him to say that but not me. I could imagine him beating up my rapist, but I could not imagine feasibly achieving that myself.

I used to be an anarcho-commie, but that wasn’t very empowering. I didn’t want to rally for an unlikely future where everyone would be equal. I don’t want to be equal — I want to be better than everyone else. I want to conquer and dominate just like how men did throughout history.

I don’t care if this tendency is criticised as trying to become the enemy because the people spearheading those criticisms probably never felt like I did.

Vengeance is a visceral feeling, and it is also quite an individualistic experience. No one could support me more than myself. No one can speak or stand up on my behalf or myself. Being a survivor, despite it looking like a collectivist effort, is an internally very lonely one.

“I will humiliate him when I meet him in person,” I said, drafting a year-by-year plan to achieve financial independence. Financial power is the only non-vicarious mode of power accessible to women.

Sex, marriage, and beauty are not genuine powers because they are vicarious, meaning they are dependent on the power of men the woman is associated with.

I think capitalism is a more feasible method for a feminist to achieve personal power despite the criticisms against the system as a whole. I am aware of how it oppresses women and how an individual woman succeeding in the system does not represent the vast majority of women who are screwed over by it.

However, this assumes that women should care about other women instead of looking out for themselves. No businessperson thinks they are morally obligated to support their competitors. This moral imposition levied on women to be morally superior to men shoots us in the foot.

In truth, we have as much propensity for benevolence as much as victory.

—

This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

***

You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:

White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism

Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box

The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

—

Photo credit: iStock.com