This week must be feminism week. No sooner had I published my post about feminism from my perspective as a tone-deaf male, I read Kristi Coulter’s revealing article titled “The real reason why women drink” on Quartz.
Giving up alcohol opened my eyes to the infuriating truth about why women drink https://t.co/qajgccdHRj
— Quartz (@qz) August 22, 2016
I have a feeling the topic of why women drink as a coping mechanism is more complex than it seems to be. I definitely think I need to read this article again. In the meantime, a couple sections stood out for me in my first reading (and justify reading the article at least once).
I mentioned in my feminism post that the concept of “mansplaining” eluded me. I think this quote from Coulter’s article may fill in that conceptual gap for me:
What’s a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she’s wrong about what it’s like to be herself? What’s a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she’s wrong about what it’s like to be herself? I could talk to them, one by one, and tell them how it felt. I could tell the panel organizers this is why you never have just one of us up there. I could buy myself a superhero costume and devote the rest of my life to vengeance on mansplainers everywhere.
This next quote took me right back to Gretchen Kelly’s article (which inspired my previous post) and the outrage that fuelled much of my little essay:
Is it really that hard, being a First World woman? Is it really so tough to have the career and the spouse and the pets and the herb garden and the core strengthening and the oh-I-just-woke-up-like-this makeup and the face injections and the Uber driver who might possibly be a rapist? Is it so hard to work ten hours for your rightful 77% of a salary, walk home past a drunk who invites you to suck his cock, and turn on the TV to hear the men who run this country talk about protecting you from abortion regret by forcing you to grow children inside your body?
Coulter’s article is definitely worth reading. I plan to read it again in the next day or two while my mind is still primed. I’m not really a drinker and I’m definitely not female so I am more of an outside observer.
It would also be unfair to suggest that only women drinking points to some or other problem. I am pretty sure there are plenty of men who drink for equivalent reasons and could relate similar stories. At the same time, this article adds another, much-needed, dimension to my understanding of how women see the world I live in.
Image credit: Splitshire