I want a fearless love, I won't settle for anything less

I figured that "Fearless Love" was as good of a title as any for this post. This is the title track off Melissa Etheridge's latest CD, not the similarly titled Taylor Swift one (not too much of a Swift fan). I've been listening to a lot of Melissa's bluesy heartland-rock groove lately, and she is absolutely spectacular.

But all music musings aside, I am going to discuss something a little different in this post. I'm writing to discuss the phenomenon of the mainstream dating book. I know these things are as old as it gets, but I really feel so bombarded with the messages from them. It really seems like a woman with her own mind and own interests and desires is somehow not welcome in these books and that their prevailing message is that we independent and successful women need to subsume our own identities into that of our significant other's. It really makes me wonder how far we have come as a society if books like those can still make the bestseller list (meaning somebody must be buying them) and people still repeat the ideas they promote!

I was curious about a few of them, so I put on an emotional hazmat suit, flipped through them, and immediately regretted it. You have The Rules, which encourages its female readers to play hard to get and let their man decide everything. By playing hard to get, its (divorced!!) authors explained, a woman would have to downplay her own accomplishments or desires and not look for much more than a pulse in a partner. You have books for teens, which are all geared towards pleasing a guy, lest he turn into a potential boyfriend. You have those paragons of ridiculosity Steve Harvey (Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man) and "Dr." Laura (The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands) who warn that men are "hardwired" to always want to control their wives. And you have what looks like more of the same in The Man Whisperers, which says that there's only room for one personality in the relationship and that personality sure isn't the woman's. I mean, what century are these authors even living in??? In a world where we women have made tremendous strides and most men have come to expect that we are not extensions of or mirrors for them, how is it that drivel like this still exists??? (Not to mention that not every woman wants a man, but in the dating books, gay men and lesbians don't seem to exist.) And how the heck is it that a new book is out almost every year, rehashing the same old thing?

Not only are the books sexist against both men and women (by making men seem as though they expect the world to revolve around them and making women seem like little more than marriage-minded extensions of men), heterosexist, and marriage-centric, they also make me wonder how a relationship they advise could ever be successful. Who would want a relationship that was built on deception and manipulation? Who wants a significant other who was only pretending to be a certain way? And who would really be happy with somebody who didn't care about her accomplishments or desires or anything else that made up who she was? I don't know about you, but those do not strike me as relationships that would make anybody happy or that would be all that successful if I was pretending to be something I wasn't (or following the rules, acting like a lady but thinking like a man, or man-whispering). Perhaps the relationship would work, but it does not seem like one that I would be all that happy to be in. I'm not a man, nor do I usually partner with women, but I can tell you that I would much rather be with someone who was her own person and brought her own personality to the relationship than someone who merely acted like an extension of me!

It also makes me wonder if those books aren't merely extensions of the authors' own prejudices and attitudes as well. Maybe with "Dr." Laura and Steve Harvey, it's a no-brainer, but I wonder about the others. Like, let's keep the ladies in their places by telling them that guys won't like them if they become too strong or successful. Gotta return to those good old days of being chattel. Which then really makes me wonder if the women who wrote the Rules or the Man Whisperers even follow their own guidelines and how that even works for them! Do they even practice what they preach, and if so, does that work? Or if they either don't do it or don't like it, then why in the world are they trying to make other people do it??

It's high time we heard a different voice. Isn't it time for some equality?