Someone said, “Nice is letting things happen to you.” I suspect she, and I’m sure it was a she, was telling it as it is. Nice is for girls and women. Saying a man is a nice guy is almost damnation with faint praise. She’s a nice girl/woman asserts she is as she should be. And to be nice is to be kind. Not when it comes to women. Being nice for women generally involves being doormats, which is certainly not being kind to self.
Women, let’s dump nice. Make it a dirtier word than the one considered the dirtiest in the English language. (You can look that up at urbandictionary.com. It starts with c and ends with t and is used in connection with women.) If a woman strives for nice she is dooming herself to being half or less of what she could be. She’s also contributing to the damnation of other women. There’s that slogan “Well-behaved [nice] women seldom make history.” I suspect it’s never. Stirring things up makes history. Stirring things up usually involves not-nice behavior.
The women who fought for the vote here and Europe engaged in not-nice behavior. If they hadn’t given up at least a degree of nicey-nice we women wouldn’t be voting. Nor would we be working at jobs we chose rather than were herded into, even though we might have had absolutely no interest in them. Nor would we have children while we work at chosen jobs. Nor would we have children even if we don’t have husbands. Add your favorites to this list.
Nice doesn’t produce anything useful for women. We’ve got to turn it into a dirty word and go forth ready to do whatever battles confront us. The best way to be kind to women is to battle with the enemy. Women, identify your enemies, some of whom will be women—alas—and figure out how you can stop them.
An example from me: If you’re a feminist—I am—you are supposed to vote for women to shift the power balance. I would NEVER vote for a Republican woman— anymore than I would for a Republican men which includes a South Carolina Senator who calls women a lesser cut of meat. Any woman who associates with a party that includes creeps like this is the enemy. I am not a lesser cut of meat and neither is any other woman. And I want nothing to do with women who enable men to think of women that way.
Note—please don’t bother trying to justify Republican women to me because they are NOT nice and kind to women. I repeat, they are my enemies.
