the man crisis is everywhere. and it's true, i think: we're becoming unnecessary and we're mediocre, and we will soon be subordinated. one factor in this is that we have a bad conscience about our own power, and there are a thousand mechanisms by which girls' self-esteem is nurtured to gargantuan proportions. but i'll say this about the self-esteem monsters that are taking over the world; we'll be back. the fragility is almost incredible, probably because the whole thing is pretty impoverished and jive-infested. so a woman will spend hour after hour for years telling herself how valuable she is: how smart, how beautiful, and maybe invest thousands on plastic surgery or absorb infinite consumer goods because she's worth it, and then she'll feel better about herself, if that is possible. she will express an unbelievable quantity of self-confidence, and roll over everyone around her because no matter what she does she's a good and valuable person. cock an eyebrow at her, though, and it collapses like a house of cards. any criticism or resistance is completely intolerable, because underneath the jacked-up pneumatic self-love is a seething mass of extreme insecurity. 

one reason for this is that the idea that every woman should esteem herself a good and beautiful person is not actually based on reality, or is a program for irreality. y'all should, i suggest, seek to understand yourself, seek to have an accurate self-image, cultivate self-reflection and even self-criticism. you are exactly as attractive and smart as you actually are, and you should maybe spend a moment facing up.  i know it seems like that might be debilitating or a barrier to your conquest of the world. i know you think that if you believe you're incredible, it's true. that's false. reality is actually the only secure basis for going forward, the only way to construct a self that is not always threatened with collapse. 

and i just want to point out that the therapeutic idea that no no matter what you do, you're good, does not help you be good. it helps you be bad; it is a formula for moral impunity. well, girls just want to have fun.

i have a funny feeling that the patriarchy will endure until y'all take this in, because you're actually still giving us incredible power: any edge of criticism is an existential threat. you can't run the world from that extreme fragility, and you can't run it without knowing it and yourself within it as it and you actually are.