The Nature of Women, and Sociopolitical Observations

 "What do women want?" is an age-old question and one that is particularly relevant for writers of fiction -- male authors in particular, I suppose.

With men it is easy: they want power, money, sex and celebrity in no particular order since one of those objectives often brings all or most of the others along with it.  Endless books revolve around such themes. 

With women it has been more of a puzzle, but two articles in the Nov. 11, 2021 New York Times may be of some help. Both -- one in the arts section and the other in the sports section -- involve violence on the part of women toward other women.

The arts section article concerns "Yellowjackets," a film about to appear on "Showtime" that depicts first what happens when a place carrying a U.S. girl's soccer team crashes in a remote location and then what happens to the survivors. Essentially, as the NYT article suggests, it's a gender-reverse version of "Lord of the Flies." Instead of young boys turning against each other in a sadistic fashion, this time it is girls.

"It argues for the savagery of girlhood -- with or without an aviation disaster -- and how that savagery reverberates throughout women's lives," the article says.

Let's pause for a moment and consider a major current of sociopolitical thought these days: that white males are responsible for most if not all of the world's ills.  Suppose the patriarchy is successfully toppled; what sort of a world are we in for next?

"The show abounds with strong women, none of whom you would want to share a bottle of chardonnay with," is one observation contained therein. Another is: "There's a very specific feminine way of brutalizing each other."

But even before the plane crash, some of the girls are depicted as malevolent at home in up-scale suburbia. One betrays a friend and another grievously injures a teammate.

Which brings me to the NYT sports section article. It reports on the arrest -- and subsequent release -- of a French professional woman soccer player suspected of being instrumental in the beating of one of her teammates by a couple of thugs who concentrated on injuring the victim's legs while stealing nothing from her. The accused woman was described to be an understudy of the victim and, indeed, replaced her as a starter when the victim, a French national team veteran, was unable to play in a subsequent match.

While no charges have been filed, an investigation by French authorities is continuing,

It is now necessary to pause for a second time and consider another prevailing sociopolitical issue: racism.

The two NYT articles on the incident -- reporting the arrest and then the release -- did not mention the race of either of the two women, but large photos accompanying the pieces showed clearly that one -- the suspected perpetrator based on names in the caption -- is black and the victim white.

Let's think about that for a moment. If this incident had occurred in the U.S. and the race of the victim had been black as opposed to white and the alleged perpetrator white rather than black, this incident would have been trumped as another example of the endemic racism that is said to characterize American society.