Are We Meat?

@goinggodward posted a poignant thread on Twitter the other day wherein she mused about how she, a 40-year-old mother, would have experienced today's dating scene as a girl. Here's an excerpt.

And as a girl, it would really bother me that there are millions of images of women accessible at all times for men to view. And it would be maddening to be able to see who he has "liked" and interacted with on social media because I would assume that was some standard of his.

I would see he liked a girl with blonde hair, who's 5'8", and I would hate myself for being a 5'2" brunette. He likes girls who draw and paint and are fluent in three languages? That's not good for me because I can't draw and I can barely speak a couple of other languages. 

Women have a tendency to compare. When young women have to see guys interact with women on social media, it has already created distrust and insecurity before a potential relationship can even begin. How do we know he wouldn't prefer someone else? After all, he "liked" her pic. 

Her humanity and vulnerability shines through the whole thread. When I've talked to Catholic girls who are in the dating scene and they describe what it's like to have a new guy join the Catholic Singles Group, the girls all ask each other, "Which one of us will he choose?" Imagine if there aren't 10 girls available, but 10,000,000. The end result is practically inevitable.

She feels she's fighting a losing battle. She can't use her natural beauty, wit, charm, or talents to win a man b/c she has to compete with a million other girls. What's the point? she asks herself.

It's natural for her to just throw in the towel. You can see that when you sit at the stoplight outside of our local high school around 3 PM. Coming home from work the other day, I watched 20 or so teenage girls cross the street right in front of my car. 18 were fat, glum and schlumpy. 1 was fit and schlumpy. 1 had it all working and knew it.

Being a man of a certain age and one prone to judgmental snark, I mentally condemned them for not even trying any more. Lazy! Slothful! They weren't raised properly, they haven't been taught any self-respect! What has happened to young women these days? They're all fat, dumpy and have hair colors that look like they were dipped in the effluent of a Chinese chemical factory!

As @goinggodward points out, what did we expect? The game is rigged. There's no point in trying to be attractive when your competition is infinite. It's hopeless.

From the guy's point of view, we're inundated with images of women with careers, women in the military, women athletes and women leaders. The message over and over is that women have overcome so much! Just who is it they've overcome if it isn't us? So we're horrible, we suck and they don't need us. A girlfriend isn't going to bring us love, warmth and support, she's going to be one more guy competing with us, being resentful of how we hold women back all the while.

Forget that. We throw in the towel, too. We still have needs and Internet porn brings us temporary, shallow relief for them. Weed and video games round out the trifecta.

After watching Matt Walsh's excellent What Is A Woman?, wife kitteh observed that in our modern culture, we're just meat.

Meat has no feelings. Meat isn't vulnerable. Meat doesn't have emotional needs. If it gives you temporary pleasure, just do it. Meat would.

Meat isn't transcendent. Meat doesn't have a higher purpose. There is no meaning to meat.

Hey, we inject meat with hormones, don't we?

If we're nothing but meat, then it makes no sense to place any restrictions on behavior at all. Nothing matters and everything is relative. One thing is no better than another.

But @goinggodward makes a strong case that we aren't just meat. Commoditizing sex isn't without a tremendous social cost if we have emotions. Read her thread and the reality of our complexities and inner beauty shines through.