Aggressive Women

"I got scared of this girl because she came on a bit too strong the other night."

I only realized a year ago that most guys are secretly really scared of women. I never thought about it until a conversation one night with a guy friend when he admitted that he always felt uncomfortable initiating interaction with women. But, if a girl initiated interaction with him and tried to seal the deal, he did not feel like he earned it and was disinterested.

There's a double standard here, but this all related back to the primitive age... men were the hunters, and women were to be the prey. When boys became men their right of passage was to hunt and capture the right female, one that was fertile and attractive while also able to tend to build the home.

On order to find this right female, many practices were enacted; there was the usual trade of money or land between man and family for daughters where either the family or the man would profit. But the more satisfying approach was more likely the man finding the female through pathways of society like a social gathering or event.

Enter Mary Pickford in the 1910s who was the first rebel in film who would play characters that said "I can define myself any way I want to. And I am just as strong as I decide I'm going to be." She was the first person to really reject the norm in mainstream media, and gave our grandmothers a taste of what it was to be an aggressive female.

After this came he natural rolling out of events of that empowered women like the flapper movement of the 1920s, the WWII labor force movement to introduce women into the workplace, the Feminist Movement of the 1960s and then major icons of the 80s and 90s like Madonna, Alanis and Britney.

We were able to be more aggressive as an individual, but one thing that never changed was men's desire to still have the "upper-hand" in relationships. In an age of freedom and equality, this is a very confusing/frustrating message. Most women have taken the "Charlotte" approach (she is a character from Sex and the City for those you who have never watched) where women have two separate personalities: one that is used for first meeting men that is very passive, and one that comes out after they know the person that tends to be more aggressive.

Because we are all pretending to be this really passive sweetheart, sometimes who we really are slips through and we do something aggressive like call when we are not supposed to, slap a butt in public or make the first move.

How to deal with this: don't be scared. Women are different than we were even 20 years ago, so your mother is not necessarily the best measurement... a "what would my mother do" approach is not good.

Aggressive women are valued in the workplace because of their no fear attitude and their fight for something that was not available to their mothers. My hopes for you is to respect this and embrace the aggressiveness when a women decides to show it. Men do not have to always be the hunters. Dating should be an equal responsibility between a man and a woman.

So boys, embrace an aggressive women and do not stand for that "Charlotte" approach. Unless she is actually passive in personality... in that case this article was completely useless to you.