The True Victims of the Gender Pay Gap

Did you know that men are the real victims of systemic discrimination? It’s a brilliant fact I thankfully had explained to me (by a man, who of course understands sexism a lot better than me). Now be ready ladies, this will truly change your outlook on life, because since “men earn more, they have to pay more tax”. It all finally makes sense now, those pesky women aren’t the victim of the gender pay gap, but rather it’s the men! Girls we have to UP OUR GAME, we need to be allies to the male community! On top of this, because women retire with average pension savings of £69,000 compared to the struggling man’s pension of £205,000 they also have to pay far more pension tax than us. My eyes have been opened to the truth, and never in the year 2024 would I think there would still be the disturbing idea that those who earn more money have to pay more tax.

But in all seriousness…

When he said that I could hardly think of a response, in that moment I was seen and not heard. The class went onto discussing and I was dumfounded by what I had just listened to. Unusual for me, that too-loud-too-opinionated-fridgid-bitch who always had an opinion, and apparently my silence was heard as an admission of defeat as this grinning man asked if I had anything else to say. I wonder if my true anger was at the stupidity of his statement or rather his perceived intelligence. Looking back on this situation now I could think of a million responses that would dissemble his argument; thrown out all the pretentious terms I could think of; point out the flaws in his example; end up looking like an emotional women who can’t handle an intelligent criticism.

In a way my heart breaks for these men, how unfortunate it is to not realise when shit is flying straight out of their mouth.

The woman's allegory of the cave

If you are not familiar with Plato's allegory it goes something like this: people spend their entire lives in a cave, with their only idea of the outside world shown through shadow puppets and sounds, if the prisoners of the cave leave they would be blinded by the and refuse to believe that this was the true reality, however as his eyes adjust and he sees the beauty of the world.

I am sure that whatever comparison I am going to draw between Plato's metaphor for his theory of forms and my sad example of getting older as a woman may be pitiful but bear with me here.

Growing up we saw no difference between us, as children it did not matter. The worst thing I faced at 7 years old was being told that I could not like the colour blue. When I was younger most of my friends were boys, but as we grew this friendships slowly dwindled (it was embarrassing to be friends with a girl). I slowly saw some of the most sweet boys I knew grow into just another man, whilst I grew into a woman. As I left my "cave" of childhood I became disgusted and out of tune with this misogynist (sorry for the strong word lads) world that I was expected to carry on living in. At first we were all deeply unsettled with this, confused how every man was supposedly smarter than us, upset with the fact that we were expected to talk less and less and simply spend our time listening.

Our eyes eventually adjusted, or so I thought. We did not find any beauty but rather just became compliant in this new world we live in. Going back into the cave would be having to adopt deep levels of ignorance and naivety.

Ever since I was a teenager I tried to push back against this narrative, I'm sure you all remeber that loud girl who had the whole class sighing when she had to speak her mind and remind the everyone of her "pollitical correctness". No matter how annoying she was, at least she was unapologetic about it all.

Unfortunately no matter how hard I tied to reject the cards that I had been dealt, I could not escape these reminders that men will always be men. They can never truly understand (or maybe they just do not want to).