This is why we should stop shaming women for patriarchal conditioning
Admit it: we were all 'pickmes' once
We love to talk about how men behave in a patriarchal society and how their hatred of women runs deep, but women are just as susceptible to that same conditioning. We all know the ‘pickme’ woman; someone who seems to side with men in every argument and who willingly throws other women under the bus whenever an opportunity arises. It’s safe to say that a lot of feminists loathe ‘pickme’ women. But what if that dislike of these women isn’t that innocent? What if it actually makes you a patriarchal ‘pickme’ too?
Patriarchal conditioning is something we can not escape: people of all genders grow up in the same systems. Systems that objectify women.
Systems that say that men are superior and that treat women differently solely based on their gender.
It creates inequality and the normalization of violence against women. But it also gives people of all genders something in common: in our society we all share the same beliefs when it comes to how we view women. And that means that there are plenty of women out there who actually hate women.
It’s not that surprising when you think about it: if all you see in media, in your close circles, and around you, is negative messages around women, femininity and womanhood, you’re bound to pick up some of that stuff. If your dad jokes about your mom in degrading ways or if the kids at school treat the girls in class differently because of the fact that they’re socialized as a woman, you might subconsciously internalize some of that stuff.
For men and people socialized as such, this results in misogynistic beliefs about what women should do, how they should look, other prejudices and biases or even violence.
For women, it results mostly in what we’d call ‘pickme’ behavior.
Short summary for quick readers
- ‘Pickme’ women are women who appeal to men in hopes that they’ll get ‘picked’. They’ll side with men and throw other women under the bus to protect themselves or the men around them.
- At the root of ‘pickme’ behavior lies internalized misogyny: we all grow up to hate women and women aren’t immune to that.
- Even though ‘pickme’ women think that choosing men will ‘save’ them, men will always turn against them when it comes down to it. You’ll never fully be ‘one of the guys’.
- It is hard to convince a woman that she’s been conditioned to side with men and hate women. That’s because they fully believe they’re ‘free thinkers’ and ‘not like other girls’. Admitting that her behavior is about the male gaze means admitting she’s not as cool and ‘different’ as she thought she was.
- In order to realize you’ve been a ‘pickme’, you have to be ready to accept that men will not be your salvation. They’re actually the root cause of your problems.
- Because we all grew up drenched in misogyny, we should give ‘pickmes’ some grace. Especially since for many women, it’s a survival technique.
- And we have to make sure we don’t turn on ‘pickme’ women just to find a justifiable outlet for our own internalized misogyny.
- Ironically, feeling superior to ‘pickme’ women is also ‘pickme’ behavior. We all have the responsibility to unpack our own patriarchal complicity and reflect on our intentions. So, we don’t become complicit again.
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What is a 'pickme' exactly?
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘pickme’, it’s pretty easy to guess what it means: a woman who wants to appeal to men or society at large in the hopes that she gets ‘picked’. And what she’ll be picked for can vary from romantic relationships, sex or just the safety of not being harmed by men or ostracized by the society she lives in.
Some ‘pickmes’ definitely want to be seen as desirable by men. They, just like basically every woman, believe that their worth is determined by how attractive she is to the men who perceive her.
And, as we’ve discussed before, being ‘attractive’ isn’t just about looking pretty. It’s completely tied in with behavior too: a good woman stands by her man. And a good woman definitely doesn’t go out to spew feminist rhetoric that might actually harm the patriarchal structure that he benefits from.
Because we as women grow up in that same structure, we learn not only that supporting it and adhering to it brings us a feeling of power and respect, we also learn that it can provide us with safety.
As women or people socialized as such, we have to learn how to survive in a society that deems the violence against the women living in it normal or neglectable.
And one of the survival techniques that a lot of women adopt, is the “fawn” response. The fawn response is about appeasing to your abuser. It’s people-pleasing in order to make sure the number one perpetrator of violence against women doesn’t become hostile with you. In this case, we think that ‘pickme’ behavior can actually keep us safe from the wrath of men.
Patriarchy, please pick me!
But what is at the root of ‘pickme’ behavior? I’ll tell you: it’s good old internalized misogyny.
The hatred of women by women.
I mentioned before that everyone living in our society is conditioned with the same beliefs about what it means to be a woman and how women should be treated. If you grow up in that same society and see how boys talk about girls, how your father treats you as opposed to how he treats your brothers, or how women celebrities are dissected and discussed in the media, you’re bound to pick up on some of that messaging.
You internalize those beliefs and make them part of your own attitude towards women.
The jokes they make become yours. You laugh along when your man friends make comments about what a ‘whore’ that one girl is. You tell your girls how much you hate that coworker even though you’re not sure why. You willingly participate in the misogyny of others because it’s all you’ve ever known about women.
It’s all you have ever learned to do.
In every interaction you witnessed, you learned the one thing that all people learn in our society: that women are a free-for-all-buffet when it comes to criticism. The patriarchal system we live in taught you that this is what you’re supposed to be doing.
Because it’s what you’ll be applauded for: help keep women small, even though it means that, by default, you’ll remain small too.
Womanhood will always come before 'pickme' behavior
That’s the interesting thing about all this: there’s a self-destructive tendency of women who buy into this patriarchal conditioning. But that is because it doesn’t feel that way.
As someone who grew up to be a ‘pickme’, I can tell you right now: it feels like you’re one of the guys. It feels like you’re accepted. And it feels like misogyny is something that will never happen to you.
Because when they do joke about you, it’s because you’re their friend (it’s not). It’s not because you’re a woman (it is).
Pickmes tend to say things like: ‘I’m not like other girls’ or ‘I don’t like having girl friends’. Or basically anything to sacrifice another woman just so they can get a little piece of validation from the men they’re hanging out with.
Yet what we fail to understand when we behave in a ‘pickme’-way, is that our womanhood will always come before the theatrics. It doesn’t matter how ‘masculine’ you get, you will forever be seen as a woman. And that means that as soon as something happens that you do want to call out, you’ll immediately be degraded to where you belong: below the men.
With all the women you just sold out in order to feel the respect you so desperately crave.
The truth is that even a pickme woman isn’t safe. As some of the conservative ‘pickmes’ like Tomi Lahren demonstrate: eventually, the ‘boys club’ will talk over you, ignore you and call you a ‘feminist’ or ‘independent woman’ mockingly just because you voiced an opinion different from theirs.
As long as strict gender roles still run our world, women will never be free or safe from men. Not even if they do everything in their power to appease to them.
You can't convince a 'pickme' that she's conditioned
It’s hard to point ‘pickme’-behavior out to a ‘pickme’ woman. Because as soon as you do, her patriarchal conditioning will kick in and fight for its life.
It’s because of cognitive dissonance.
When we’re presented with information that doesn’t match our own reality and beliefs, our mind crashes. It looks for ways out of this confusing mess and it will grasp at whatever it can to feel some form of security again. That means that these women will get extremely defensive or even mean when they’re being confronted with the fact that they’re complicit in patriarchal thinking.
It’s because we as women have been told that all we do—and should do—is for men and a man dominated society. And these conditioned women don’t want to actually acknowledge that what they’re doing is for men.
They see themselves as ‘free’ thinkers. As ‘edgy’. As people who don’t follow the masses and are completely independent. They see being a girl’s girl as something that the ‘stupid’ girls do.
They don’t want to associate with those airheads who are ‘all the same’. They’re intelligent and different and ‘not like all the other women’. They don’t want to be associated with femininity. They’re the gamer girls. The sports girls, the girls who drink beers and like cars. They don’t know that their behavior is actually a conditioned response that makes them behave in ways that completely denounce femininity just to appeal to men.
A ‘pickme’ woman won’t acknowledge that she is one because admitting that her behavior is about the male gaze means admitting that she’s actually not as cool and ‘different’ as she thought she was.
That she’s actually even more brainwashed than the women she condemns for being ‘feminist sheep’.
You have to be ready to stop catering to men
If there’s a way to break a woman free of the ‘pickme’-curse, then I sure haven’t found it yet. For me, the way to break the hold that the patriarchy had on me was through feminism.
And especially realizing that men are—excuse my misandry—assholes.
My feminist awakening came when I realized that men just really weren’t that great. And that they never really valued me. It was a hard realization. I tried to date men because I needed to find self-worth and society had taught me that I could find love with them.
That self-love and acceptance came from dating a mediocre dude who I had to convince to be with me.
But when a man that you just gave everything to, dumps you and leaves you in shambles, you’re going to come out of it questioning whether or not all of this is worth it. Especially if you then go on a dating spree of men who ghost you, treat you like crap and basically only want to use you for your body.
For me, undoing myself of my ‘pickme’-attitude happened because feminism was introduced to me at a moment where I was ready to accept that I was the problem.
That men were treating me like shit because I was shit.
And that’s when I started learning about a shared experience that all women have. And we couldn’t possibly all be shit, right? Feminism came when I needed it. And when the façade of “men will be my salvation” started to wear off.
When I realized that men weren’t as cool as people told me they were. That they actually weren’t cool at all.
We were all conditioned to become a 'pickme'
But that’s exactly why I try to have compassion for ‘pickme’-women. Even though they definitely annoy me beyond belief, sometimes.
Because I was them.
We can pretend that the patriarchy never had it’s hooks in us and that we were always the feminist icons that we are today, but in a society where everyone is constantly conditioned with the same beliefs and thinking, it’s almost impossible to not have been a ‘pickme’ girl.
Because ‘pickme’ is the default for us all.
A pickme is what we learn to be when we watch shows in which the boys are the cool ones and the girls the kids who ‘nag’. The snitches. The annoying sister. A ‘pickme’ is what we become when we learn that being a girl is ‘girly’—which we learn is a bad word.
That the color pink is a bad thing and that horses are stupid.
Our childhood was denied to us because we learned that we were already limited in the choices we could make. It was simple: either you’d be a ‘girly girl’ and get called the worst word for it (girl), or you became one of the boys and rejected girlhood completely while finding acceptance and a new plethora of possibilities.
Because the “boys girl” had more options. She was ‘tough’ and ‘cool’.
It was the safer bet.
It’s a sad reality, but also one that I as a former ‘pickme’ can understand. You do whatever it takes to survive in a society that is dead set on leaving you behind. You try to play the system into believing you’re ‘different’ because that might mean you won’t end up with the same fate as the women who came before.
The 'pickme' as an acceptable outlet for misogyny
What I think is important to highlight in the ‘pickme’-discussion, and that is the one reason I wrote this blog, is that ‘pickme’-women aren’t the only one acting from an internalized misogyny.
As women—but mostly as white women—we’re so conditioned with the desire to be the ‘best girl’.
To always be the smartest, prettiest and most desirable woman in the room. The funniest and the most popular…Being the one who is seen as the most valuable is such a deeply ingrained craving for most of is, we don’t even notice we’re doing it.
And in our quest to becoming the most desirable, we’ll happily throw other women under the bus.
But, of course, we’re ‘good’ feminists. We don’t want to hate on other women and we definitely don’t want to be seen as a ‘pickme’ because of it.
Luckily, the ‘pickme’-woman is an acceptable enemy.
Someone we ‘get’ to sacrifice for the greater good, right? I think the eagerness with which some women jump on the chance to put a ‘pickme’ in her place is also rooted in internalized misogyny. That feeling of “I get to put another woman down” scratches an itch that many of us have denied ourselves for years.
So, when an opportunity presents itself on a platter, we yell “pickme!!” and pull out the pitchforks to let her know that she can never sit with us.
Feeling superior is also 'pickme' behavior
I think we all have a responsibility to unpack our own patriarchal complicity and to look at our actions. To always reflect on our intentions—especially when we think we’re doing it out of the name of feminism.
Putting other people down out of sense of superiority is still white supremacist and patriarchal thinking. Responding from a place of “I can’t believe you’re this ignorant” when you were literally that ignorant five years ago just isn’t it.
I wish we would all look at our own reactions when it comes to ‘pickme’-women and stop ostracizing them for not making it out of the cult of patriarchy yet. We know how strong the conditioning is in all of us. Hell, I still believe every woman secretly hates me even though I’ve been a passionate feminist for eight years.
Internalized misogyny is such a bitch and I don’t think we’re going to win the battle against the patriarchy by shaming women who just haven’t been able to accept the cruel reality yet: that society hates us and wants us chained to the kitchen. Which is a really hard reality to accept.
Of course, there’s a difference between ‘regular’ ‘pickme’-women and actual fascists who would gladly rid the world of any woman that doesn’t fit their idea of ‘real’ (looking at you, Growling). I think the latter deserves all the hate she gets.
The former, however, I would personally extend some grace.
I know I can’t fix her. But I know I was her. And I can’t blame her for buying into the lie that patriarchy told all of us: that if we please men in just. the. right. way. we’ll finally be safe.
Have some compassion for the 'pickmes'
‘Pickme’-women are a complex and fascinating subject. Confronting, but fascinating.
Because as someone who was in their shoes not too long ago, I can understand their behavior. Yet the misogynist in me hates them so much.
And I still don’t know how to turn that off.
But I will keep working on that as part of my own journey with patriarchal complicity. Because you can be the bestest feminist of them all, but you’ll never escape that little voice in your head that has creeped it’s way in from the moment you understood what ‘girl’ meant.
And even if you don’t want it to, it will still dictate your actions.
That is, unless you’re willing to face it and tell it ‘no more’. Including when it comes to ‘pickme’-women. No matter how much you’d love to exclude them from your feminist awakening.
Because the patriarchy will clock the divide, get it’s claws in it and use it to discredit the movement altogether.
Just like it always does.
