I’ve been thinking about the stories of Adam. Lilith left him and Eve led him astray. Poor Adam. These two stories have sparked centuries of debate among theologians on the duplicitous nature of women. Why do women lie? A better question to ask is: Why do people lie?
How We Teach Our Kids That Women Are Liars
This article addresses the pressure from society to view women as liars. Interestingly enough, when I looked up “are all women liars” on Google, there were pages and pages of articles about the lying nature of women. When I Googled “are all men liars,” I found a couple of articles on the first page and then all the other hits were for a movie, All Men Are Liars. My experience is that PEOPLE lie for various reasons, but hey, let’s get out that tar brush and paint in wide strokes over half the world’s population, shall we?
This was an eye-opening read because it showed a wide spectrum of how men view women. Yes, women lie. I have lied. But believing that all women lie would mean that I could believe all men are absent the emotional spectrum to have hurt feelings. I sensed crushed, male feelings in this offering and rightly so. I also sensed balanced, male perspectives. You have to read past your own biases.
Then there is this lovely treatise on the anatomy of feminine emotions. This rang true for me. Women have a different emotional perspective as a general rule. It is part biological and part cultural. Women are wired differently. Biologically, we serve as the vessels of humanity’s continued existence. Culturally, containing something is a far different experience from penetrating something, and the actions you are able to commit will affect your experiences and the ordering of your priorities. The mystery in all of this is that you are in charge of how you see things.
In my journey, I’ve discovered that people lie because they are afraid: fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of success, agoraphobia (hey, don’t knock it ’til you’ve suffered it). I’ve also discovered that if someone is lying to me, more than likely s/he started lying to self first (unless of course the subject is a sociopath and I’ve dated plenty of those).
Perspective is everything. Once you understand the motivation, you can’t stereotype. You are able to stop yourself and ask, what fear is motivating this behavior? And women are afraid. Women have been afraid for millennia, but that’s a post for someone else to write.
I.O. Kirkwood 