“Yeah, I got a phenomenal job offer 3582 miles away but I declined, because of my boyfriend‘s career here and he‘s just the man of my dreams. But you know what, it‘s totally fine, I didn’t need to move anyway and I wouldn‘t have it any other way.“ Something you‘d pretty much only hear from women, it‘s never men sacrificing their plans and ambitions for the sake of someone else.
If you wanna get sterilized, doctors will say “But what if you meet a man who wants kids?“. Ah yes, because I‘m supposed to put my own plans and wishes aside as soon as I meet someone I‘m very obviously not even compatible with.
I used to be a smoker (I know, shame on me) and my grandma told me to quit because men don‘t like that in a woman. She was totally right about me needing to quit, but what kind of fucking reasoning is that.
Also women in intercultural relationships creating content on social media in a hyperfocused manner about their boyfriend‘s culture and all the cultural differences within their relationship etc. .
And don‘t get me fucking started on interfaith marriages. They don‘t stay interfaith for too long because in like 90% of the times, the woman will convert to the husband‘s religion anyway. If there’s a female western Muslim revert, you can be 90% sure a man stepped into her life and introduced her to it. I mean it‘s totally expected to basically subordinate your persona to you husband within those communities, but western women falling for this whole thing is wild.
It’s insane how we‘re basically raised to be NPC whose interests, habits and plans are supposed to change depending on who we‘re in a relationship with. Men are staying true to themselves and ruthlessly just reject everything that doesn’t align with their goals and lifestyle, but we‘re a mould, just a blank character that‘s supposed to adapt.
Women aren't considered "people" under a patriarchy. Once a woman gets with a man, she's expected to give up her interests, lifestyle, and preferences for him, as well as sacrifice her body, time, and comfort for the future family she's expected to have.
Growing up, my family and church tried very hard to instill these values in me, but I guess I was just too stubborn and refused to accept less than the boys of my family. As a result, I was punished a lot (both physically and verbally) and called selfish, greedy, a "witch", ungodly, unfeminine, and every name in the book by my parents, and was even diagnosed with "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" for understandably having trust issues. But at the end of it all, I'm glad I stuck to my guns by choosing to live for myself instead of living the miserable life they wanted for me.
Ayoo girl so sorry about that
What's crazy is that even if a woman shrinks herself in the hopes of avoiding men, it still puts a target on their backs because a man's twisted sense of entitlement will justify their animal instincts all the time.
There's no winning for women when it comes to patriarchy and the entitled men it creates, so it isn't in any woman's interest to shrink herself and play the "good girl". She'll be targeted by men either way, so it's better for her to be strong and self-sufficient instead of weak and vulnerable (Unless she lives in a country that's violently patriarchal, in which case I understand laying-low and prioritizing safety first.).
This is why I don't believe there are such things as invisible women. Women are kept invisible for sure but they are harmed or mistreated behind closed doors. They are ignored, not invisible. Hell I bet a lot of women would love to be invisible!
You can be the best female NPC in the world and there will always be some gross man that will notice you anyway.
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I have seen this too within my own family members.
A cousin resigned from her Bank Director job to raise her kids. Do you really think her husband would ever make this decision?
Another cousin is a regional manager for Fortune 500 company, Resigned because her husband received an overseas job posting, and she was compelled to follow for the sake of the children.
There was a tiktoker who quit her degree to follow her boyfriend (he got a job there) literally on the other side of the world, only for him to break up with her, he literally asked her to follow him there. She was left homeless and penniless and scrouged for money to return home. She eventually did return home, but at a great financial loss and other aspects of losing on her life. I can never imagine allowing men ruin me like that.
Women are expected to forgo & put other people above themselves.
And the sad thing is, when their husband cheats or leaves them or becomes abusive – or when their kids grow up – it’s very hard for them to get back into the workforce. You leave the workforce at your own peril. We all know that 50+ year-old woman whose marriage broke up after 25 years and she can’t find a job and is broke.
My sister is in the process of getting a divorce and is going through exactly what you wrote. It doesn't matter that she has a masters degree and tons of experience from before her kids were born. They see that job gap on her resume, and they automatically think she is unreliable. When she tells them why she wasn't working- to take care of children- they now think she's even more unreliable because she's going to be "focused more on her kids than on her job." Which is what they always do to women who have kids but not men who have them. I wonder why that is, lol. (Misogyny and the fact that even men know that other men won't be focused on their kids whatsoever, lmao.)
I recently had a job interview where the man asked me whether I had kids or was planning to in the future. He slipped it into the conversation naturally. Technically he should not be allowed to ask this question, but the way he phrased it was like he was just making innocent conversation. Sneaky little misogynist. I could tell if I would have said yes he wouldn't have hired me, and the look of relief when I said no was comical.
It's so disturbing. You couldn't pay me to be a mom. It's all one big slap in the face from society, and men specifically. Why women are choosing to do anything with these oppressors, especially continuing their bloodlines, is wild to me knowing what we all know about them. (I understand many women don't get a choice in the matter.)
I always talk about 4B with my sister. We talk about the ways women lose when they have families with men. My sister was a huge, "not all men" woman. This would have been an impossible conversation just a few years ago. I'm seeing a lot of progress from all the women in my life, and they are all starting to connect the dots, but I have noticed that it's disrupting their relationships with the men around them in big and small ways. I've often seen it happen with women who go 4B, and it definitely happened to me. I think it's because having the conversations that we have here allows you to start seeing the bad behaviors and patterns in the men you know, and used to trust. More women are joining 4b everyday and that's really great. We should all start talking about it more just so women are aware of what it is so they can know that they at least have the option to avoid the trap men have set up for them.
I agree with you 1000% as well! I’m so grateful I never had children and have amassed a nice net worth, including my own paid for home. I will never have to be dependent on a man. I love being free and independent.
FOR REAL.
And you ALWAYS see wives on the internet defending their awful marriage with their incompetent husband but husbands are instead off the internet to trash talk their wives at work to their coworkers lmao. I think you’ll never see a man defend their marriage or women in general the same way you see the other way around🤢 some of our sisters need to stop being down bad for these low effort guys. It’s embarrassing.
I love the title of this post- yes I was raised to be an NPC and an outsider looking into others’ lives- only recently I realized I am the main character and the author of my life.
My mom tried really hard to not raise us an NPCs but first of all world got to us anyway and my sister is still under that influence, and secondly she couldn't be perfect and still can't be because of her own internalised attitudes. The ways she is flawed are huge part of it, despite how hard she tried. I believe my sister wouldn't be the way she is, if our mother wasn't.
Deep down I'm sure my mother sees women just as important if it comes to things like "who'd you save from burning house" or even "who you would rather hang out with" or "whose schooling to pay for" but unfortunately this doesn't make it to her everyday attitudes over little everyday disagreements and making men carry their responsibility in them. And whats left is still a shitshow and we still got raised to be if not servants with no mind of our own, still begrudging but patient abuse victims ready for garden variety of leeching men take granted we should exist for.
My mother has always SAID she sees us same worth and even successfully taught us to not take crap from boys. When I was dating though, especially when I was seeing same guy for multiple years so that she gets "future mother in law" goggles on, things started changing. I started feeling increasingly like if I'm not hit I will always "owe to consider his point of view" because he is a person, but really that's because he is a man
How I know the difference, because the things where I need to "consider his point of view" are everything except for direct physical abuse. Even things that I'm 100% sure I don't want to live with or experience even monthly let alone daily. She "both sides" it all, with zero standards he needs to fill before something unnecessary that he has no physical compulsion to do at all can be held simply as a requirement. She see it as communicating and looking for compromise, and if she is confronted she just says men do it too, even against piling up contrary evidence that they don't. We have had zero men in our lives family or otherwise, not even "the good ones" that "both side" everything including things they really won't live with. Yet she insists that must be how things are done. This also applies to our family but it especially becomes blatantly clear when it's a boyfriend who should not even have her loyalty.
The way she considers men to be people and things she thinks need to be satisfied when you are treating a man like family ("both sides" everything, even reasonable asks) is not in balance with how she considers women to be people and things she thinks women require (listen up but if you really are not gonna put up with something you can, they won't break because they are women but somehow men will). When it comes to bar she sets for how men just must be treated within a family, versus bar she sets for how women must be treated in family, the womens bar is realistic with reasonable things to ask and mens is crazy high. Great protocol for surviving in the 1800s but she identifies as feminist.
As I got older I started to see subtle ways she was still goading us to take very same crap in our relationships that she would rather have let hell freeze over than let men we aren't dating get away with. Somehow, something, about that magical relationship of fucking a guy for any extended period of time made my own mother not want to defend me against things she'd never have let any boy we came across get away with. Not things like domestic violence but definitely things like "he knows that bringing this thing up / doing this thing unncessarily hurts you and it's not necessary, yet your own mother defends him anyway".
I don’t know if I qualify as 4B (I’m lesbian so there’s no attraction anyways). But I’m definitely in favor of all opposite-sex attracted women avoiding male partners, so I consider myself an ally.
I live with my sister and it pisses me off that the first thing people (both men and women) say when they learn is “Oh no, is that sustainable? What if one of you wants a boyfriend one day?” First off, she’s not interested in men either. It’s so annoying that there’s this assumption that all women innately see living with a man as their ultimate life goal and that our situation of living is an obstacle to “true love” 🤮.
I think that's probably man-made (this case literally) obstacle for a lot of living arrangements women could benefit from. If we stopped thinking our lives as a continuum that is just prone to lead to marriage at some point, we would certainly more commonly look around and see and dare to suggest arrangements where our found family of other women move either in or around us to form different type of community.
I would love to see what would happen if we physically isolated women and men from each other for a couple of generations and then put them back together. I think by then we'd have ton of family and community structures that we currently can't even imagine because all the "what ifs" around mystery guy that hasn't even showed up somehow outweight them in importance.
This reminds me of the movie “Mona Lisa Smile” and almost every woman I know. I have always been “selfish” prioritizing my studies, did my Masters, started my own business. Every time I took a step my family and friends were scared the more better I become in life the more I would intimidate a man and would end up alone. I would rather end up alone rich and with dogs than be pathetic and give up my dreams and ambitions. Men would never do that for us, NEVER! It’s an absolute waste of time and energy investing in a man giving up your own interests and dreams.
I agree. I have been 4b-esqueish for long time, and in an increasing curve. I'm not full 4b (yet, thats the keyword) but I know that's where I'm going as surely as I know sun rises tomorrow.
But even for the amount I have dealt with men or dealing with men, they don't invest back in you so why'd even person who is not heading towards 4b invest in them?
And before women pull that "but I'm not doing it to get something in retuuurrrnnn" or "its not all tit for tat" or "it's not a trade, it's a relationship" or "everything isn't transactional" yeah what does that even mean. They should have to explain what it means to themselves other than words that one just strings together.
What does it mean, stripped to it's essentials, typed out as physical concrete things. What's the true contract behind "its not transactional". Is it that you keep putting things in because you were taught to, and you think if you do what you were taught to you have a chance to happiness - is that how it works. Wish they had to answer to those questions.
The women who do compromise ALWAYS will end up resentful and bitter at some point and end up regretting it. We are human, we expect things in return, no one can just keep sacrificing and pour endless efforts into anything. It's impossible. Also might explain why women are more likely to have stress related autoimmune diseases.
Maybe I'm giving them too little credit for intelligence, not because they are women but because people in general have tendency to be silly BUT I don't even think they fully realise they are putting in things into basket someone else keeps emptying because they get caught in "well, its not tit for tat" and "doing it for love" sounds like it's good idea on surface, and they don't think further into what means in their spesific situation. Like what it really means.
It's so easy to use words that you are used to hear "as an explanation" if you don't stop to explain to yourself what every word in your explanation to yourself really means.
I think it would take having to type that all out, piece by piece, in bullet point concrete examples, to realise that they are not "investing" and realise that instead they are putting stuff in in hopes that if they do "what everybody is doing" and do it right, they get their coin toss for happiness.
So well put!
My mother knows I don't want kids and she'll say shit like, "what if you meet a man that wants kids"? Then he obviously isn't the man for me mom!
And we’re gaslighted by being told this is women’s “natural submissiveness and agreeable nature”. Geeeeeet fucked.
Fr. I almost got tricked into transitioning into a man because I didn't fit the stereotype of a woman™. But nah, turns out women are autonomous people too.
You can probably tell I had a lot of internalized misogyny to overcome, because I really thought I was the "exception" lol (And perhaps even a little better than most men because I'd "earned" my personhood through trial and tribulation instead of being handed it on a silver platter). But now I know that no woman should have to go through what I did just to be considered a "person", and that being a woman in and of itself is worthy of visibility, respect, and praise.
And if we ever display a personality we're villified and violent suppressed. Every woman gets viciously hated for having a personality.
Women are expected to have four interests. Childcare, cooking, home maintenance and beauty. This is also why Christmas presents for women almost always fall into one of these four categories whether that's in line with the woman's actual interests or not.
“Yeah, I got a phenomenal job offer 3582 miles away but I declined, because of my girlfriends career is here and she‘s just the woman of my dreams. But you know what, it‘s totally fine, I didn’t need to move anyway and I wouldn‘t have it any other way“ would provoke such an reaction.
Not only would men call him a simp, predictably, but everyone, the men and the women, would be telling him to "talk it out" with his girlfriend and "mate are you for sure you wanna do that". They'd question the point of whole his relationship with her if he said that, rightfully.
With women doing the sacrificing, only the job offer gets questioned, not whole relationship. Not whether they "spoke it out". Women say stuff like that all the time and nobody says "did you speak that out with your boyfriend/husband, can you two for sure not figure it out" and it doesn't get given the "potential breakup" gravity.
People would assume the reason "it's not working out" aka reason he is sacrificing for girlfriend rather than other way around is because he simply didn't raise the topic or because she somehow didn't understand the importance of the career opportunity. They'd tell them to "work together" instead of just accepting he's staying because there is a girl there. He would be told they are "not compatible sorry buddy" as last resort if it turns out that yes they did speak and she had a mind of her own and is really not moving.
People frequently listen to women say exact same thing and nobody is there telling her to "talk with him about it once more".
Only once everyone was completely convinced that they have spoken it out multiple times on repeat would they ever let a man make equivalent choice, and they'd absolutely think she owes him her life in return for the sacrifice.
When woman does it "well, she is fine with it" and it's suddenly a mutual decision, an one time occasion of them "coming to an agreement" rather than sacrifice he owes anything in return for, and nobody requires remote proof that the relationship is for sure functional or that they for sure spoke it out.
I'm still trying to work out my life after years of NPCing.
This reminds me of prominent male celebrities with up-and-coming or highly talented wives who basically disappeared from the spotlight after marriage and/or having children with male celebrities.
I have a list of thousands of doctors across the US who will sterilize you if you’re 18.
My daughter got her tubes removed a year ago this month—in Texas—and she was 18, single and childfree.
Let me know if you want the list.
I lament and angrily mourn the things I’ve missed out on because of men. I mean, life changing opportunities, international travel, all for people that abused, cheated on me, etc. and for me to end up wanting to be alone anyways.
The only piece of advice I can give to any lurker or explorer is DONT WAIT - go 4b now! Every year I waited my life got worse and I sacrificed even more and became more traumatized by men. Start YOUNG - do not engage with men, I’m begging you!
Can I ask for some advice? Im sorry of this is a annoying thing to ask here (and this may have to do with me being in my 20s) Im worried with no relationship I am basically completely alone. All other women my age are partnered up and its their entire personality. No hobbies or independence. They only hang out with other couples. I have tried and tried but I cannot find other single women or at least women that do not revolve their life around their man 24/7 and hang out with only their man (and sometimes coupled friends) 24/7. After my one friend got a boyfriend I am basically completely alone and I can’t stand it. My therapist recommended getting a partner.. I know my quality of life would go down with a man but I feel so unwell having no one there.
That’s why the best thing you can do as a woman is to decenter men and live life for yourself. Most men live life selfishly, No wonder they want us to get out of the workforce and go back to the kitchen to be their bangmaids again because they want us to be NPCs in their lives and far away from having our own lives. You have abusive men who manipulate their girlfriends into believing that their friend is ruining their relationship and to drop all their friends because they know friends are more likely to point out when a relationship is abusive or just not right. The only way men can keep us wrapped around their fingers is by manipulating us lies. That’s why for some situations it’s not worth listening to them, we have to put ourselves first.
“But what if you meet a man who wants kids??”
I heard these exact words from my now former doctor. Who is a woman. Who is a Black woman (as am I). I was so pissed I said “forget that man and forget those kids!!”
Demanded a specialist. Got my Hyster a year later.
That's why as a bisexual I only dated women because who can be arsed with all that crap
I felt like who I really was disappeared a little every day after I married. I was miserable.
It's like those Western feminists who support Hamas. How delusional can you be?
This whole post is just one of the life lesson I learned this year. The others also revolve around patriarchy.
That's why women think they are not like the others because they have personality and hobbies