Titanic

In 1912, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater boards the Titanic in Southampton with her wealthy fiancé, Cal Hockley, and her mother, Ruth. Rose is unhappy in the loveless engagement, but Ruth stresses that the marriage will resolve their financial problems. 

But marriage is never a polite form of prostitution. Her own MOTHER is pimping her out for money.

She tells the Keldysh crew that Jack saved her in every possible way...Later, as she lies in her bed, photographs on her dresser depict a life of freedom and adventure inspired by Jack.

In this movie, Jack Dawson broke a lot of rules and taught Rose how to spit so she could spit in someone's face and gave her a lot of instructions for how to get things done that an upper class lady wasn't supposed to know.

In that detail, the movie is similar to Out of Africa which I wrote about previously, where a woman is taught how to live by her illicit lover because he's not looking for a personal servant called a wife. Unlike Titanic, Out of Africa is based on true events. 

Jacques Mattheij served a similar role in my life, unfortunately unlike Jack Dawson and Denys Finch Hatton, he didn't die. He still lives and may still be imagining he will eventually marry me and make me his personal servant and bauble on his arm.

I grew because of knowing him. There's no reason to believe he grew because of knowing me and there's no reason to believe I will ever meet a man who genuinely wants a partnership of equals.

I've written multiple posts about this: Men are excited that I have agency like a man and I'm smart and opinionated like they are or whatever and then wish to promptly break me and turn me into the obedient little wifey exactly like all the other women they resented before me.

They don't WANT to give up male privilege in their personal life. They don't WANT to stop being in charge in the marriage because they have the money.

And I have come to believe this is probably a root cause of my ongoing financial problems: A wealthy man who treated me in some ways like a man, but probably has been actively sabotaging me online and he has substantial reach.

I believe he's not the only man to have done this to me. I believe Dan Tasman, owner of Cyburbia, has likely also poisoned the well for me quietly in urban planning circles because he was attracted to me and unwilling to pursue the relationship for reasons never explained to me.

At one time, I would have been willing to talk with Dan Tasman and see if it led to a relationship. I put up with a lot from him because I had children with social challenges and he played up painting himself as being like my children and not good at the social thing. 

I no longer believe that is the explanation for how that went. I believe he was attracted to me and didn't want to get involved, so he was intentionally and asshole to me. And then he had public reputation in planning and I did not and I wouldn't know and couldn't prove if he was having private conversations with people dragging me and not admitting it's because he's got issues and finds me attractive and didn't want to work it out and apparently sees that as sufficient reason to materially harm me career wise.

Most gatekeepers are male. They tend to be very competent people and find competent women attractive, and then the only role they want to give her is little wifey.

It actively closed doors for women and I seem unable to escape the scorched earth policy these men have had for dealing with a woman they found attractive and chose to not pursue. It's not because I rejected them out of hand.

When I worked at Aflac, in five years of working there, only one person knew what GIS was without me explaining it. He was a senior programmer and he asked me for a date.

He didn't wonder what use my unusual technical skills might be to the company, not what my goals for my future might be in terms of career. He didn't know I was extremely ill and celibate for medical reasons, so not looking for a man. I was looking to further my career.

If Jacques Mattheij had died at some point, perhaps I could have salvaged my relationship to Hacker News. But he didn't and I have no means to prove he's the fly in the ointment there, poisoning the well.

It's aggravating to conclude that after all these years of trying to protect him. I did so because I have ethics and out of enlightened self interest, not because I was imagining this might be true love.

I felt strongly that he was a critical factor in my ability to get something out of Hacker News. I felt strongly that if I accused him of being a problem for me, at best other men would have been happy to burn him and run him off and pretend that solved my problem and then most likely continue stepping over my body in the gutter and gaslighting me about how you can't make money online.

I didn't feel it would give me the income I needed. I felt he would become a scapegoat that got blamed for the bad behavior of EVERYONE on the forum so they could pretend they weren't ALL misogynistic assholes clearly mistreating a prominent member because of her gender.

I felt that allowing them to scapegoat him would make my problems WORSE, not better. It would seal my doom.

It seems not scapegoating him has had the exact same outcome via a different path. My relationship to Hacker News is DEAD and apparently never had ANY hope of becoming what I wanted it to be, which it is for many men.

The book Seeing Like A State talks about a principle of learning limits by failing. It says instructions like "Heat the oil to just before the smoke point." implicitly assume you've previously overdone it or you wouldn't be able to recognize when it's just before the smoke point.

As a parent, trying to help my kids find their limits without literally or metaphorically slamming into a wall at a hundred miles an hour has been a large part of my process for helping two twice exceptional kids become functional adults. 

Not being clear what those limits are means you are at high risk of leaving money on the table -- of being too conservative and not getting as much value as you could -- and also crashing and burning because you don't know when to quit.

I don't know how women can figure out how it really works and then actually get it done when the problem seems to boil down to hell is other people.

I still don't think the solution is to run around screaming about men being misogynists and that's why you won't promote me.