In Praise of Difficult Women

In Ireland, where I live, there’s a word used to describe difficult, crotchety or hard-to-like women. They are referred to as wagons. It’s meant to be an insult, but I love it. It encapsulates the tough, unyielding, give-no-fucks swagger that difficult women have.

The world needs more of that right now.

A wagon, generally speaking, is not a young woman, nor is she a Karen. She doesn’t get her nose out of joint over small rule infractions and run to the nearest authority. She IS the nearest authority. Do not cross her.

When I see what passes for female empowerment these days, I alternate between anger, horror and derision. Contemporary femininity is portrayed in exaggerated and contradictory poses of sexual aggression or powerlessness. Worse still is the fawning mother who grovels for her children’s approval and respect. These stereotypes are unrecognisable to me. Perhaps that’s because I was raised among and by difficult women, and I’m the better for it.

Last week I finished a biography of Golda Meir, which is how I found my renewed appreciation for the ball-busting crones the Irish call wagons. Because Meir was 100 percent wagon. 

One of her colleagues described her thusly: “When she was not displeased, she was …. the queen. When she was annoyed, she turned into…the hag. When she became angry, she became…the witch.” 

As a young woman, Golda was never beautiful, but always headstrong, refusing any compromise — even with her long-suffering, faithful husband. As an old woman, she subsisted largely on cigarettes, coffee and rancour. She is described in her biography as sarcastic, blunt, intolerant, strong, and overbearing.

Meir’s life story and her geopolitical significance are extraordinary, but she also serves as a needed reminder to contemporary women in the English speaking world of two important things that we seem to have forgotten: 1) being “nice” or “kind” should not be the ultimate virtue of womanhood; 2) that great achievements life require huge — sometimes unbearable — sacrifice. What Golda achieved for her country cost her a happy family life, and her single-minded obstinacy and vindictive streak made her many enemies. These two things contributed to a mostly solitary existence at the end of her life, grandmother to her people but less so to her actual grandchildren. Never once did her biographer quote her as fretting over work-life balance.

My fondness and admiration for difficult women is personal, not political. It stretches back to my childhood, growing up in an extended family that could be described without exaggeration as a matriarchy. I grew up with a mother who lived life exactly on her own terms and never shied away from stating a controversial opinion or offending sensibilities. Her entire moral code could be summed up with one phrase: never bow down to anyone. One of seven daughters, all of whom are opinionated, contrary, mouthy and feisty, my mother’s family gatherings when all seven women were together in the same room were raucous, bawdy, often argumentative affairs — and to outsiders, slightly overwhelming. The love was palpable, but so was the fierceness. This, I now realise, was a huge gift. It’s an inheritance far more valuable than money.

One of the most frustrating things about our current perception of strong women is that they are so often conflated with feminists — or even worse, their existence is seen as a result of feminism. 

But nothing could be further from the truth. As my mother often says: “scratch a feminist, find a doormat.” 

Feminism, with its myopic focus on the patriarchy and male oppression, misses almost everything that is significant about the male-female power dynamic. Feminism blames men (and men’s creation, capitalism) without ever asking its adherents to recognise women’s power over men and the huge influence women have in society. By denigrating domesticity, feminists skip over the universal human experience of female wisdom and power and pretend it never existed, except perhaps in pre-modern indigenous tribes. In these ways, feminists end up sounding to me like sheltered, WASP-y teens who have yet to walk through the fires of life or encounter women from outside the bourgeoisie.

It is because feminism is a fundamentally adolescent form of rebellion that it will never be able to fully express, or even acknowledge, what a woman’s power really is. 

Difficult women, however, innately understand women’s power. As Abraham Harmon, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said of Meir: “Golda knew what power was and how to wield it.” 

No surprise that Meir was deeply skeptical of, or downright hostile to, the women’s lib movement.

“What do they have to be liberated from?” she asked. “Are they bored?”

As her biographer put it, “Golda enjoyed traditional femininity too much to identify with feminism.”

It’s important to acknowledge that difficult women, by definition, cause problems for those around them and can, of course, be hurtful in their words and actions. But their opposites — meek or deferential women, let’s call them — also do harm. They fail to protect themselves, they fail to push back when pushback is required, and by not seizing their own autonomy with some force, they create an individual power vacuum around themselves which allows the possibility of abuse being meted out to them, or those in their care. While I strive for balance in all things, if I am forced to chose, I personally would rather be too tough than too soft. 

There are many facets of the female experience, and of course our experiences change with age. The power a 25-year-old woman has is not the same as the power a grandmother has. But each stage of life brings with it a new set of challenges to overcome, and difficult women have one powerful weapon in their arsenal — a strong mind. 

If you were raised by a woman with a strong mind, chances are you will be ok, whatever other obstacles or misfortunes life throws your way. A mother with a strong mind is probably one of the most formidable forces in the universe.

That formidable force is epitomised in the viral sensation Tatiana Ibrahim, who, as I mentioned last week, took the Internet by storm after upbraiding her local school board. The look she gave the board when they tried to chastise her is universally recognised as the “don’t you try to pull that shit with me, buddy” look given by strong moms everywhere.

She followed up her tour de force performance at the school board with a rousing speech to her friends at her local bar, posted on Facebook, after a week in which she suddenly got famous and therefore understandably needed to grab a few drinks. She once again condemned the local government employees for teaching children cops are bad and dangerous and “to spit on them.” (If you think she’s being hyperbolic I encourage you watch this video.)

She pointed out that despite all the protestations for tolerance among the progressive left/wokerati, “it only works one way with these people.”

This, to me, is the heart of the matter, and why we require more difficult women. Because woke culture weaponises kindness and tolerance. It perverts the idea of equality and demands submission to its perversion. It hijacks the natural human need to be liked and approved of by our peers.

So it takes a special kind of person to have the courage to stand up and tell the world they won’t be cowed by false kindness, false tolerance and false equality. It takes a person who ultimately is ok with being portrayed as all the worst things that our society condemns. A person who, when the chips are down, doesn’t really give a shit if you like her or not. 

In other words, it takes a difficult woman.