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Depressed about my value to society.
LucyLucky
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Sorry - this post is going to seem bratty and entitled, but I really want to get it off my chest.
A few months ago I took a job with a mid tier (good, but not big 5) consulting company. I'm a junior management consultant. I have my MBA from a good university, and I'm on track to have a great career in this field. It's what I've always wanted to do, and I love it so far.
Except for one thing. The pay isn't bad, but it's not great. With rent, loans, payments etc I'm keeping above water comfortably. So what's wrong? While I was in graduate school I started doing some cam-work to help cover my costs. What convinced me was that I could make SO much more than waitressing or even TAing at my school. I ended up doing it pretty steadily for a couple of years. It wasn't too bad, but I hated the way it made me feel objectified. I wanted to shout out "You know I almost have my MBA?" Anyway, I kept going, telling myself that after I graduated I would never have to do it again.
Fast forward to now - when I work it out I make less manangement conslting than I did camming, once you take unpaid overtime and everything else into consideration. I know, I know, I will make more money as I progress, but I really resent that what society values most about me is not my skills in real things that actually add value, but taking my clothes off.
It sucks. I don't want to spend my time resenting this until I start making more in my career than I used to, but I find it's constantly on my mind.
A few months ago I took a job with a mid tier (good, but not big 5) consulting company. I'm a junior management consultant. I have my MBA from a good university, and I'm on track to have a great career in this field. It's what I've always wanted to do, and I love it so far.
Except for one thing. The pay isn't bad, but it's not great. With rent, loans, payments etc I'm keeping above water comfortably. So what's wrong? While I was in graduate school I started doing some cam-work to help cover my costs. What convinced me was that I could make SO much more than waitressing or even TAing at my school. I ended up doing it pretty steadily for a couple of years. It wasn't too bad, but I hated the way it made me feel objectified. I wanted to shout out "You know I almost have my MBA?" Anyway, I kept going, telling myself that after I graduated I would never have to do it again.
Fast forward to now - when I work it out I make less manangement conslting than I did camming, once you take unpaid overtime and everything else into consideration. I know, I know, I will make more money as I progress, but I really resent that what society values most about me is not my skills in real things that actually add value, but taking my clothes off.
It sucks. I don't want to spend my time resenting this until I start making more in my career than I used to, but I find it's constantly on my mind.
LucyLucky on
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High end strippers and prostitutes (for lack of a better thing to compare camming to) can make good easy money too. It's not a career. Also healthcare benefits are a big deal, so is stability. There's also not a damn thing wrong with being sexy or naked or making money off of it, as long as you respect yourself.
You're an MBA, you should know that profit isn't the only measure of value. No more than its a measure of goodness or happiness.
Do what you want. Just do it for the right personal reasons. Money is nice, but if you love your job you are in an astonishingly rare position. I don't know many people who can say that.
Edit: You're also in the "real world" now. Give yourself a bit of time to adjust. Thinking about the future when you're young and then suddenly existing in it is a hard transition.
Also enjoy being young, mildly fucked up and conflicted. You only get to be all three at the same time for a few years.
Edit:
Wasn't implying anything by using the stripper/prostitute thing beyond how lucrative marketing sex or sexiness can be for a period of time if you have regular work. I apologize.
When it comes to camming. Yeah. It's going to pay well. The supply is fair, but the demand is even greater. That's just how it is given the current nature of society. A lot of women won't do it given the social stigma and...well, the objectification. For most people it's not very pleasant work (while some people love it. It all depends on what makes you tick).
Most other well paid jobs will have some kind of drawback that keeps people from going into the business. To most people for example Accounting is TO MURDER YOUR OWN SOUL AND SENSE OF FUN, yet every business needs (and is required to have independent) accountants and as such senior accountants are very well paid.
So. Forget about the money. Unlike Camming it feels like you feel that the job gives you what a job should from the Needs pyramid. Enough money to cover the two lowers rungs (physiological needs and safety) and it sounds like you enjoy it so it probably fulfills your work-related self-actualization needs. Yes. Feeling that your job is well paid definitely helps in the self-esteem portion, but if I felt that money determined my worth in society my self-esteem would be in the drain (I work in the public sector atm, with kids in primary school age. It barely covers the bills atm.). I feel that my work is important for so many other reasons though and I'm appreciated by my coworkers, my friends are encouraging and I've never been very focused on money.
tl;dr; Where society is willing to spend its money would depress anyone but Gordon Gecko. Do not pay attention to it. If you need to feel valued it's almost meaningless to seek it from some sort of abstract entity like "economics" or "society".
If you want to feel like people value what you do and who you are you need to find it among your friends, co-workers and people you interact with. Those are the people that can get to know you, not "Worker No 1511141356. Education rating: MBA".
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
It colors my relationships with men, when I walk into a room in a professional context, or even meet male friends, I wonder what they are really thinking, because I have this insight into what a lot of men are thinking about me through camming. I have this real fear that the respect I get is all a kind of a sham - like they know they are supposed to respect me, and they pretend to, but really they just want to objectify me.
Dispatch - yes. You're probably right too.
I think it's important to remember that what men are thinking and saying while watching a cam show, is a far cry from what they are thinking in a personal/professional setting. It isn't a true representation of how men actually feel or think about you as a person.
And as far as value for your professional work compared to your cam work, you should keep in mind the cost going into benefits and other things the company pays for/supplies on your behalf. I imagine your current compensation evens out or surpasses that of you cam work. Not to mention that the pay for your current job was probably set before they even met you to interview for the job and would have been similar regardless of if you were a female or male.
I wish I could be sure about that. Some conversations I have had with men (both camming and with friends) sometimes make me doubt that.
You're in the unique position to have a period of time in your life that gave you a (presumably) kind of fucked up window into peoples fantasies. That should provide an internal chuckle once in a while.
All the strange insecurity and acute self awareness that comes with interacting with other people is shared. Society on a macro level is just a bunch of vaguely narcissistic insecure people agreeing to obey the social contract and pretend they know what the fuck they're saying and doing.
You can use your stable job and wage as a foundation for your life that grants you the means to help others if you feel like doing more. I'd still probably hit up a therapist though.
Edit: You will definitely still have strange interactions with males and females alike though. I guarantee it... which is great because strange is okay sometimes.
Well. I guess that Camming is very much a realization of peoples fantasies. That's what they pay for. As such you're likely to get a very "Me me me" version of your audience. An audience that doesn't care about you or your personality other than as a sexual fantasy. A version of them that's much closer to their inner Id (to get all Freudian), than what you'd meet if you met them socially. It's quite possible to meet people (read "jerks") who are even in normal life living as if everyone else exists to gratify them, people who so lacking in empathy that they feel that if they do something nice for you, then you owe them...or whatever. Like you don't really exist as an individual. Toxic masculinity at its worst (See the feminist discussions on "Virgin, Mother, Whore").
In my experience though that's not the norm, at least not among younger well-educated people (the majority of my acquaintances).
Yes. A guy you meet might have sexual fantasies about you. We all have fantasies, even about co-workers and friends. Especially about co-workers and friends. Sometimes those fantasies colour the relationship we have with others (and that can be positive or negative). However, friendship can't be based on physical attraction alone. Real friendship is about enjoying each others company, and to do that you have to respect each other. Even meaningless socialization has to be based on respect in the long run. In the short run we can keep up the masquerade, show our friendly faces around other people because we desire something from them, something else. In the long run we can really only be nice because we want to be, because we respect people.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
There's what's socially expected, and what's ethically right, and then there's what men really think and feel on a gut level. When I interact with women I defintitly try to respect them as real people, but there is a big part of me that just sees them as potential mates and sexually desirable objects.
I know that's not the right way to behave, so I do my best to keep that to myself, and I would never say that to a woman. I'd lie and tell her that 'of course I respect you for your skills and personality'. And yes, those things matter, but when I'm in a meeting my mind always wanders to what each woman would look like naked. Even the unatractive ones.
I find myself daydreaming about ranking them in order of hotness, those kinds of things. When I'm listening to them talk I'm usually thinking about whether they give good head.
It's not that I'm a monster, it's just that that's how men are wired. What you saw camming is what men are thinking all the time. The good ones work hard to hide and try to overcome it, but it's there in everyone.
The rest of it is unhealthy.
But it's cool - we most of us try to behave the way we know we should - not the way our biology wants us to.
It's definitely not a healthy way to interact with 50% of the population. Not all men are prisoners of their own dicks.
Edit: No point in specifics.
Article.
I bet you could find a community somewhere that has other people going through similar stuff. Or start one.
You know, I realize this is all in the eye of the beholder, but I'm not particularly attractive. I don't mean that in a low-self-esteem way, I just have a fairly realistic view of how attractive I am. I'm not ugly, I'm HWP, but I'm not a beauty queen or a cheerleader. What camming taught me is that it doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter what I wear, it doesn't matter what the lighting is like. It doesn't matter if I do my hair or put on makeup. What matters is that I do what men tell me to do and let myself be objectified and degraded.
I want to believe most people on this thread, but deep down I'm terrified that JackJohnson is right. I find it hard to trust men, especially when, contrary to what most of them think, women do notice when they are checking out body parts instead of making eye contact.
You're exactly the kind of douche I am worried ever day that I will have to deal with.
Thank you, but I'm firmly exempt.
Thank you - that article was great, if not quite my expereince.
To be fair, lots of women without your experiences worry about people like that. It's a reasonably common concern. Going by every old cop movie where a woman joins the force... or Anchor Man.
Which is pretty much what I worry about. I know you're joking, but I worry there's a reason for those stereotypes and tropes.
Twenty five years ago, this summer, I graduated with a Bachelors. My very first job after graduation? Pumping gas at a Chevron station. Way to use my diploma, eh?
And yes, I went through similar moods and doubts. Why had I even bothered to get a degree, if I was going to "waste" it on a service job with bad pay and hours? It was enough to live on, considering my modest post-student lifestyle, but not very fulfilling, being a well-educated cashier, window-wiper and occasional flat-changer. Sometimes just putting on the uniform sent me into a funk.
My own story has, if not a happy ending ('cause nothing ever ends), a better next chapter. A year later, I managed to leverage my various other skills into getting an office/secretarial job - entry-level, sure, but white collar work, better hours, better pay, for a great boss. It wasn't in a field directly related to my degree, but that was okay; that piece of paper helped me get my foot in the door, showing that, e.g., I could stick with something for four years, and it helped me in other little ways I hadn't considered at the time. And during my time (a dozen years, as it turned out) in that position, I like to think I helped many other people get their own business done and affairs sorted; I'm still proud of that.
I hope you're able to find something that pays the bills and also makes you feel good about yourself.
While it's easy to get hung up on society's ills, the truth is there's many more things that are more "valued" by society than an advanced degree, not just sex. Ask anyone who has a passion for X but does Y to uphold their standard of living. Society says mostly shitty things as a whole. If its getting you down, talking it out regularly with someone is probably going to be the best for working through it.
Maybe it helps if you think about it this way.
You should also keep in mind, that your former customers are not representative of men as a whole. I am absolutely sure that most guys do not pay for cam services, just like most guys do not hire prostitutes.
But society is not saying this. There is a demand, certainly, but it is shared by a narrow margin of society distributed across the entire planet. Supplying that demand may pay well, but just because there is value in your sexuality does not mean men see that as the extent of your worth; or even majority share. So too may a beverage kiosk in an airport clear more in a month than than a kindergarten teacher does all year; but Society does not value the former over the latter. Not by far. Even if that teacher owned that kiosk, parents would not cease to appreciate her efforts shaping our youth, even though the thirsty travelers may never take the time to care what she did when she wasn't hawking over-priced soft drinks.
And now I'm going to hit eject on that analogy before I get sucked into it any further and forget what thread this even is.
You don't cease to exist because some blind assholes don't see you for who you are; and you do society, but mostly yourself, a diservice to assume they speak for us all.
You're going to have to be dealing with him pretty soon since it looks like y'all are using the same computer.
Setting that aside, I'm actually just trying to be honest. I'm a feminist as much as the next person. I believe that as members of society we have to work to overcome our animal instincts, but also that it doesn't help to pretend they don't exist.
Think about the phrase 'women and children first'. It's one illustration of the reality that we value women and children differently than men. We value children because they express our genes in the next generation, and we value women for their reproductive and sexual capacity. It is 'scarce' in the sense that bearing children is a big investment of time and resources. Conversely, men's contribution to this is not scarce, but their role as provider and protector (a bigger investment) is. That's the biological background that we're dealing with.
Now in modern society we aspire to treat everyone equally, to give both women and men the opportunity to express their potential in every area of endeavor. That's great - I'm on board with it, but I'm also a creature of my biology. When I see a woman in a meeting I have to work to think of her as a capable professional, not just as a potential mate.
Your value to society is inherent in your reproductive and sexual capacity - that's what you're experiencing camming. Men's value must be earned. That's what you're experiencing in the workplace.
Well this thread just got extra fascinating