When I went back to my high school last year to talk to prospective applicants, the number one thing I was asked was: “Are all your conversations, like, really smart?” And I felt a slight sense of shame to admit that they weren’t. I recognise that it’s pretentious to want to discuss philosophy at brunch or the political and economic state of the world right now in the queue for the club, but I do sometimes lament the extent to which my conversations are filled with gossip – and it’s almost always gossip about boys.
So a few weeks ago, when I came across creator cc’s thoughts on TikTok, who had captioned her video: “POV: trying to make plans with the friend that decentered men”, I stopped and paid attention. It featured a presentation of successive, slightly outlandish activities. “Sorry, I can’t hang out today”, she announces: “I’m working a NASCAR race.” Or she would be studying Spanish in Mexico, or being a seatfiller at the VMAs, or doing a matcha workshop, or going to the outdoor library, or working as a TV extra.
Carmin is not the first to use the term ‘decentering men’, and as an amateur internet sociologist, I will take it upon myself to try to define it for you. As I understand it, to decentre men is to construct an ascetic resistance to the parameters of your own thoughts. To recognise a masochistic obsession with the male gender, and to focus on yourself, with force. To denounce men is not to completely reject romance, or develop cynicism regarding love; it is simply to carve out time where those things don’t consume you. To resist the temptation to obsess over being perceived. To reclaim solitude, or time with friends, as a space for reflection, and not for courtroom-grade crush interaction cross-analysis.
Far be it from my job to tell you how to live your life, but in my opinion, such a mindset can hardly be a bad thing. I was lucky enough to be able to talk to the account owner, Carmin, about her content, and we discussed the benefits of taking time for yourself in this way (though, perhaps, less extravagantly) in order to reinforce your sense of self outside of your relationships with men: “A lot of people are afraid to spend time by themselves but, because of that, they’re missing out on things that would have otherwise in some capacity, and the majority of us have concrete plans for the future, or at the very least a concrete desire to do something meaningful, whatever that may look like. been great experiences.”
I pointed out that almost all of the activities which she showcases on her account involve taking part in some kind of in-person activity. Carmin believes that this is key to widening your outlook: “There’s no substitute for putting yourself out there and trying new things IRL”. Here, then, is a tangible step to be able to take in Oxford. Although Carmin definitely takes the cake when it comes to adventure, there’s so much that you can do in Oxford on your own to try to tap into your own sense of independent free spiritedness.
“It’s like you’re charging different parts of yourself, when I’m by myself I can have that time to reflect.” When considering this more closely, the challenge then is not to not let men invade these reflective spaces. Even taking a walk has been appropriated through a lens of desirability. Your ‘hot girl walks’ score negatively on the Bechdel test, and you should be honest with yourself about it. Social life has become cloaked in this strange level of self-denial. You’re not going to the club ‘to dance with your friends’ if you spend the whole time constantly looking over your shoulder at the men around you, and that’s ok! But so is a night in where no one desires you.
Although the term ‘decentering’ is a modern one, or one that seems to have gained popularity on digital platforms at least, it has roots in centuries’ worth of feminist ideology. The problem that this phenomenon seems to attempt to tackle is similar to the one that De Beauvoir identified in 1949: “Defined to the sphere of the relative, destined to the male since her infancy, accustomed to seeing him as a sovereign whom she cannot hope to equal, the woman, who has not stifled her claim to be human, will dream of overcoming herself by uniting with one of these sovereign beings” (translation my own).
Betty Friedan continued this feminist psychoanalysis by trying to draw attention to “the problem with no name” – an inexpressible dissatisfaction with a life lived revolving around men. But when I picked up a copy of The Feminine Mystique, I was struck by how different the modern picture really is. Friedan explains that when she interviewed seniors at Smith Women’s College (at some point before 1963), she observed that “many of us could not see ourselves beyond the age of twenty-one”. I don’t think this is true today. I think almost every woman at Oxford does want to use her education in some capacity, and the majority of us have concrete plans for the future, or at the very least a concrete desire to do something meaningful, whatever that may look like.
The problem no longer lies in the disruption of aspirations, but in the suppression of the means to achieve them. The obfuscation of the end goal and the onset of a certain kind of oxymoronic mania sees a brilliant woman concern herself with whether or not her tits look good while she sits in the library, pushing the limits of her field. We are not Friedan’s prospective trapped housewives. The modern “feminine mystique” is such that women need to be simultaneously ambitious and desirable, that we pursue greatness but without relinquishing the need to be looked at while doing it.
Oxford is a city filled with the smartest girls hand-picked from all around the world for their genius, and who pursued their best interest so ferociously that they managed to gain admission through sheer hard work.
The women of Oxford conduct ground breaking research, translate in and out of dozens of languages, and consider books in ways that no one ever has before. We wake up at 6am to play sports, we volunteer to give back to the city, we write, we dance, and we sing. Are you really going to look me in the eye and tell me that the floppy-haired boy in hall is the most important thing in the world to you right now?
