Why Do Women Protect Themselves but Fail to See That a Country Needs to Do the Same?

I am a woman in my mid-30s. I have experienced first-hand the booming trend of women empowering themselves through various kinds of therapy, counselling, coaching and other support groups and training on how to be your ‘best self’ and not let others walk all over you. I have worked in mental health settings and I have taken part in a lot of women-oriented coaching myself. I will not name the providers I did this with as I suspect they would not appreciate being associated with some of the views I am about to express.

What baffles me, and is the main point of this opinion piece, is that the same women who worked hard on recognising and enforcing their own boundaries, conserving their energy and resources for things that are important to them by saying ‘no’ to things that do not serve them and their aims, fail to see the parallel between this and a state’s need to enforce its borders and protect its resources by refusing what doesn’t serve it and its people. To me this parallel is obvious and the comparison doesn’t feel laborious to make, yet I haven’t noticed it alluded to in any of the coaching circles I am a part of.

Let’s break down some of the key concepts I’ve learnt through this women-centred coaching. The main one is, without question, the concept of boundaries – recognising the need for, setting, enforcing, revising, recognising consequences of them being broken and imparting consequences on those breaking them. Boundaries are a real buzzword in the coaching and therapeutic circles, and for good reason. When done correctly boundaries allow us to guard what is important to us and not let anyone walk all over us, communicate our needs clearly and recognise when it is time to cut someone out of our lives for repeatedly disrespecting us. They protect us. They make sense. I am a big fan of boundaries.

Borders are boundaries by definition. Why do the same people who have spent time to learn and personally apply so much about boundaries fail to join the dots on this one? Borders are needed to protect those within them. They allow us to clearly communicate where our home is. They allow us to set rules and laws within them, as well as let others know beyond which point on the map they need to obey these laws. They allow us to let in what serves the country, and keep out what endangers it. In theory at least, not in today’s Britain but one can hope. But why is enforcing boundaries seen by many women as undesirable for our country when they firmly accept it to be right for themselves as individuals?

Another concept I am quite fond of, and that is top priority in much of the training, is managing your energy and where you place it. This asks women to differentiate – in other words, discriminate – between different people and separate them into groups, not based on their overall quality as human beings, which would be a separate debate in itself, but in their importance to us specifically. This differentiation is directly connected to what resources and energy we then spend on the people.

My favourite model separates everyone into three groups: those in the Inner Circle, those in the Outer Circle and The Rest. The Inner Circle is a very small one, often comprising children and a spouse, maybe a sibling or a friend or a parent. These are the people on whom we spend resources even when our own are depleted – we might take a second mortgage to financially support our child, or look after our spouse when ill even when we feel knackered and beyond the edge ourselves. The Outer Circle is the people on whom we spend resources when we have them, often most of the people we are somewhat connected with. People that, if we reject them, we do so politely and make sure they know we are open to say yes when we have resources to spare. No, I will not participate in voluntary bake sale this year as I have a lot on my plate, but I might next one; yes, let me help you look after your dog while you are away, I have nothing on that weekend so I don’t mind.

The Rest are the people who are not connected to our life and bear no importance on it. We do not spend any resources on them and say ‘no’ without needing to justify ourselves. Those people knocking on your door asking to talk to you about their charity? No thanks. No need to let them give you a whole lecture on a cause of their choice with the inevitable push for your donations. No need to explain you are completely capable of choosing whom to support with your finances without their help. Just no and be done with it. It doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with them as people, it means that they hold no value specifically in your life and you have better things to do with your time and resources.

Why can this differentiation not be applied to those people coming in this country? Why are we assigning more resources to The Outer Circle and even more to The Rest, such as illegal migrants? The national debt is staggering, economic prospects dire, housing is beyond stretched and NHS appointments are like gold dust. So why are so many women who go through this coaching more comfortable to protect their resources and send packing people who are not important in their own lives, but would shout down their own brother if he said that maybe we should spend our resources such as social housing and NHS appointments on local people first and send illegal immigrants away?

The next concept, just as applicable, comes from a subgroup of women’s coaching specifically aimed at mums of younger kids. It is a concept of family or house rules. It tends to be your usual ‘use gentle hands, kind words, keep our body parts to ourselves’ sort of thing, usually prefaced by ‘In this house, we…’ and placed in a more or less ornate version onto the fridge, or maybe framed on the wall. These are the laws of this household: if we break them there will be consequences. Importantly, visitors who break them are not invited back, and we will think thrice before letting our kids anywhere near them or their families. Why are these rules hard and fast in our homes, but we forgive those who break the country’s rules, call any attempt to remove them racist, and applaud the opportunity of our children to be able to experience ‘diverse viewpoints’ even when these break our basic safety-ensuring rules? I want my child to have many diverse experiences, too; being stabbed or raped are not on that list, though.

There are further concepts in women’s coaching communities where I can draw these parallels. I will mention just a couple more so that anyone who finds this thought-provoking may have something more to consider.  

We are highly encouraged to monitor what we put in our bodies in order to look after them well and stop putting in what does us harm, such as sugar or smoke. Should a country not do the same with its immigration? We are encouraged to get financially literate and to delegate a part of our income to a charitable cause of our choosing – but crucially only once we are out of debt. Shouldn’t we as a country do the same, and say ‘no, thanks’ to foreign aid and upkeep of innumerable immigrants not contributing to our economy while the country is in a massive debt and cost of living for British people continues to soar?

Finally, worryingly, women are encouraged to limit how much we read the news and what we read as to not distress ourselves and protect our mental health. I am all for looking after our mental health, and while your child is crying in distress is not the time for you to read the news; but as a general advice it may just go and explain why there is sore lack of questioning the main narrative in so many women’s lives. I acknowledge that the push for this is somewhat overexaggerated on my part, and there are situations of really poor mental health where this makes sense. But I certainly have been advised through more than one coaching provider to limit my news intake, while not once being warned it may result in me not being aware of key issues and perspectives and may limit my ability to analyse situations critically and establish my own viewpoint. My issue was that it was making me anxious – but since at no point did reading the news stopped me from functioning, I do question how many women are advised to protect not even their mental health but their mental comfort, resulting with the sanctioned narrative being even more protected.

It often seems like having to deal with someone with a ‘universally condemned’ view point (i.e., someone with Right-wing views) is causing such a mental distress that one cannot use one’s faculties well enough to actually pause and think critically, and not jump to vilification and rejection so as to maintain status quo. Don’t get me wrong, it took me a while to get there, too; I was a convinced Leftie not as long ago as I would like to admit. But I have aged, and I have kept my eyes open, and eventually the sheer amount of things that just did not fit the approved narrative was too strong to resist. Many of the women I think of when writing this have more years and life experience than me, yet they seem unable to accept that there may be an alternative that is also valid.

Let me give you an example. In my previous role in a mental health setting my colleague once expressed significant difficulties in supporting a client who was a Donald Trump supporter, purely for this reason. She has been able to support them professionally but was quite literally shaking and struggling with this mentally afterwards. The irony was, this person’s mental health difficulties stemmed from isolation, because they lost all their friends after telling them that they were a Donald Trump supporter. I really feel for them, and admit they were braver than I was at the time. I have many a reservation about Donald Trump, but between him and Kamala Harris I fully believe the better person won. I have not told my friends, and live comfortably with them assuming that I conform to their view in which every sane person must hate Trump and everything he ever does.

This example has a happy ending. This specific colleague eventually, through a lot of introspection and support from her husband, came to realise that, with so many people voting for Donald Trump, it is unlikely that they are all evil or idiots. Subsequently she has been able to open up her mind and not be so rattled by conversing with and supporting people of differing opinions, even though she remains of the Left of the political spectrum. I applaud her nonetheless; she is the only one of many women I met who was able to somewhat significantly shift her viewpoint without being forced to by personal circumstances.

That is not to say that I hold any contempt for all the other women in my life who for now remain firm Lefties, even those who have seamlessly shifted their support to Zack Polanski. Every now and then I am baffled by a very Leftie comment – for example: “I have moral difficulties with reading The Hallmarked Man because, of, you know, who the author is,” from a woman with her own difficulties stemming from being judged by males in her surroundings at earlier age. I just don’t see how so many smart, intelligent, educated, and to me generally impressive women fail to draw the parallels I have described above, and keep doubling down on the notion that anyone holding Right-wing views on migration or gender identity must be evil or uneducated or both. But then again, I keep finding myself realising every now and then how wrong I was about something I was adamant about, to the great albeit sad entertainment of my other half who is usually already there. So, I cannot judge those at earlier stages of the same journey, when I am nowhere near the end myself.

Marianne Bennet is a pseudonym.