Introducing Dr Travis Stork, the author of Don’t Be That Girl, who is finally laying out all the [redacted]-girl-behaviour on the table and warning women everywhere: stop blaming the blokes and start looking within.
If you’ve never watched the television show The Bachelor, Stork was on the hit show in season eight.
During the show, he got to date 25 gorgeous women in the hope of finding “the one”. Yet, unlike all the other bachelors, Stork – an emergency physician – could not choose one to marry.
Nevertheless he learnt a valuable lesson out of it all which he’s keen to pass on to the women of the world.
“It may not actually be the man that’s at fault; it may be you,” he said. “He may not necessarily be afraid of commitment. He may only be afraid of a commitment with you.”
Wow, like we hadn’t heard that before. So what type of ‘girl’ shouldn’t you be?
SotBO: this assumes that you a) want to get married, b) want to have children/are able to have children, c) are interested in dating and marrying men, d) are cis, e) are prepared to believe that it’s all your fault and not because some men just need to grow up and stop behaving like strawchildren (i.e. children who don’t actually exist and who exhibit behaviour that most parents would not tolerate for long if at all).
Agenda Girl – Don’t be talking about getting married. Don’t want to waste years with someone who has no intentions of getting married, too bad it’s all your fault you aren’t married yet.
Yes Girl – Don’t automatically agree with everything he says. Don’t disagree with anything he says. Can’t you get anything right? No wonder it’s all your fault.
Drama Queen Girl
“Men don’t want to date Drama Queen Girl because you’re unreliable and, ultimately, exhausting,” says Stork. The solution? Stork suggests being quiet, talking only 30 per cent of the time and taking a month off from complaining about anything whatsoever. Yes, a month.
In fact, don’t talk more than “So tell me all about yourself” and the occassional “Oh! My goodness!”. We don’t want anyone to think you are obsessed with yourself or anything. Also, never complain ever because it’s all your fault anyway.
Bitter Girl – See all those men, you’ve just alienated them. It’s all your fault.
Insecure Girl – It’s all your fault men don’t like you because you are insecure.
Desperate Girl – Don’t be desperate. No wonder men don’t like you. It’s all your fault.
Working Girl
“Men don’t like being second to anything, and they don’t like being cancelled on for a last-minute meeting, or having pillow talk interrupted by your BlackBerry.”
Don’t even think about being successful. Men don’t like that. Don’t be a doormat. Men don’t like that. Simultaneously be everything he ever wanted, even the stuff he didn’t know he wanted, while being yourself, the yourself that he approves of. If you don’t it’s all your fault.
Lost Girl – Constantly in a relationship that you don’t like and then wondering why no one marries you. It’s all your fault.
The worst part is I’m not joking. This crap is a real book. Don’t be that girl who goes out with someone like this. You deserve better. And the author – will probably never realise that it is all his fault.
Categories: gender & feminism, media, relationships
96th Down Under Feminists Carnival 
DUFC #69 
Feminism needs more practice, less perfect 
The controversy in writing about your children 
Hoyden About Town 
*falls about laughing*
“Don’t buy that book”
Right up the alley of some of the advice in the article below (MAKE SURE you don’t bring that NASTY ‘man-like’ work persona home with you! Cook him some brownies and speak in a compliant high pitched voice) : http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/people/the-price-of-success-20110510-1egwe.html
Oh man, I….have no words. Just a weird mix of lolz and vomit.
I realise that wailing and gnashing of teeth may not be enough to express your woe at not landing this sage. I have some old garments you can rend if you like.
Yes it’s true, I’m really just Bitter Girl.
Best. description.ever.
Okay, I’ll do this bloke a swap: I won’t be “that girl” if he won’t be “that guy” – you know, the one who expects the ideal help-meet, the ideal housewife, the perfect mother, the flawless figure, the perfect face, and the ultimate in personalities which are interesting to him, all bundled up in the one person (whose father also owns a chain of breweries and distilleries to which she is the sole heiress). Sound fair?
Ignoring the obvious for just the second to probe at a more fundamental problem with the book at hand:
He was on a reality show and, despite having a near no-lose condition on his position in the game, he lost according to the rules, right? And now he thinks that people should listen to him talk about the extrapolation of that game to real life, especially about how his position in said game was made hard by the other players? Despite, again according to the game, the fact that the other players had to work to improve his impressions of them to win, where he had to just choose someone by the end of a season of the show to win?
What in the name of the nine hells?
As I said, the above ignores the complete and utter misogyny and misandry inherent in the book’s premise. Not to be all “what about the menz”, but it does seem to portray men as idiots who can’t deal with anything less than perfection in their partners at the same time that it expects that women aren’t really people. To sum up in one sentence: I didn’t know they made shit in book-shaped bricks.
@Medivh – Are you saying he hates himself? Perhaps he does. He certainly doesn’t seem to like women and maybe that is his ultimate problem – he can’t accept that he doesn’t like women so he is constantly looking for the perfect straw woman he does like.
Travis Stork is the only author credited on the book, so I guess the question is can a man be a misandrist, or does he just believe that every man thinks like him?
I think that a man can be a misandrist, as I’ve encountered plenty of misogynist women. Although, it’s not really equivalent as misogynist women have internalized society’s subordination of women, but a man’s misandry would have a different cause.
I like to cycle through all those girls on a monthly basis.
If my partner is lucky there is an overlap between desperate girl and drama queen girl and i pretty much just quote from othelia’s lines all day.
love it.
Existing Girl — The very fact of your existence prompts your man into an existential crisis. Is your own being really so important to you that you can’t give it up for the sake of his happiness?
Love it.
I am really happy to see that this rubbish has been turned into a book while so many talented female writers go unpublished. /sarcasm
Good call Beppie. Book buyers could save themselves the cost of the book and just read that instead. Almost makes you feel sorry for Stork (M.D. !), if it weren’t for the fact that this book is almost guaranteed to cause unhappiness and angst that wouldn’t have existed in the world otherwise.
@Mindy:
I really don’t know what to make of this sorry shadow of a man. His writing is certainly consistent with self-hatred with projection to the wider male population. It’s also consistent with arrested development somewhere around 13 years old. Further it seems consistent with someone who knows that they’re privileged and has decided to try to enhance that privilege.
None of it reads well, but “he hates himself” is probably the interpretation that paints Travis in the best light.
He certainly seems to have the whole projection thing going on. To answer ‘misandrist men?’: very definitely possible. There’s whole encyclopaedia to write about various combinations of societal messages leading to “does my penis make me a bad boy?”, to riff on Bill Hicks. As I said just above, though, I can’t really get a handle on what our “good” author’s mindset is.
TW intimate partner violence
I went to Amazon and read the preview. The first page gives an account of his meeting a patient in an emergency room, who eventually admits that her injuries are the result of intimate partner violence. And of course he immediately starts conjecturing about the woman’s personality flaws, describing her injuries as the ‘consequence’ of these flaws (losing “herself and her sense of confidence”). I knew it would be a trainwreck but seriously. Reprehensible.