The seeming passivity of women in the process of rewriting social norms to the exclusive benefit of women is what is throwing Sunshine Mary off. She can easily test this by coaching one of the boys to suggest that the girls show some reciprocal form of deference to the boys during a future celebration. Perhaps the girls should serve the boys refreshments during their next celebration, as Anonymous Reader suggested:The artificial and non-accidental nature of the female imperative is inadvertently revealed by female attempts to police it, quite often with the help of their usual white knights. What I want to point out in particular is the way that emotion, particularly anger, is the most reliable weapon in the male arsenal; an angry woman can almost always be provoked into volunteering unsolicited the sort of secrets she would otherwise endure torture to avoid revealing. This isn't a new revelation; Agatha Christie even mentioned it in one of her Poirot novels.
One way to damp down the entitlement princess training just received by the boys / young men deferring to the girls / young women would be to cause the girls and young women to defer in a different way to the boys and young men. For example, at some future time you might consider having the AH girls serve the Boy Scout boys, perhaps by seating the boys at table and having the girls bring trays to the tables.
If this is suggested the lie of the girls’ passivity will come out in force. It won’t come out in the form of a logical reaction, even if on the surface it appears to start that way. For example, they are likely to bristle at the idea of having their moxie damaged by deferring to the boys, and make a feminist argument for equality. However, if this is simply about equality one could then propose that instead of serving the boys the girls have the boys go first through the treat line, and agree to take turns at this from here on.
At this point the reality of the feminine imperative will become evident, because while the girls were seemingly passive when everything was going their way, any deviance from this will be met with emotional outbursts. Whoever proposes either true equality or simple reciprocity will become the object of great irrational anger, and at this point the passivity turns to aggression. While the girls (and their mothers) won’t know why they are so angry, they will know that whoever proposed such a thing is a terrible person.
Encouraging the passive-aggressive to reveal their underlying desire to control and dictate the actions of others can be tremendously revelatory. Just keep in mind that you may be in for the same sort of shock that men who are forced to recognize the nonexistence of the pedestal upon which they'd been placing women for all these years must endure. Seeing the black heart and long red fangs of what you'd always assumed was a gentle sheep can be more than a little startling, but any time you see irrational anger arise on the part of a perfectly reasonable request or suggestion, you can be relatively sure there is a font of aggressiveness hidden beneath the apparent passivity.
Getting back to the imperative, Dalrock's post was particularly insightful in observing how the female imperative is transformational; this effect can be seen in everything from medieval chivalry to the current NFL.
"The feminine imperative took the original idea of chivalry – a code of honor amongst men – and attached to it a code of acceptable conduct for men in relating to women. In doing so it effectively remodeled chivalry to benefit the feminine and limiting the power men held over them by enlisting other men to participate in regulating it."
