Gold-Diggers

Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold-digger, but she ain’t messin’ wit’ no broke, broke.

Ah, the wistful complaints of a generation and a half retasked to greed. Actually, I don’t think old Kayne was far off here, thematically. It is true that using the word “gold-digger,” male to female, has invariably become a mirror on “whore” to the feminine ear. The notion’s more recent adaptation ‘ho,’ as now also heard when one utters the term “gold-digger” adds a smattering of gully racism to the already sexist vibe therein meant. Expressing that some one is a gold-digger, specifically a woman, is today like to elicit responses of an intensity one might use to verbally thwart off a rapist or to steer a rocket ship full of mental health consumers careening into the sun. Very much in opposition to the politically correct speech continuum, “gold-digger” runs that fine line between being both cuss-free and an arbitrary insult. It’s a PG-13 bullet. The word is never uttered in the positive and while then fully negative, is still a sort of cast-off wording as aspersions go like baldy, shorty, diva, blondie, yahoo, wing-nut, or peon. Kayne ain’t sayin’ it. I ain’t sayin’ it.

I, of course, do not believe that almost any woman is a true gold-digger. Yes, I still have my penis. Traditionally the term is understood as a woman who chooses to marry for money, big money, in the absence of all love, maturity, self-respect, and couplehood. That’s pretty harsh. Yet, as harsh as it may be, there are one or two people out there who’ve done it and pretty much ruined the romance game for everyone else. (I’d make an Anna Nicole joke here, but it’s in poor taste to speak of dead boobs.) Still, the modern take on the word “gold-digger” has evolved far beyond its original affronting intent. So, while no woman deserves to be referred to in such a sexist way, it might also be incumbent upon an intelligent woman with relationship interests to know all the new permutations the notion has taken on.


Why? Well, to explain that, let’s look at a far more despicable word like “bitch” to illustrate. I am going to take it fore-granted that all readers agree as I do that a woman should not be called a bitch. It is a word originally meant to compare a woman to a female dog whose job it seemingly is to immediately bend over and acquiesce to sex as it is dished out, no conversation, no strings, no complaints. Bitch is a morbidly demeaning word in its linguistic heritage, an insult timeline that includes both the typical American tendency to insult through sex words and the typical European tendency to insult through comparison to lesser animals. It is a word used to subjugate, to battle, to goad, and to sometimes reassert a fictional manhood all too fragile to withstand fair debate. Given its origins, it is little wonder why in a society striving for equality we ponder as to the term’s usage at all. Any man worth his salt has set forth a pattern in life to either minimize, eliminate, or to never in the first place find function for the term. That said, and heard resounding in the ears of all the women out there who’ve actually found themselves a good man, have any of you ever wondered, despite how infrequently your man speaks it, how often he’s thought it? How many times has your man, in his head, thought you were a bitch? See, coming to the near collective agreement that the word “bitch” is bad to say, we never truly attacked the root of the issue, perception. We never really considered how much worse it might be to be thought of as a bitch than to be called one once or twice in a lifetime. Both are bad, yes, but is not the thought worse? Is not the word only a reflection of the thought and therefore a revealing of the true self, the underlying barbarian, the invisible demon within? Your man may have never called you a bitch in the entirety of your relationship, but I guarantee even the most evolved among us has thought it on occasion and amongst a small minority even been convinced of it on the regular. Asking does no good. Most men deny it. Those who will not deny it can’t really talk about it now that we’ve labeled the curse off-limits. Admitting this fault for a man is admitting the beast from whence he comes and topples all other hopes at his civilized efforts. He could solve world hunger, but his wife might never let him live down the one time the B-word slipped from his lips as he muttered in his sleep. Plus, let’s face it; nobody can control what another person thinks. It’s just not doable, nor is it ethical.

So, what can be done? Nothing? I disagree. If you work in I.T., for instance, and are thought of as the go-to tech guru of Cinnabon Corporate, but are trying to break the ceiling into management, there are actions you can take. You can change people’s perceptions of you. You can refrain from certain practices, conversation, even projects and engage in newer tasks and interactions shaped to highlight your leadership attributes. “China needs sweet cakes!” It takes a lifetime commitment on your part, but such an outcome is very probable. Well, the same holds true for the perception of you, even the vastly false perception of you, as a “bitch.” Perhaps you are content in the word not being uttered. That’s fine. But if there is even the slightest desire in you for others to never reach that false conclusion, you can change practices in much the same way. You can gain control. You can positivize people’s perception of you, leaping thoughts out from the stagnant realm of cusses and insult and into the domain of mutual respect, perhaps even admiration or hero worship.

Should you have to do that? NO!!!! Not for the pea-brained morons who’d think you a “bitch.” You should not have to change anything about yourself to curtail these bleak prejudgments. After all, the word “bitch” only contains what power you give it, and not any power the speaker wishes to lend the term. But just because you should not have to change these perceptions, does not mean that you cannot. Seizing control is an option. If you had been somehow academically availed of all the practices that lead your husband or your boyfriend or your lover to draw that faulty conclusion, it would be in your best interest to address those points. Mature people will address them in conversation, some in arguments. Others might seek third party psychological help for the man to address his issues. Yet, for those women who might also wish to help the process along, to take responsibility for an outcome that is not her burden to bear, well a neat list of practices that lead to false perception would be invaluable. A tidy database of all the now different male definitions for the word “bitch” would come in quite handy.

I still say “bitch” is off-limits. It is somewhat insulting for me to even suggest that a woman take on the burden of changing another person’s sexist mind. The term is just far too off par to be a genuine behavior-changing motivator. “Gold-digger,” on the other hand, is a far less heated label. Perhaps there are one or two women out there who would actually welcome a useful list of all the ways in which modern men secretly jump to the conclusion that their wife is a gold-digger. Sexist ways, yes. But I am talking about an otherwise secretive mental fact, not a method whereby to defend the unjustified thought. Wouldn’t you like to know what your man thinks? Moreover, wouldn’t you want to change what he thinks if it were to prove unflattering? Asking or ordering him to refrain from a thought is not going to change squat. In fact, most people when told not to think something, picture that something all the more lucidly. Quick, don’t think about a panicked chameleon on a plaid shirt.

What follows here is a compendium of how the term “gold-digger” has socially evolved in the U.S. Each time a woman engages in one of these practices, she runs the needless risk of her husband jumping to a false “gold-digger” conclusion about her. Most do not even fit the idea’s main construct, but it would prove a grand mistake to assume that this popular, figurative definition is the only explanation and to ignore these very common permutations. The list is mildly comprehensive. Given some of the stretches herein to make sense of a male’s sometimes animal mind, each item on the list should probably have a separate name apart from “gold-digger,” but let’s face it; if this were a list of 2000 practices, that would be 2000 more insults we’d have to coin and then overcome anyway. Yes, we’ve a faulty, sexist lexicon used to depict men as well. Bum, deadbeat, slacker, loafer, scrub, small, mooch, leech, couch potato, are among our favorites. Yet, only men can work the change in a woman’s perception of them, just as I here hope to aid women who might choose to do the same. “Gold-digger” is a truly loaded thought. It can be pre-empted.

He’s at fault, yes, but you can still refrain from poor practices nonetheless. Outside of the label “gold-digger,” any person of any gender should understand that all the practices which follow are destructive with regard to relationships, sometimes lives. Do not think that because somebody close-mindedly molded your gender into these faux-pas that the insult taken would justify you continuing the action. For many of these, there is responsibility on both sides of the misogynistic characterization. I reiterate; he does not get to call you a gold-digger based on any of these. Period! Yet, you should perhaps not be engaging in almost any of these practices regardless, and if how you might be perceived mentally, daily, by your husband is motivator enough to change what you are doing, I simply spell out the truth of our unevolved male thoughts here. Check them out. A few are somewhat surprising.


What Modern, Married Men Mean By "Gold-Digger"

Any woman who fits the original definition above, whether or not she is married to the man in question.

Any woman with a career of her own who refuses to contribute equitably or equally to the household expenses, particularly the bills.

Any woman who bounces checks.

Any woman who refuses to work out a household budget.

Any woman who refuses to adhere to a household budget.

Any woman who cannot discuss household finances without the discussion ending in an argument or tears. Both are a means to change the subject from even approaching a remote tangent to her spending habits. The truth is that, even if anger and tears are involved, it is incumbent upon both in a couple to work all the way through to good financial decisions. This is a conversation that doesn’t end at all. It is one that starts and continues on or gets revisited all throughout life together. Ending the conversation, by whatever means, is, in effect, the same as never having had the conversation in the first place. Just as judges will take into consideration who threw the first punch in a case, it is wholly important to realize that whoever ends a conversation about household finances first is usually in the wrong.

Any woman who does not keep an accurate and balanced check register. Not-knowing is a guilt-assuaging tactic used by very small minds.

Any woman who considers bankruptcy as any resort other than the final one. She doesn’t want to do the work to fix the problem; she just wants to throw in the towel and start over, dragging the entire family, unethically, down with her.

Any woman who insists upon opening a joint savings account and who never contributes funds to that account. These tend to be the same women who deduct from the account regularly, even if their spouse never makes a withdrawal.

Any woman who has any untreated addiction, especially a shopping or gambling addiction. Getting help is the first step. If one is unwilling to take the first step it indicates and possibly outright proves that she is willing to do NONE of the work to fix anything.

Any woman who shares a car or cars with her partner and who regularly visits the gas station, but only fills the tank part of the way. These tend to be the same women who insist that men always fill the tank completely, who never count the cost of gas in a household budget, and who consume the majority of both the gas they’ve purchased and the gas their spouses have purchased. These also tend to be the same women who will lend a car to friends or share a car with a spouse while always leaving the gas gage on “E” when others need the car.

Any woman who makes the claim, “If I was a gold-digger, then I wouldn’t be with YOU.” Such is a comment on how “little” money you make in her eyes and an expression of her desire for you, not her, to make more. Yes, she doth protest too much.

Any woman who reserves the right NOT to go camping with you, but additionally dislikes the fact that YOU are going camping. Many women do not like camping simply because it is dirty and time consuming and difficult. That is their prerogative. But when those same women do not want YOU to go camping, it is for a much deeper reason. They will claim that it’s a desire to spend time with you. That’s false. They could have spent time with you while camping. Some women do not want you to go camping because they do not want you to realize that minimalist living can be perfectly doable and involve much happiness. They do not want that notion to even enter your head. They are phobic of you finding truer happiness in simplicity and the basics.

Any woman who lies about birth control.

Any woman who jokes about trying to get pregnant so that you’ll have to move to a larger home.

Any woman who insists she’s only slept with one man, making a baby, but for whom DNA testing proves otherwise. Interestingly, we rarely hear the sexist term “gold-digger” for these few because the label gets buried under the somewhat more sexist term, “slut” when this occurs. Forget not, however, that failing to know a baby’s father is an altogether common mistake. The lying insistence that she’s only been with one man, on the other hand, is a deceitful attempt to entrap a particular man’s skills and bank account and father potential.

Any woman who asks for a very expensive gift, even for holidays, and then never or almost never uses the gift.

Any woman who wishes to go green or to reduce a household’s carbon footprint by cutting back, reducing, reusing, and recycling, but only does so in a way that impacts the spouse’s belongings and not her own, the spouse’s pleasures and not her own, the spouse’s needs and not her own.

Any woman who does not know her net income off the top of her head.

Any woman who insists that her spouse work overtime when his boss does not and when she, herself, does not work overtime.

Sort of the inverse of the immediately above, any woman on salary with a partner on hourly wage who would prefer that her partner spend LESS time at work. While this can be a legitimate concern, for instance, when the partner is a workaholic; it can also be a negative practice. In some cases, the only way for that family to achieve a greater income is for the person on wage to work more hours. The salaried person will hold earnings steady over the year. If income is the family concern, the wage earner, given a high enough wage, should perhaps milk their job for more time. Short of finding new jobs at higher pay, or additional jobs to the ones they already have, allowing the wage earner to max out his time is the only short term solution to boosting income. Asking him to be home more often to help with household duties is fully ethical, but really stupid when it comes to income decisions (doubly so if in debt). This would seem to run contrary to the “gold-digger” notion, but it is not. By asking for this time at home, one is attributing an exact dollar value the man’s personal time. If the man would have earned an additional hundred dollars per week by working said hours instead of coming home, you are directly stating that the loss is worth it. You are directly stating that his home time, rather than being priceless, is worth one hundred dollars per week (one hundred dollars per week you now do not have and cannot get). Attributing an exact dollar value to one’s family time, even accidentally, is demeaning and begins the speaker on the shaky path to affixing a momentary value to everything else that is intangible. His sex is worth twenty bucks, his compassion a few Benjamins, his hopes and dreams a cold, plug nickel. Once a person unwittingly starts along this road it is not a far journey from gold-digging. “He should write that cookbook he wants to write because we can sell that easily, but he shouldn’t be spending his time exercising at the gym because it produces no monetary return.”

Any woman who unilaterally makes the decision on how a couple’s joint income tax returns and refunds will be spent.

Any woman who complains about her income tax returns having been larger as a single woman than as a married woman…as if that were the husband’s fault and not the fact that two completely different formulas are applied by the government. By the way, the same perceived, but not factual, “loss” holds true for the husband as well. These tend to be the same women who insist upon monetary recompense (a larger share of the return) to make up for their fictional “loss.”

Any woman who cannot sit down with her partner in a single session having produced the original of every current bill she has. At least some of these women feel that doing so is a trust issue. They feel they should simply be able to tell their spouses about amounts owed and to which accounts. They feel estimates and guesstimates are legitimate data. Sadly, without account numbers, full disclosure, proof of that full-disclosure, interest rates, payment plan details, and a breakdown of costs and fees within arm’s reach, no legitimate plan can be made to curtail debt, save properly, or cut back on expenses. In so doing, the woman will have left that burden to be fully dependant upon the man to resolve, sometimes without even half as much of the data any person would need to do so. Hence, gold-digger.

Any woman who refuses to have any of the household bills in her name.

Any woman who insists upon having ALL the household bills in her name.

Any woman that wants you to finance her parking and moving violations, either directly with cash/credit, or indirectly by cutting back on the household groceries and needs in order to pay her tickets.

Any woman who cooks two separate dinners regularly, one for each partner in the couple. This is a practice that frequently masquerades as benevolence in that it looks like the woman is going out of her way to please the husband. In fact, the masquerade is a simple one to pull off because a great many spouses do, in fact, make a different plate for her/his partner simply to be altruistic. There are a rare few, however, who cash in on this perceived benevolence when deep down, they, themselves were too self-righteous to eat something the husband likes. Those few usually do this believing that a grocery budget is for the birds.

Any career woman who chooses a single household chore that she fulfills on the regular and mentally offsets that chore against multiple expectations she harbors for her husband. For example, a woman who complains that her man should do the dishes because she cooks, but who also insists her man should scoop the litter box, because she cooks, and who further uses the fact that she cooks in every chore discussion that crops up. This is an over-estimation of either what her one chore is worth or what her career time is worth as compared to her spouse’s. It is a devaluing of her spouse’s time, income, and status in the home (even if he makes more, works harder, and completes more) that sets her up never to be satisfied with any chore the man achieves. It is the foundation of a power vacuum, the woman never satisfied and the man never able to do enough to fill that void. Inevitably he always works harder and more in futile hopes that simple money will turn the emotional tide. (Incidentally, number one complaint in couples therapy made by women… “He has no ambition.” Number one complaint in couples therapy made by men... “Nothing ever satisfies her.”)

Any woman with access to free job search tools, services, and materials before she quits who does not take advantage of them until after she quits.

Any woman who conducts job search from a couch.

Any woman who only applies to one job at a time, waiting to hear back before going on additional interviews.

Any woman who cannot stand a husband being out of work, but who thereafter also complains about which job the husband lands and the strictures of said job, despite the fact that those strictures are out of one’s control.

Any woman who leaves money in pockets in hopes of being surprised when she finds it later.

Any woman, at any given moment, who has more shoes than dollars.

Any woman that has ever mentioned aloud that she HAD TO buy something because it was on sale.

Any woman who cannot go a month without making a purchase.

Any woman who frequently buys two similar items with the understanding that she will simply return the one that doesn’t work out. This is baseless overspending on purchases, on gas, and on time.

Any woman who keeps buying batteries, but never uses her rechargeable ones.

Any woman who’ll accept a gift without a card, but not a card without a gift.

Any woman who plans free calling to your cell phone from hers, but then frequently calls your cell from her landline and frequently calls your landline from her cell, quadrupling costs.

Any woman who has multiple phone numbers, but who regularly fails to pick up any of them. The multiple numbers presume the need for and the ability to contact her, but ultimately waste the caller’s time and money as he will have to make multiple calls for every one piece of information he’s trying to exchange. An added layer of waste occurs when the same woman fails regularly to check her messages.

Any woman who doesn’t pay her bills on time.

Any woman who creates rolling late charges and fees, mitigating the new delinquency costs as a split responsibility between the she and her husband.

Any woman who welches on bets, financial in nature or otherwise. Her willingness to make a bet, but not adhere to the outcome, is a win-win for her and a lose-lose for the other. These tend to be the same women who cannot adhere to a household budget. It’s a fear of future money needs as if one cannot plan ahead.

Any woman who buys the household groceries, then marks off items the husband is NOT permitted to touch, and who finally helps to consume the remaining items while her “safe” stuff goes uneaten. This is a practice that guarantees that “her” foods last while the “shared” goodies go twice as fast. The result is that the husband perceives his wife always having something to eat while he does not.

Any woman who buys milks out of sync with cereals, sandwich contents out of sync with bread, and main ingredients out of sync with ancillary ingredients. This is an unconscious attempt to both stretch food supplies beyond the next planned grocery trip in hopes of affording more exciting food stuffs and an attempt to increase the regularity of eating out. Eating differently and eating out should simply be decided upon via agreement in a couple. If no such agreement can be made, a woman cannot hope to trick the situation into existence with underhanded tactics.

Any woman whose household brings in more than three times the divider amount that is the national poverty line, but who stands up and claims you are poor. One’s poor handling and decision making with money IS NOT the same as the act of making too little money. This declaration is disgusting.

Any woman who simply cannot save up for a major purchase.

Any woman with a credit rating in the toilet.

Any healthy woman who cannot remember most of the gifts you’ve given her.

Any woman who gives you more sex and/or better sex when more money is coming in.

Any woman who would pay for something she could get for free.

Any woman who uses time that could be spent at work clipping coupons, and then allows the coupons to expire.

Any woman who will organize things at work, but not at home where she doesn’t get paid for it.

Any woman who asks her husband to purge belongings for space, sometimes more than once, and then rents a storage unit to fill with her stuff.

Any woman who has more dollars on her than her children have had books.

Any woman with more credit cards than will fit in her wallet/purse comfortably.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a priority.

Any woman who thinks comfort is a basic necessity.

Any woman who takes sick days from work to do something fun and/or costly, but who goes in to work when sick.

Any woman who, if she were to die today, would leave her husband with marital or secret debt that he could not afford.

Any woman who cannot stand for her money to be in one of her husband’s accounts or portfolios, sans access, even if that money is earning more of a return than she ever could or would. Again, we see a marital trust issue here. The problem is that the perception of her husband not being trustworthy with “her” money can only stem from her own secretive dealings with funds. It’s psychology 101.

Any woman who insists that while the husband earns more money than she does, he should pay a greater share of the household expenses, but who does not or can not do the same when she suddenly makes more than the husband.

Any woman who doesn’t pay taxes.

Any woman who defrauds the government to get checks.

Any woman who has raised one or more frivolous lawsuits.

Any woman outside of the entertainment and intelligence industries who has multiple aliases.

Any woman who’ll wear clothes that the husband likes while she’s out at work or out with her friends, but that she’ll never wear for more than a few minutes while at home with her spouse. While this speaks more to a feeling of dejection in the man, the practice often mentally qualifies in a male’s eyes as “gold-digger” pursuant to how it seems as if the woman is putting on airs, building a façade. He sees it as an indicator that her home life is not good enough to be dressed nicely, ever.

Any woman who CANNOT leave the house without make-up. Men jump to the conclusion that this indicates a gold-digger simply based upon the stereotypically feminine attitude that accompanies the act. Men give little nod to a culture that demands appearance driven professionalism. However, the deeper root of gold-digging here is the woman’s treatment of the make-up musts as normal, somehow balanced and on-kilter. Look, “balanced” is a way of saying, “all things being equal.” Well if all things were equal, even allowing for forced cultural mores, there would still be some days with just as much chance you’d leave the house without make-up as days when chances were you’d leave the house with make-up. It wouldn’t be 50/50. Almost nothing’s 50/50. But, whatever the chances, the “equal” chances over time, non-make-up days would occur. They would happen. They would take place and the woman would be okay with them. If non-make-up days NEVER occur, it shows then all things are not equal. It is an overt display of the mental control a woman exerts to negate any chance of being seen without make-up. It prominently tips her hand and shows how she thinks. She is under a perpetual delusion that she should ALWAYS look better than whom she actually is. It’s the ALWAYS that speaks to gold-digging. Always having make-up will cost the most money possible. Always needing to look better is to never feel good about your natural self to be satisfied. In search for greater satisfaction with one’s self, there will be endless related purchases over a lifetime, few or none of which will bear the fruit of contentment.

Any woman who, in practice, fails to treat her partner’s belongings or the household assets with care and respect. The simple, nitpicking peeve of maintaining ones belongings has a direct bearing on finances, both past and future. A cavalier attitude that undermines or negates this maintenance therefore speaks directly to a frivolous belief that one can always buy and consume more. That attitude applied only to belongings not exclusively her own is a further devaluing of the husband.

Any woman that destroys or discards bills, statements, check copies, passbooks, notices, contracts, agreements, and other documents before they’ve been totally reconciled. This practice reads a little bit in a relationship as “destroying evidence” and, at the very least, indicates the woman’s knowledge that what she is doing is in some way incorrect.

Any woman who will not sign a pre-nuptial agreement based on the fact that it is a pre-nup’ and not based upon the document’s content.

Any woman who believes her job search is open ended, but that her husband’s has a limit to time and date.

Any woman who does not consider the gift of tickets a “thing” because tickets are not a perpetual, physical object that she gets to keep. Most women, I think, do in fact like the gift of tickets, but those few in this rare category tend to expect or insist upon another gift in addition to tickets to be pleased.

Any woman who always chooses the most expensive of all available options.

Any woman who always or almost always chooses the second most expensive of all available options “to save money.” You are not fooling anybody.

Any woman who refuses to revisit spending decisions of the past in order to readjust spending decisions in the future. This is usually a practice highlighted with short fight-ender statements like, “That was two years ago,” or “What does that have to do with anything?” One can only learn from the past, even with finances, and a failure to do so is a simple, foundationless hope that money or a financial solution is going to fall into ones lap before death.

Any woman who reserves the right to be a homemaker, but disallows the same option for her husband.

Any woman who gives her spouse gifts that aren’t remotely within the realm of what he might like or want. Such will sometimes tend to occur naturally after couples have been together for many years. They “run out” of gift ideas. It does not change the fact, however, that some men view this as gold-digging, especially (though selfish) if their own gift choices to her still go over well in kind. Where it is the thought that counts, a woman gifting presents that her husband would never want shows the lack of thought therein. No thought indicates that she hoped the cost of an item would be the sole impressive instrument between them. It might further indicate that she expects the same expense in her gifts, like them or no.

Any woman who relies consistently upon her partner for donations to charity or church.

Any woman who only “volunteers” when paid to do so.

Any woman who doesn’t want you playing in a $5.00 poker game because it costs money, but who would ask you to take her to a $200 dinner.

Any woman who buys or receives electronic equipment that she never learns how to use.

Any woman who talks about passers-by in the negative based upon appearance. This is a self-aggrandizing practice not always exclusively related to bigotry, fashion, humor, or narcissism, but increasingly to a comparison of taste expressed through cost in modern times.

Any woman who will not sit down with a financial advisor.

Any woman who will dismiss multiple candidates from becoming financial advisor to a household based upon the advisors disagreeing with her poor money management.

Any woman who sends her husband constant email links, pictures, videos, and texts of things the couple cannot afford, but that she would have the husband buy out of his own pocket.

Any woman who plays the lottery regularly, but has not paid her bills.

Any woman who PLANS on winning the lottery.

Given a lump sum or repeated payout on a lottery win choice, any woman who finds fault with the husband for choosing the option that she would not. This practice is actually engaged in most frequently by women in couples who’ve never won the lottery.

Any woman who spends more on her portion of wedding payments than she pays in household contributions in the first five years of the marriage combined.

Any woman who cuts back on necessities to pay a bill, rather than cutting back on what the bill is for.

Any woman who uses multiple payment types and sources without ever consolidating the results into an itemization of what she spends overall.

Any woman who cashes bonds early and pays penalties when she doesn’t have to.

Any woman who invests time, money, and assets in herself, but not her relationship.

Any woman who argues, delays or ignores her half of the responsibility (when present) for the cost of couples therapy, pre-Cana, household financial advisory, rent, mortgage, insurance, or vacations.

Any woman who refuses to include yearly or one time charges on a household budget because they are a seemingly lesser concern than monthly charges.

Any woman who refuses to include line items on a household budget because to her they are invisible or intangible like insurance, student loans, gas, car repair, interest, internet access, taxes, fees, entertainment, dues, club membership, subscriptions, mass transit, charity, tolls, heating oil, landscaping, child care, medical co-pay, online purchases, tips, and so on.
Any woman who cannot make it from work to home on the regular without making a stop or purchase in between.

Any woman who regularly commits to meeting her husband at a certain time and is instead regularly or always late. Again, while this might not seem too much like a gold-digger offshoot, it screams that time is money. A husband waiting, she’s forced you to push off all other things that might have gotten done had you been uncommitted to the time slot. This, in turn, builds up and collectively impacts a person’s maximum possible work schedule, not to mention long term earning potential. When this happens on the regular, husbands WILL make less money, not only less money than they could have, but less money than they should have in their current positions. They will get less sleep, get fewer chores done, get fewer errands run, acquire fewer opportunities to make extra money, land fewer opportunities to properly network, have less effectual mental time, be on a tighter resultant schedule; cleanliness will suffer; caring will suffer; personal time will fly out the window; stress will increase…all because one’s wife does not value his time. All of these negatives accumulate and spill over into one’s work environment. So, if a person is going to make LESS money, why does it qualify as gold-digging? Because anyone who values her own time significantly more than her chosen partner’s time is just selfish enough to still expect that the husband perform up to his maximum potential despite the collective obstacles she’s inflicted. He can’t put in the hours, but she expects him to bring home the same check. Men view women who always make them wait as gold-diggers simply because men value their time more than they value their own money.

Any woman who talks about what would be a second, complimentary purchase to the single purchase she is making at that moment.

Any woman who does not take an overt, unprompted, verbal interest in her husband’s day and career.

Any woman who, on the regular, talks about something she’d someday like to buy before asking about her husband’s day.

Any woman who continues to dream about being someplace else after she’s moved several times.

Any woman who has to go out every single weekend or travel every single month to keep up her self-esteem.

Any woman who refers to shopping as a meditative state or a stress reliever.

Any woman who nostalgically prefers the freedom of her youth, as afforded by funds from her parents, to the idea of making her own living or living up to the vast responsibilities of her current relationship.

Any woman who would take over the household finances by having her husband hand over his paycheck each week, but who would not hand hers to him if the tables were turned.

Any woman who mitigates cost/value via quantity as opposed to quality.

Any woman who enjoys getting flowers from her spouse “for no reason,” but always waits for an occasion to purchase niceties for that spouse.

Any woman whose finances are so out of control that she needs to skip gift-giving occasions with her spouse or children even if her spouse does not.

Any woman who calls her husband’s work number to check that he is at work. While some of these cases have to do with suspicions of infidelity, others are actually a direct attempt to control when the man is earning money and at what times. The latter scenario is the rarer of the two, and of course men cannot tell outwardly which is which in any given phone call. Some calls might be just to see how he is doing or to tell him that he is loved. However, the caller DOES know the reason for her call. She knows if she’s checking up to make sure he’s pulling a paycheck or working hard. If she is somehow unaware of her own intentions, she is the one, the only one, who can and must examine her inward motivation. Have you ever called your husband just to see that he was working?

Any woman who thinks that actually going bankrupt is okay so long as she is not going spiritually bankrupt.

Any woman who makes a mess that outpaces her capacity to clean it. This is an addiction of sorts that once again demands of the spouse excess time to correct her mistakes, time that could be better spent with family or earning. It not only falls into the “gold-digger” category for the same reason as some of the “less money” practices above, but also because a select few selfish women out there have additionally forced this issue as a medium through which to hire a housekeeper or to move to a larger abode.

Any woman that is incensed by any time or effort her spouse spends entering a contest, but who insists upon half of the winnings when the husband hits the jackpot.

Any woman who votes based on looks. This is a power hunger that speaks secondarily to money.

Any woman who frowns upon her husband improving himself by unpaid, non-career means. This closed-mindedness covers a wide range of practices, everything from women who can’t allow a man to read more than a few pages of a book without interrupting, to more complex doings like finding fault with a man’s quest to climb a mountain or to reconcile with an adversary. Women in this category show no qualms about a man improving himself in a bankable way.

Any woman who simply cannot play a game with built-in limits. I’m put in mind of a game we used to play. It was a little, conversational question about what three things you’d want if you were stranded on a desert island. For a select few ladies, three was a limit with which they could not feel comfortable. Those women could not stick to the one parameter within the question. In fact, the discomfort of having been imposed with a limit was such a huge burden to some, that they would refuse to play despite the fact that the game was complete fiction. I’d never again seen such a frightening indicator as to how some women feel limitlessness is the only way to think.

Any woman who would keep a teaching job she fell into when she doesn’t know about the subject being taught.

Any woman who wants to be well off enough to move to a country wherein she would not learn to speak the native language.

Any woman who finds fault with her spouse’s personal decision to not want riches or fame and the inherent problems that come with them.

Any woman who uses any amount of money given to her for child support on any purchase or payment that does not support the child.

Any woman negotiating a divorce settlement who defines “the lifestyle to which she is accustomed” in terms of a lifestyle she had with a different man or in terms of a lifestyle she hasn’t yet achieved.

Any woman who would accept alimony, but under inverse circumstances never pay alimony.

Any woman who insists that her husband not set bad examples of any kind as a father, but who would teach her child, by example, poor money management habits.

Any woman who outstretches her arm and leaves it extended, waiting, in an attempt to hand her husband an object while both of his hands are already full. While this is not a practice that might readily force your man to jump to the conclusion that you are a gold-digger, it is an indicator. Build up enough indicators cumulatively over time and their indirect nature may eventually and directly lead to the same false conclusion as other poor relationship practices on this list. This particular practice is a forceful attempt, on the woman’s part, to unburden herself of whatever she has in hand, even if it lends triple the burden to her husband. Such can additionally be viewed as the woman exercising license to remain completely oblivious to the man’s state while insisting he recognize her own state. Both give rise to the gold-digger indicator. A great many American woman actually engage in this tiny practice to an addictive extent without realizing it. Culturally, this gesture derives from older, feudal cultures wherein women were stuffed into impossible clothing, made to balance on precarious footwear, and fed so little that they were physically weak if not all out ill. Plus, at times, they were generally looked down upon for keeping fast to any possession, possessions to which a female frequently did not have the legal right. Pre-pocketbook, men held and carried anything that would not be tied onto a woman’s garment. Note how very many other historical cultures did not show this to be the case, the woman’s doll-like lot. Females from northern hunter-gatherer tribes in the Americas did all the work, for instance, chewing every inch of seal skin ever slaughtered in the bitter cold of the arctic to soften the material for domestic use. Women of polygamist, communal sects in this nation sling 60 pound bags of feed over their shoulders, dig wells, prep entire sides of beef. Tribal Amazon women of the mid-to southern Asian continent are described as having purposely severed a single breast from their bodies to give them superior accuracy with their warring bows on horseback. Try moving up the corporate ladder or getting equal pay for equal work if you are a woman in modern day corporate America. No, women in almost all cultures have always carried the brunt of the nastiest, most laborious tasks. So why do women today socially look so longingly back to one, solitary, feudal example? Why do they idealize the only culture that did not exhibit their strengths? The example has been romanticized. If you were a woman stuffed into a corset, it was “romantic” for a man to realize that and to help you carry. If you were so weak you could not lift a pea or even bend over to do so without getting dizzy, it was “romantic” for a man to understand your circumstances, particularly a handsome stranger. This minority of women receiving such treatment, however, was of the court, walking trimmed gardens and frequenting secure, stone dwellings. It is neither to the greater populous of the Italian Renaissance nor to the throngs of feudal serfs that modern women reach for this false romanticism, but to the ever so tiny court culture. They peer back to perhaps one of only a handful of social settings wherein men made it proper for men to help women in this way. They look to a time where only the richest women with the richest clothes and the richest expectations would need hand off a balance-impacting trinket. They look so steadily and with such a fixed eye to the tiniest “romantic” pocket of all the cultures that have ever been that they’ve unwittingly preserved a gesture from second-class citizenry which no longer has any factual gravitas.

Any woman who will risk a $65.00 parking ticket to save a quarter.

Any woman who before marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “his possessions” and “her possessions” and who after marriage looks at all the couple’s possessions as divided into “marital assets” and “her possessions.” These women are mentally practicing the very same archaic notions that once legally banned women from ownership.

Any woman who borrows luxury items on more than just special occasions.

Any woman who has never changed her vision of a perfect life, even once, since junior high school. Dreams are fine. Inflexibility is not.

Any woman who does not take an active part in even one of her husband’s hobbies when invited. While hobbies usually have little to do with finances, most of them cost at least a little doe and a significant amount of time. Not taking part in any single one when invited, the woman shows that she wishes to use that potential together time, instead, on a separate hobby of her own. Not always, but in some rare cases, this translates in a woman’s mind and demeanor to “For every hobby he has, I should also get one.” That attitude can be costly. He should take part in one of yours. You should take part in one of his. This will decrease the number of household hobbies by two and save dollars. Otherwise, the problem is a practice that ignores relative cost and instead compares the number of hobbies in a 1 to 1 ratio, as if that has any bearing on life.

Any woman who cheats. While this too gets buried under the other comment, “slut,” the ire that results in a man’s response is a “gold-digger” sourced ire. When a man cheats it is either about sex or having been dehumanized in his existing relationship. When a woman cheats it is because she wants more than she already has, whether that’s more sex, more money, more understanding, or more love. She’s mining for gold from another mine.

Any woman who demands that her husband literally write her a blank check or checks to save time. Again, this sounds like more of a trust issue with regard to what amount the woman might fill in on a blank check, but the fact is that the woman has squandered her valuable time to the point where the mere moments it would take to write down a few numbers and words is a concern. It is once again the husband bailing the wife out of a sticky situation in a way that requires no trust or risk on her part, but both trust and risk on his.

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All Pharmacists Cannot Be Nancy Reagan

Not quite an explosion onto mainstream media, more like a dribble over the affiliates, it has recently made national news that the Indiana General Assembly is trying again to pass an old bill that would create/ease a pharmacist’s “right to refuse” service, in this case based upon religious belief (among other factors). While there are already several states that support this practice by law, there’s no time like the present to address the situation either with national interest or in all remaining states.

This is not a new issue. “Right to refuse” clauses or “conscience” clauses, specifically as they relate to abortion drugs, have been around since Roe v. Wade. Clicking here gives a great breakdown of all the states pushing legislation in one direction or the other over this topic. Clicking here shows the verbiage in the formerly proposed Indiana bills.

Okay, so we all know where the argument goes. On one side it’ll aim to say that if any pharmacists are allowed to do this, then what’s stopping them from exercising a “right to refuse” over any other drug beyond morning after pills or any other customers beyond pregnant or possibly pregnant women? After all, a law cannot name a specific product or group. The other side will claim that these pharmacists are providing a Samaritan human service by “refusing,” similar to a firefighter that rescues a baby from certain doom or a conscientious objector soldier who refuses to fire in war. I’d like to take the discussion out a little wider than abortion drugs, though.

Even if a “right to refuse” sounds new to you, toward your likes or dislikes, it is, in fact, a concept we deal with everyday. Most of us have seen the sign in the convenience store reading “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” We all know that any clerk, customer service rep., sales person, or manager is permitted to simply withhold service if you are belligerent, cussing, threatening, physical, lewd, or generally being a pain in the ass. I can refuse you service if you’ve broken a contract or failed to pay. Libraries can kick you out for talking, cinemas for the same, museums for touching works of art, airports for being on a list, former employers for claiming you were disgruntled, some hospitals for having the wrong insurance, lending bureaus for having poor credit, restaurants for bringing in food from competitors, bars for drunken behavior, amusements parks for not sitting correctly in the rides, government buildings for failing to produce proper I.D., or even beaches for not swimming inside the ropes. All of these exercised “rights to refuse” seem reasonable to most of us. They are so commonplace, in fact, that we might consider them a required component of running a business.

Additionally, there is the more top-down notion that an employer or corporation should not be able to FORCE you, as an employee, to do anything that is against your moral beliefs or religion. Banco Popular cannot force tellers not to worship on Easter Sunday. Blimpies cannot insist that Muslim counter workers eat bacon on their lunch hour during Ramadan. Circuit City cannot add “stab that Commodore 64 moron in the neck” to a salesperson’s job description, even if that employee is a once violent ex-con. Yes, if employers ask you and you refuse them, you won’t be long for that job, but that is also why we have the fallback of wrongful termination suits.

Given this dual tier, common sense familiarity with “rights of refusal” in the conscious mainstream, it’s a surprising wonder that when applied to pharmacists it would get such a rise out of people. Sure, the focus on that one set of drugs brings with it all the ire of the medical abortion debate, but people who’ve never cared one way or the other about the legality of non-spontaneous abortions have thrown a great many hats into this “conscience” clauses ring. And, it is a dangerous, morally relativistic ring.

Assume for the moment that I am against conscience clauses, that I want them eliminated either from pharmacies in particular, or from all businesses as they relate to the customer. Perhaps the strongest argument to rid the world of the “right to refuse” is that the practice is a form of prejudice or discrimination. Refusing to sell a person a product is reasonably similar to a cabby refusing to pick up a pregnant woman. Refusing to fill a prescription is oddly comparative to not giving African-Americans a homeowner’s application at an open house. Even if the practice itself is not intrinsically biased, it is a very easy practice to abuse for the sake of bias. So, in order to counter the idea that “right to refuse” is similar to prejudice, my opponents will claim the act is based upon the pill, not upon the customer. They’ll make the counter-argument akin to the particular product, not the consumer. That’s a rough road for them to take, given that these pills, like others, will overwhelmingly be purchased by women, and that they will ALL be purchased FOR women like pre-natal vitamins, estrogen pills, medications to ease menopause, vaginal healthcare products, and anything bombastically pink.

While the counter-argument might not be completely convincing, I, as the presumed opponent of conscience clauses have to account for and deal with it anyway. This generally ropes me down from my “discrimination” high horse and lands me on a platform of “domino effect.” That’s to say that I would need to change angles, take the next most obvious route, and instead argue that if a pharmacist is allowed to refuse any customer one set of pills, what’s to keep her/him and all pharmacists from refusing all kinds of services based upon all kinds of belief systems. Pharmacist Edgar might refuse my anti-HIV cocktail because he believes my impending disease to be a gay curse and further proclaims that homosexuality is a superlative sin. Pharmacist Tallulah might fill 400 milligrams of my 2600 milligram prescription because she believes doctors over medicate. Pharmacist Deepak might refuse to give me any service whatsoever because I mentioned, three conversations ago, that I was a divorcé. Well, this is a great argument. It makes sense to so many people. Granted, opponents will claim such things will never happen and then we wind up in this junior high school debate spiral.

“Yes they will!

“No they won’t!”

“Yes they will, poopy head!

The spiral aside, domino effect is an understandable platform. I was vey careful NOT to discuss my political affiliations and points of view with the dentist right before he gave me a root canal. Sure, he picks up CNN on the same monitor with my dental x-rays, a monitor that during my exquisite torture only he could see and watch, but the last thing I needed was him taking out his election primaries dismay on my exposed, raw nerve. Duh! None of us like to imagine how that situation might turn out if we were forced to agree with all dentists’ political leanings before getting extra Novocain. We fear domino effect. We perceive it, acknowledge it, and prevent it. Recessions and depressions are domino effect. Nations falling to Communism was a domino effect. Why not pharmacists’ “right to refuse?” It’s a great argument. Don’t let any pharmacist refuse to give out any drug and we’ll never have to worry about all of them doing it with all drugs. Oh wait, where have we heard that argument before? Ah yes, gun control!

Here comes the dangerous moral relativism I spoke of. If I make the supposition that many of the people who’d oppose a pharmacist’s right to refuse skew to the political left by nurture, well then they are the same people that have been trying to convince right wingers there would be NO domino effect if we take away certain firearms. One cannot make the anti-domino effect argument for conscience clauses without opening up the door on overblown NRA assertions. By arguing this way that Donna should get her pill after she was raped, is to also argue that Manny the American ex-con gets his pick of AK-47 arsenals. Damn! So near, and yet so far.

Now, let’s go the other way. Let’s presume for the next moment that I am pro “right to refuse,” if even because I am simply pro anything with the word rights in it. Perhaps the easiest way to start this argument is with a future tense.

“So, one day, American doctors and psychologists and legislators decide that suicide is not a form of murder, but a patient’s choice. I, as a pharmacist, in good conscience am supposed to give them a big death pill? Am I as a pharmacist supposed to trust more in my nation’s ability to promote the common good than I am my own ability to spare a life standing right in front of me?”
There’s something basically human about the idea that doing one’s job well is defined by the limits to which we’d take it. We don’t think that a professional football player is any better if he keeps running to Montana after scoring the touchdown. In fact, we’d think he’s nuts. No reasonable person would claim that self-inflicted 17 hour workdays are anything but highly negative workaholism. Heck, we even give the most powerful job in the world, the U.S. Presidency, all kinds of limits, parameters, checks and balances and thereafter define a President’s “job-well-done” by how precisely s/he stayed within those strictures. Is it at all odd, then, that some doctors under the same Hippocratic Oath refuse to perform abortions or that some pharmacists under the Oath of a Pharmacist, an oath that includes a passage on ethical conduct, exercise their right to refuse? Isn’t setting limits part of a job-well-done? Are they really supposed to become a doctor or a pharmacist one year and then dole out every drug and every procedure that crops up in years to come no matter how radical or controversial? Do we not simply think they are better at their own jobs if they take the mental moment to say, “Stop, wait a second, let’s examine if this is really in congruence with my patient, my oath, and my knowledge?”

Opponents to this view on conscience clauses often go right for the frequented point of view, “What about the rights of the patients?” The law said they could have the prescription. The doctor who examined them lent all the professional weight of making out the prescription. The insurance company was even willing to pay for the prescription. Who is a pharmacist at the tail end of the service provider chain to say that a particular person should not be sold that particular prescription? Even more so, who is a pharmacist to countermand a medical doctor? The argument is the basic, tell-tale wisdom our parents taught us about rights. We were never to let the exercising of our own rights extend to the tip of somebody else’s nose. That is the historical difference between “rights” and “equal rights.”

So, this time, as the presumed pro “right to refuse” junkie, in accounting for the most frequented counter-argument, I dial my stance down a few notches from the lofty oaths and good job defense to now land these shoes on a platform of endless examples.

“What if women, once again, no longer had the right to refuse any random guy for sex?”

“What if Nancy Reagan never taught children to just say no to illegal drugs?”

“What if unions had never strengthened employees’ rights, many of which were based on the refusal to be abjectly abused?”

“What if the Boston Tea Party never took place?”

Insert your own pre-1964 examples here. There are a million of them. The new argument becomes the simplified idea that there is a lot of good demonstrated throughout history by both the practice of granting legally covered rights to refuse and, by extent, in listening to the very words that make up the phrase. Refusal empowers, it protects rights, it prevents catastrophe; it draws a line in the sand defining character, change, and perspicacity.

New opponents then jump in on this litany of examples with their contrasting case that states “none of those examples have anything to do with the sale of products and services.” They wish to assert that in order for equal rights to prevail through their infancy in a system of free enterprise, then at the very least we must make all products available to all consumers. We must collectively decide that the historic examples of “right to refuse” cannot apply to a product line or supply chain, to a service driven industry or person to person transaction. This leads again to the now familiar gambit,

“Sure we can.”

“No we can’t!”

“Of course we can, poopy head!”

I don’t truly see, given the eventual degradation into poopy head byplay, how anyone can firmly stand on any of the common arguments for or against conscience clauses. Sure I don’t want to have to go to seven pharmacists to find one who’ll fill my anti-anal leakage prescription. But, you know what? I also don’t want my daughter to be forced to sell a house to a customer who’s cupped her ass in the real estate office. I don’t want to be coerced to do every damn thing my yutz employer might insist I try, yet I also do not want do any damn thing the customer thinks I should do whilst calling me a fuckwad and insisting that the customer is always right.

My take is two-fold. First, we have laws, with regard to equal rights, that provide we cannot disallow anyone from entering our businesses based on race, ethnicity, creed, etc. There are still African-Americans alive who remember not being able to go into certain lunch counters or play on certain baseball teams. This is not some figment of revisionist history. They sat at the back of the bus, drank from separate fountains, used different bathrooms, went to different schools, and altogether were treated as less than. Those laws provided a necessary component to a truer America, one that did something to rectify its own atrocities. I find it interesting that pursuant to the interpretation of these equal rights laws and the simultaneous interpretations of “right to refuse” legislation, that any customer might now be allowed, by law, into the neighborhood, via the front of the bus, through the front doors of an establishment, up and down the aisles, only to still be refused service at checkout. By “interesting” I mean, how is that different than 1942?

I think there is some through line to a logic which would imply that if a customer is allowed into your business, that same customer must be provided your service within that business. Would this not be a self-evident truth? So long as a customer is not tampering with product, disturbing the peace, or doing something else worthy of getting them thrown out (acts that are covered by other laws and therefore not needing “right to refuse” clauses), then that’s it. Your personal feelings about their choice of product are irrelevant.

Secondly, let’s remember, with regard to pharmacists, that prescription drugs are controlled substances. They are legal controlled substances, but nationally controlled nonetheless. All of the legislators, companies, lobbyists, scientists, doctors, researchers, voters, officers, and associations involved with deciding how a substance is controlled are far too vast for any one crusader to veto solo. They’ve determined the exact process a person must go through to obtain said substances and when a person does so IN GOOD CONSCIENCE only to be turned away, it completely undermines the masses it took to make such a grand decision structure in the first place. Pharmacists are not the leaders of their own little nation. They didn’t go to school to become Ivan the Terrible. I understand that part of the job is something that goes against the grain of your ethical make-up. Then why do you have that job? Is it true with every job? Can we “refuse” to do any work based on the notion that all jobs go against our religion?

If it’s going to be right against right, right to refuse verses consumer rights, then I believe they stack like this. The person in the role of the pharmacist can go anywhere, anywhere at all to practice their right to refuse. Simply sitting on the couch NOT giving out pills is an exercise of that right. It’s a non-act by nature. You can go NOT do anything, anywhere. On the other hand, your establishment is the only place that rape victim can go to exercise her rights, rights that were already violated at least once. Taking away her one place to practice her right in order to maintain ALL your many places doesn’t seem equal with regard to rights at all. For Americans, rights without equality mean nothing. Don’t take my word for it. Here are some other entries:

Druggists Refuse to Give Out Pill

Pharmacists Rights at Front of New Debate

The Right To Refuse Service


Should Pharmacists Be Allowed to Refuse Service



It seems to me that nobody can force a store to carry a particular product, distasteful or no. I can't make Target carry Super Juggs 2008: The Sleeze Expo Edition. I can't make Dillard's carry unitards for men studying ballet or Japanese import Music CDs. Each business decides upon its custom consist to maximize profit and to evoke an atmosphere attractive toward targeted clientele. In the case of controlled substances, however, targeted clientele is EVERYONE. We control controlled substances in a manner that impacts everyone. Everyone needs to go through the same process to get these products. Everyone is subject to the same punishments if they get these products any other way. Everyone is still liable after getting these products for subsequent abuse of said products. It's a web of necessities used as both control and deterrent. One doesn't need to jump through any hoops to order off of Overstock.com. However, if one does choose to navigate the web or jump through the hoops to get the proper medications, webs and hoops that we all set up for society's benefit, then we cannot opt to penalize righteous care seekers for doing so in the end. We cannot make the act of obtaining something illegally, wrong, AND the act of obtaining something legally, wrong. Pharmaceuticals distribution is a business that has no particularly targeted clientele. Everyone gets sick and hurt and therefore everybody needs care. This indicates that business owners who opt-in to an industry that serves all people have opted out of the choice of what products to carry or to sell.

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