I Asked ChatGPT a Question: How to Disempower Myself as a Woman

Enjoying a day at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

The answers aren’t radical. That’s what makes them disturbing. They’re subtle. Familiar. Normalized.

Some are even encouraged—by the media we consume, the stories we’re told, the expectations placed on women and, sometimes, accidentally or not, by the people who love us.

And I realize: a woman doesn’t have to give her power away all at once. She can give it away in tiny pieces, every day, in ways she doesn’t even notice if she isn’t paying attention.

I’m guilty of plenty of these.

What started as a random weekday evening curiosity chat with ChatGPT when I should have been sleeping became something of a manifesto I now want to guard against.

And I want to share it with you, so you can as well.

Make being chosen the measure of your worth.

Especially romantically. Treat someone wanting you as evidence that you’re desirable, successful, feminine, lovable—and rejection as evidence against all of those things. Confuse being desired with being loved. And confuse having a relationship with having a good relationship.

Let everyone else tell you what you’re worth.

Constantly rank yourself against other women. Prettier. Younger. Thinner. Richer. Married. More experience. More popular. More, ‘more’. Keep a running scoreboard you can never actually win. Hand strangers enormous authority over your self-perception. A match, a text, a second date, a compliment, an Instagram like: tiny external verdicts all day long.

Become endlessly pleasing.

Abandon your preferences whenever they inconvenience somebody else. Say yes when you mean no. Be agreeable. Don’t risk seeming difficult. Convince yourself that having standards is the same thing as being demanding—and that keeping other people comfortable matters more than keeping yourself intact.

Stop trusting yourself.

Distrust your own judgment. After every decision, reopen the case. Ask whether you screwed up. Seek another opinion. Then another. Eventually teach yourself that you cannot be trusted without outside confirmation. Treat anxiety as information. If you’re afraid you made a mistake, assume you probably did. If you’re afraid something terrible will happen, treat the fear as a prediction rather than a feeling.

Make your body a problem that never gets solved.

Make your appearance an endless improvement project. There is always another five pounds, treatment, outfit, haircut, wrinkle, muscle, flaw. Move the finish line every time you get close. Never allow yourself to arrive at: I look good. I am enough.

Give men executive-level positions in your brain.

Spend enormous amounts of mental energy thinking about men. Who likes you. Who didn’t respond. What he meant. Whether you should text. Whether you were too forward. Whether there’s someone better. Let people you’ve known for 72 hours occupy executive-level positions in your brain. Meanwhile, neglect the things that actually build your self-respect: your friendships, work, creativity, money, strength, curiosity, hobbies, community and adventures.

Make your world smaller in the name of safety.

Demand certainty before acting. Don’t risk embarrassment, failure, rejection, wasted money, being mediocre at something, or changing your mind. Make the safe choice again and again until your world gets very small. And keep postponing the life you want until some imaginary future version of you is finally ready to live it.

Break your own trust.

Keep breaking promises to yourself. Tell yourself you’ll write, exercise, save, leave someone alone, try something new, speak up, set the boundary—and repeatedly don’t. Because confidence isn’t just believing you’re great. A huge part of confidence is believing: I will show up for myself.

Or, keep your power.

Want things deeply without making your worth contingent on getting them.

Have preferences, even when they’re inconvenient.Make decisions without knowing how they’ll turn out.Let rejection hurt without turning it into self-rejection.Allow yourself to be wrong without deciding you can’t trust yourself.Keep promises to yourself.

Build the friendships. Do the work. Take the trip. Make the thing. Say no. Say yes. Risk looking foolish.

Build a life you respect while staying open to the parts of life you cannot control.

Your power isn’t knowing everything will work out. It’s knowing you won’t abandon yourself if it doesn’t.