In my city there is an annual ‘makers’ event that takes place downtown.
I’ve been going to it since I was about 14, and it went from a tiny hipster artist event in a community center to an event centre that hosts car shows… so it’s grown massively and I really loved seeing it evolve over the years.
Unfortunately due to the sheer volume of vendors and applicants, some MLM’s can slip through and periodically I notice a vendor selling monat, or some other similar product.
As I was mindlessly browsing, I approached one vendor selling essential oils and realized that I was looking at doTERRA products and swiftly lost interest. The vendor stopped me as I was turning to leave and inquired if I knew that her products could be used in cooking (which is a whole other issue on its own) and I politely said I wasn’t in need of anything like that. She persisted in sharing the benefits of her oils and I listened for a little while before repeating that I wasn’t looking for something like that at the moment.
“well these make great gifts, and i think we can both agree that its super important in a space like this for women to support other women”
This left me fumbling for words for a moment.
That statement really rubbed me the wrong way. I know fundamentally she said it to manipulate my emotions into closing a sale… but it stayed on my mind for a little while because I realized that while I absolutely love the CONCEPT of supporting other women with my money, in reality I don’t support ALL women in their ventures and that was a hard pill for me to swallow.
will always fundamentally support a womans freedom to choose what she would like to pursue in life but whether or not I think someone’s product or business is worth the support of my dollar is an entirely different matter.
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I’m just picturing this woman stumbling upon my seller booth and forcing her to buy a rainbow 10 inch dragon dildo because “hey women need to support women’s business and this is the perfect handmade product for you to go fuck yourself with”. Eh, I’m petty.
Ohhhh the MLM community has co-opted this to guilt women, 100%. MLMs are scams that prey on vulnerable women and should never be supported. On top of that, essential oils should not be ingested except short term for a specific use and under the care of a certified [something I forget what it’s called, my brain is not functioning today] ETA oh my god, aromatherapist is the word I was looking for, not used in cooking (which, aside from anything else, is an incredibly EXPENSIVE way to flavor something), etc. The MLM essential oil companies push unsafe use and it makes my eye twitch, because that’s a great way to get sued.
As a maker who does these types of events, nothing makes me more angry than MLMs at these things. There were several at the last event I did and I was just not amused.
Those MLM people are literally trained on manipulation tactics. Your Spidey sense is working correctly.
Why is this a hard pill to swallow? She was using like MLM 101 techniques. I would’ve been insulted they assumed I would’ve fell for it and not even MLM 202 techniques.
Maybe women should support women by not pressuring them to spend money on items that they don’t need or want. Or, you know, women should support women by not enabling their participation in a predatory scam.
Support is a pretty ambiguous word, is what I’m saying. You can twist it to mean pretty much anything that agrees with you. I don’t really take these things seriously.
In general, capitalism is really good at co-opting well-meaning slogans.
FYI, I know this isn’t the main point of the post, but no – they cannot be used in cooking. This is how you end up in the ER
You have my permission to be rude to anyone who advises such a thing and tries to imply you’re not a “girl’s girl”
Yeah, I support other women who aren’t jerks to me. I have my mom. I have a sister. I have women friends. Who the fuck are you, a stranger selling doterra?
I was told that I’m a bad person after calling another woman out for purposefully trying to seduce men with pregnant partners. I wasn’t being “supportive of her being true to herself”.
It wasn’t “weaponised” against me, but I had an acquaintance confront me for not vouching for her when applying for something. My friend, who was in charge of screening the applicants and knew that I was acquainted with her, asked me what my thoughts were when working with her/her abilities. I had told him, “idk, I’ve never actually worked with her before in any capacity and can’t provide an opinion.” Like, I barely knew her – she was a friend of a friend at best.
She got the spot, but I guess my friend at some point he had mentioned he came to me for input (which shouldn’t have happened either…), and she confronted me and was upset I didn’t strongly vouch for her. I told her the same thing I told him, which is that we’ve hardly interacted, and therefore really couldn’t provide him any insight or opinion. And then she said something like women should always be supporting women, that i could have put in a good word for her regardless, and that it reflected badly on me to not put in the effort to uplift another woman…which frankly I had no clue how to respond to her lol, and I just told her I wouldn’t lie about someone’s capabilities when selecting her for the position would also affect him, in the off chance she was not a good or proper fit.
This was a couple years ago, and maybe I’m in the wrong, but I think if the situation came up again, I wouldn’t do anything different – idk! Women should support women, but I dislike how it’s treated as a blanket statement or weaponised sometimes.
As that one lady tweeted, “i do not support all women. some of you bitches are very dumb!”
But really they’re just taking a reasonable idea to an idiotic extreme. Like I support all women having physical safety, food, and shelter, and being treated with basic human decency and respect. Support does not equal me giving my money to any rando because she asks me to buy crap from a predatory company I don’t need. That’s stupid, and I’d say this to her face.
You were very gracious and that person was very manipulative. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
Mine have been a little different and not related to MLM, but yes. In our mid-20s, I had a former friend who was a fellow “radical leftist” (like me and most of the other people involved in the examples below) who did things like this constantly.
The most extreme examples:
-They tried to argue that boundaries/hyperindependence can be a form of colonialism- when someone who was an anticolonial leftist rejected a friendship/romantic relationship with them.
-They complained that monogamy is a nonconsensual way of inhibiting (heterosexual) women’s sexuality- when a woman asked them to look out for their partnered female friend who was drinking heavily at a bar to “make sure she doesn’t do anything she regrets.”
-Their friend wanted to buy a plant at a small, PoC business that had just dealt with harassment and rejected a free plant from/hanging out with them to do so. So they made a bunch of passive aggressive social media posts about people who advocate support for small businesses are still capitalists supporting capitalism (they had also bragged about buying things from small, PoC owned businesses).
I’ve come to believe that even the most positive, beneficial general ideology or platitude can be weaponised by bad actors/someone looking to get something against others to try to get others to support what they want. I’ve come to ask myself if they looking to influence my behaviour, and how will it affect me/others/the world in general, in the specific instance they are advocating for? I’ve come to think the real value is holding onto your values but also using your personal judgment while avoiding black/white thinking and showing compassion for others without looking to control them.
This phrase gets weaponized in politics A LOT!
“Oh, you don’t support this woman candidate who believes you should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen for the rest of your life? What about wOmEN SUpOrtiNG WomEn?!”
Owner of a cat cafe I worked at about a decade ago was a woman (she came from money). We were the same age, early-mid 20’s. 95% of the staff were other women in the same age range.
She was awful. (Once texted me telling me I needed to give her an adequate amount of notice before calling out and that I was unprofessional. I was in the ER coughing up blood at the time. She was aware.) She was always trying to cut corners at the expense of the cats, to get us to do extra work for free (example: I am a writer and I was a publicist at the time, this was my side job. She expected me to do website copy and press campaigns on my own time). The good news is she was incredibly lazy and thus was almost never physically at the cafe so we ignored her attempts to cut corners that would harm the cats.
Anywho, if anyone pushed back she was constantly pulling this shit. How we weren’t supporting a woman-owned small business, women needed to support other women, etc.
I loved that job (minus her) but I only made it a year before I couldn’t deal anymore.
Hardly the only time it’s happened but it’s the one that came to mind first.
You can support all women until she proves that she doesn’t deserve our divine support. I would have told her, don’t try to manipulate me into purchasing your scam products. But, I’m confrontational. (Feral Gen X).
I support women’s rights and wrongs!!
Haha no, this was just an MLM tactic/manipulation. She didn’t even use the phrase correctly, and she knows it.
>I realized that while I absolutely love the CONCEPT of supporting other women with my money, in reality I don’t support ALL women in their ventures and that was a hard pill for me to swallow.
Nor should you. Some women are terrible people and their endeavors hurt others. They shouldn’t be rewarded with your money or your support.
Women support women by understanding that ‘no’ is a complete sentence. I’m usually a very nice person but I’ve been so done with these types of marketers. I just say ‘not interested’ and keep walking. Really upset a lady one day with NRG company. Just keep walking away so they are not waiting your time and they don’t inadvertently waste their own time.
I got that weaponized for criticizing trumps mouthpiece. I used to have something about supporting women in my bio on fb and another woman came at me for it. Like I support women who are ethical and doing the right thing and I support women’s rights for all, no matter what they choose to do with THEMSELVES. I don’t support racism, hatred, bigotry, transphobia or homophobia in ANYONE, including women. I think it’s such a bullshit thing to say. MLMs aren’t ethical. And not only are they trying to make sales but they will prey on customers to buy in. So NO.
Yes. I’ve sold at craft fairs before they started excluding MLMs. The MLM vendors would inevitably make their rounds to the table of every crafter and make the sales pitch about earning passive income on the side while supporting a female run business by signing up to be her downline. They added pressure by buying an item so you’d owe them something in return. They dropped $4 on earrings you made, so why aren’t you dropping a few hundred dollars on a starter sales kit? You must not support other women. You must be anti-women! Otherwise, you’d in the very least buy something from her store. And it’s all poor quality stuff she didn’t make being sold at luxury prices.
The craft fairs I ran into this the most with were the ones where half the vendors were MLM reps. The women who showed up to the fair with their handmade items never once pulled that shit with me.
/r/antimlm is full of stories like these! So frustrating. MLMs prey on women in particular.
Now there’s a thought stopping cliche if ever I heard one
Have you ever watched the Netflix movie “Do Revenge”?
One of the background themes of the movie is people weaponizing empowerment language to be cruel and manipulative.
Have you ever watched the Netflix movie “Do Revenge”?
One of the background themes of the movie is people weaponizing empowerment language to be cruel and manipulative.
In the wise words of some random Twitter account from a few years ago “I don’t support all women. Some of you bitches are dumb.”
‘Women supporting women’ is usually a dogwhistle for ‘give me unconditional support and validation in my objectively poor choices because we have matching junk’. Truly secure women don’t need to beg other women for approval.
Are you from the Quad Cities? Our little hipster maker fair has grown into a giant event.
I miss when it was small and only makers.
This is why I like to say women PROTECT women. DoTERRA woman tries to sell to me? Fuck off, go away. DoTERRA woman is being followed by some creepy dude? Omg girl I haven’t seen you in so long!! How’s your boyfriend?!
Here’s what you do –
You nod, smile and say “Of course I support women!!” And then add: “I’m supporting the most important woman in my life, myself, by not falling for such an obvious scam 🙃🙃🙃”
And then pat yourself on the back whilst walking away 😂💀
I would lose my mind.