"I Think We Contribute Enough," Says a Woman Who Believes the Ladies Shouldn't Pay Taxes
Published Dec. 14 2023, 5:20 p.m. ET
Women have done enough
When it comes to making extra money, I've had my fair share of side hustles. By far the wildest was participating in drug studies in the early 2000's. I was living in Los Angeles at the time and the back of the LA Weekly was a sea of paid drug testing opportunities. One could make anywhere from 50 bucks up to a cool thousand. I would be remiss if I didn't mention I already had a full-time job. I still needed the extra money.
It's been more than two decades since my time in Hollywood and it appears as if things have only gotten worse. Someone somewhere rebranded the exhausting idea of having several jobs and turned it into hustle culture. Don't let anyone fool ya, it's not more impressive if you have to work yourself to death. You're so strong! And for women, it's even worse, as the Equal Pay Act is still not a thing. This is why I am fully behind a TikToker by the name of Alexa Jay who says women shouldn't pay taxes.
Women fielding all the requests from people who need things from them.
Women are done with paying more for less.
Alexa Jay, who goes by @flexylexxxy on TikTok, is done. While sitting in her car, presumably to get away from the numerous individuals who need something from her, Alexa drops what her 2024 Presidential campaign should run on.
"When I say this, I'm dead serious," she says in a way that can only be described as dead serious. "I'm not trying to be funny. I'm not joking, nothing. I don't think women should pay taxes." Paying taxes does seem like to ask from a group of people whose rights are slowly being stripped away. That's like when I inevitably pay for a bad haircut and include the tip.
Paying as a woman in America feels a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. We keep getting the crap kicked out of us and we then pay the people for doing it. It's true. According to Fix the Court, "one quarter of our federal tax dollars – that’s 25 cents and not one-fourth – will be used by the federal government to pay salaries and expenses at the Supreme Court." Sadly this doesn't mean we can fire them.
Alexa goes on to say that women "contribute enough." Once again, she nails it. In April 2023, NPR (via Pew Research Center) reported that "women in opposite-sex marriages are still doing more housework and caregiving than men." In marriages where men and women split living expenses equally, "wives are still spending more than double the amount of time on housework than their husbands and almost two hours more per week on caregiving, including tending to children." Wow, I'm screaming!
"We suffer enough," says Alexa. Obviously that's more difficult to track unless you look at the fact that doctors often ignore women's pain. In 2022, the "Journal of the American Heart Association reported that women who visited emergency departments with chest pain waited 29 percent longer than men to be evaluated for possible heart attacks," per The Washington Post. And that's just one example. Don't get me started on reproductive health.
If all of this sounds depressing, it's probably because it is. Sadly, who knows if it will get better. The best we can hope for is things stay the same. A March 2023 study conducted by Pew Research Center found that the "gender gap in pay has remained relatively stable in the United States over the past 20 years or so," with women earning an "average of 82% of what men earned." It's important to note Black women and other women of color earn even less than that.
That's too much and two much!
Women also have to pay more for the same products. There is something I've never understood about haircuts. Obviously a complicated style is one thing but I'm referring to simple cuts. For example, I have a chin length bob. When I get a trim it's half an inch off the bottom with no frills. If a man gets a haircut, it's significantly less. Are we not both removing half an inch of hair from our heads? I would argue a man's cut is more complicated as scissors and razors can be brought into the mix.
This of course brings me to the infamous pink tax. This is not an official term but rather refers to the very real scenario where women are paying more than men for the same product. "A report from the Progressive Policy Institute shows the average tariff rate on women's underwear is 15.5% compared to 11.5% for men's underwear, which means the tax women are paying is 3.5% higher than men," via CBS News. This is not the only time that happens!
To wrap things up, I'd like to quote the great and wonderful Jane Curtin. "You know, the genders are different in how they approach things, and so I really think that women put a lot more guilt on themselves than need be." You hear that ladies? Drop the guilt and stop paying taxes.
