Yes, but in the minds of men the valley isn't quite as wide as you think it is. The third category women could shoot for is being equals but most women, in my experience, really don't want men to treat them like a man because men don't treat each other gently. All that hazing that women fighter pilots and such complain about -- yeah, men do that stuff to each other all the time and we're not allowed to cry and complain about it. Not being able to fight off attacks and abuse is a sign of weakness. Crying and complaining about it shows that you aren't up to being treated as an equal. Changing standards is even worse and creates the same impression that affirmative action does -- that the person can't really do the job and doesn't deserve to be where they are on their merits. Some women can and do pull this off. For the rest, that really only leaves the other options of sex toy or pedistal goddess that I can see. I'm sorry but the minds of many of my fellow men are not sophisticated enough for more complexity than that.
Why?
The reality is that women are generally physically inferior to men. That's why women's sports don't sell very well and why men and women generally don't compete against each other (letting transsexuals compete as women should illustrate this, too). It's also why, even in liberal liberated households, that when they hear a strange noise in the night, it's the man who gets out of bed with the baseball bat or fire poker to find out who the intruder is. There are other issues, but without going into detail when men evaluate women on the basis of things that matter to men -- stoicism, physical prowess, mechanical intelligence, etc. -- women often come up lacking. Many women make poor men so, judged as men, they are inferior. The way not to be judged as wholly inferior if you don't want to compete as a man is not to be judged by the same measure that men judge each other or to be judged in an area where men are inferior.
The sex toy tries to play the man's game of being promiscuous but doesn't add anything that men admire. Yeah, that get's some pseudo-respect but it's the sort of uncaring respect that you can also get from fear and it doesn't last. Because of that, the sex toy ultimately gets treated as a lesser being. She's somewhere just above a blow-up doll and a sheep on the moral scale. They are entertainment, not really human.
The pedistal goddess plays a different game. The idea is to out-do men in an area where men do poorly. As the above conversation (and this whole thread) illustrates, men are often severely lacking when it comes to honor and dignity. Women can compete favorably with men by that measure and can even blow their doors off. The reason why the pedistal goddess gets the respect of men is that she's earning it, by outperforming men in an area that men respect but are often lacking in. Basically, men respect the pedistal goddess because he know's she's morally superior to him despite the fact that she's lacking physically and in other ways. That moral superiority allows the pedistal goddess to demand respect and get it. Similarly, the woman who dedicates herself to raising children is also doing something that men often respect (at least when it is their children) but often don't want to do themselves. The sex toy, on the other hand, offers nothing for a man to respect. Worse, she raises the whole specter of paternity and committment if a man does commit to a long-term relationship with her.
Does that mean that a woman needs to be perfect? Of course not. But they should compete in the realm of honor and integrity such that they are better than men and men will respect that. Men are all about respect. They either respect you or they don't. Women can compete here and should, rather than trying to out-men men unless they are really up to the challenge.
The only alternative is to find something else that women can do better than men that men will respect them for. If you have any other alternative suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.
And please note, before writing an angry reply, that I'm fully aware that this is an oversimplificiation and that there are some women who can compete favorably with men as men in various areas including business and politics. But a lot of women apparently can't and don't and the women who do can wind up paying a price in other areas. For example, a lot of men are turned off by women who compete as men. And, of course, I don't particularly find a lot of this admirable. I'm not saying that it's a good thing that men behave this way. I'm simply saying that they do.
There's a line from the movie "Staying Alive" that you remind me of. A woman looks at Tony and says, "Guys like you aren't relationships. They're exercise."
Shalom.