This is not a screed against men (That would be too much like shooting fish in a barrel).
What I want to say is that men like Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau are our future, and you-know-who is an archaic example of testosterone poisoning. Let’s salute young and middle-aged men who have survived adolescence and managed to leave it behind them as they aged. They know themselves and they fully embrace women as equals (Don’t snicker; you know what I mean).
I live next to a park near downtown Oak Park. In the evenings or on weekends, it’s the rule, not the exception, to see men with strollers and toddlers in the park and in the restaurants. They cook and go to school conferences. They have female bosses and they promote females. Men routinely coach little girls’ sports teams and to a lesser degree, women are coaching boys’ teams. And there are even teams with both boys and girls on them. I can’t help but remember when I played high school basketball; girls could only dribble twice in a row and could not cross the center line; we were considered too delicate.
Men of my generation and previous generations couldn’t help it, and that’s a good thing — or was at one time. Men are hard-wired for aggressive or daring behavior: think Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” If you look at history, women have survived because of men’s aggressive behavior. They saw us as possessions and vessels to recreate themselves and would be damned if anyone would take what belonged to them. In time it came to be called “chivalry.” Aw shucks, guys, thanks for letting us live.
Eventually the ingenuity of men set us free from all-day cooking, cleaning, laundry and endless child-bearing and child-rearing. And — oops — they educated us. We’ve pretty much taken it from there. My mother had a saying: “Educate a man and you educate a man; educate a woman and you educate a family.”
Sublimation has been a big help to men. Decades ago I was bewildered when my husband’s consciousness left the room on weekends and entered the TV. I hate violent sports — tennis, everyone? — but apparently they soak up some of those pesky aggression molecules that tend to accumulate (By the way, the claim that women are more likely to be abused on Super Bowl Sunday is not true). There are so many sports where the risk of injury is part of the game. It has always stumped me. I used to think “at least no woman is getting beat up,” but now women are chomping at the bit to be included in those sports. It blows my now-estrogen-diminished mind.
Notes:
1. Every time I hear about a fraternity hazing gone wrong, sometimes resulting in death, I ask myself “why?” Why hurt a person or humiliate yourself in order to form some sort of bond? Is it a bond of friendship or humiliation? Why require or submit to such craziness? To prove yourself? To have friends? It’s outdated and crazy.
2. I used a male/female bathroom for the first time last week at Steppenwolf. I walked into the first one and there was a line of men at the urinals — backs to me, thank God — so I left. The next one had stalls for all. Whew. Later I found myself standing next to a man washing his hands. We smiled at each other in the mirror, and it felt very natural. I left the room humming, “I say, old girl, you did it, you did it, you did it” from My Fair Lady. It’s nice to be au courant. Would I want to do that in a deserted public bathroom? Not yet. Probably never.
3. A few years ago a young man told me you can always tell which man in a meeting has the most power: the one who’s not wearing a tie. Now it seems like men rarely wear ties for business, but some of them can’t carry it off. There’s too much loose material. May I suggest nice white undershirts reminiscent of Miami Vice or perhaps shirts with tab collars?