The vast majority of men on this psychotic planet don’t understand women, mainly because they don’t care to.
Women, a mighty plurality of XY chromosome-bearers on this Earth believe, are silly and weak and they’re starting to get above themselves, you know, wanting to control their vaginas and uteri, running for office, being workplace supervisors, and other lunacies.
Me? I’ve always tried to stand on my head trying to understand those people whose genitalia are slightly different from mine. (Really, read up a little on the development of male and female sex junk as embryos develop in the womb; when all is said and done, there ain’t much diff. between this one and that).
I’ve always been more fascinated by women than men. By and large, growing up as a male, I was baffled from the start by the proscribed and compulsory ways we guys are supposed to act and be. We’re expected to strut around like peacocks, hiding our emotions, never listening, only barking, pretending not to feel pain or hurt, ready at the drop of a hat to use violence to solve problems or settle arguments. What a bunch of bores!
Women, though, are allowed to feel. To care. To caress. To nurture. To hold things together. To be strong when everybody else is falling apart. To be, in other words, decent human beings.
[Image: Chicago Tribune]
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Which gang would you rather hang around with?
Anyway, I’ve done scads of reading and questioning and contemplating on the topic of who woman are. I’ve familiarized myself with the likes of everybody from Émilie du Châtelet to Virginia Woolf to Adrienne Rich to Roxanne Gay. I’ve watched and noted all the many women of my life. I like to think I know a little something about them but the reality is I probably know next to nothing. That’s okay, as long as I keep digging.
Here a quote I dug up this AM, from Sarah Vowel’s 1997 book, Radio On: A Listener’s Diary:
I took back the night. And it’s all mine until I get stabbed, raped, mugged, shot.
My guess is if you can grasp all the meanings behind that line, you might be able to know, just a bit, what it is to be a woman in the year 2017.
Vowell
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