I know this is a weird screed for March 8, and I’m probably going to get sh*t for it, but what else is new? [Note: I reference sex acts in this post.]
Anyone who has read one of my books or watched LYVIA’S HOUSE knows that I’m a proponent of women’s friendships, women helping women, and women’s rights. But this International Women’s Day, I have something to add to that message:
If we, as WOMEN, don’t also scrutinize and alter how we think about and interact with MEN, whether we are siblings, friends, colleagues, significant others, or mothers of men, we are only fixing the leaks on one side of the boat.
Look, we were all spoon-fed the ideology growing up: A WOMAN can only be this, a MAN can only that. They fed it to us like it was manna from the gods, when it was actually old feces with added coloring, artificial flavoring, and no nutrients. Yet we ate it up, absorbed it, and it has become part of what we are.
Everything society taught us about sex and sexuality, about “good” and “bad” male and female characteristics, comes from a time in human history when women propagated the species, breastfed them in caves, leaving men with the only task of going out to kill dinner. Obviously in that scenario there were certain protocols to be adhered to if one wanted to live through the winter.
Things have changed for humankind, haven’t they? Time to get rid of that kneejerk, dinosaur mindset, because what was once imperative for survival, has now become toxic, dysfunctional, and even dangerous.
I was a high school teacher for a number of years, I lifted weights with male bodybuilders, am married to a man who had four biological sons and I have one; I am surrounded by men, young and old. And they talk to me.
Here are just some of the things I’ve witnessed, some of the confessions I’ve heard when I was teaching high school:
1. A boy eviscerated by his male AND female classmates because he broke down crying in the lunchroom after his mother’s death.
2. SEVEN different boys between the ages of 16 and 18, at THREE different schools, who told me that after their first sexual experience, their female partner had talked about said experience with male and female classmates, mocking the boy’s performance, which he was then taunted with by other classmates. (I verified this with the girls in question. Teachers, take note–this is what’s going on when you’re trying to teach calculus)
SEVEN boys. And it gets worse, because two of those boys, after their female partner pleasured them with oral sex, offered said partner same to return that pleasure to her, and instead of appreciating the gesture, the girl admonished him: “Guys don’t do that,” and then went and told other classmates who mocked him, calling him a p**** e****.
You have to ask yourself who’s teaching teenagers about sex, and what the hell they’re being told. Imagine the scar on those boys, imagine their sexual encounters going forward.
3. A mom who came in to pick up her son from the dean’s office after he and another boy had gotten in trouble for fighting at school. In front of me, she looked at him with disdain and asked him, “Did you win or lose this time? If I find out you lost AGAIN, I’ll tell your father and he’ll beat the sh*t out of you.”
At the gym. Here are things I’ve been told by bodybuilders with so much muscle definition they look like they could break a brick just by touching it:
1. “My mother loves my brother more than she loves me. Actually, that’s not true, I don’t think she loves me at all. I know she’s ashamed of me, because I don’t make the same amount of money he does.”
2. This one was told to me not with anger, but with supreme sadness: “I love my wife so much, but she doesn’t love me anymore. She doesn’t say it, but I can tell, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
3. “I have a secret. It’s a terrible one, and even though I feel safe when I talk to you, I can’t tell even you.” Of course, the big ‘terrible’ secret was that he was gay. He later killed himself when he was outed by a ‘friend’ and his only living parent, his mother, disowned him.
On to the workplace. We’ve all dealt with misogyny from men in our workplaces, but at the various jobs I’ve held, I’ve dealt with misogyny from WOMEN. I’ll just share one:
Selling cars, eons ago, to help pay my college tuition, said to me by a female customer, with complete and utter disgust: “What are you doing here? Women don’t sell cars. What, do you think you can get men like my husband to buy a car from you if you offer them sex?”
And at the playground, with other mothers of male toddlers. Let me emphasize TODDLERS:
1. Boy falls down, little chubby knee bleeding. His mom says: “Stop crying. Don’t be a baby.”
2. Said to me, by another mom, of her three-year-old, “I’m just worried that he’s not ‘manly’ enough.”
3. Said to me, by same mom, of my three-year-old: “I see your son is like mine. You must be worried too.”
No, I wasn’t.
So, apart from lobbying for women’s rights (and voting for those who support them) we also have to think about what we teach our sons, what we expect from our male partners, what we accept from our male AND female colleagues. We have to be brave enough to buck the system and be strong enough to bear the consequences from society as is when we’re pointed out and ridiculed, even ostracized, for bucking tradition.
To rid ourselves of the stench of the patriarchy, we cannot be complicit in it. We have to work together, all humans, regardless of sex and orientation to bring our values into the 21st century.
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