Women

Women

With all the scandals arriving on (in) the news; the scandals involving powerful men forcefully subjugating women, I have been evaluating my own behavior.  As a man, a white man of advanced years, I just felt a little self-reflection might be a good thing.  Maybe it’s something all American (I should only speak for the culture of which I am a part) men should do.

That being said; it should be apparent that I would have a lot of evaluating at my age.  My own mother was a very strong person, everything taken into account.  But, she was a woman of the WW II generation.  She was white, from Idaho and from a very religious family.  My own parents generation were racists (might as well admit it), by contemporary standards they were all pretty sexist.  Feminism was a long way in the future for them and my own mother would have just hated the whole notion.

But then, my mother didn’t take shit from anybody.  She had very strong opinions and was not about to change them.  Which was frustrating for a young developing Progressive Liberal (and feminist as it turns out) man.  It just never occurred to me that girls were any less equal than boys.  Being a straight male, I was totally fascinated by the female and had very strong attractions to getting to know them.  But, it never crossed my mind that girls shouldn’t have every consideration that boys should have.

Truthfully, it never crossed my mind.  And, I do not know why?  During my beer-boozy college days (about two years of that before I got married), I was probably kind of overbearing in my social behavior.  Yeah, I’d have to admit to that.  But, it was also the early days of birth-control, Free Love – too much beer, a war, - just a lot of new stuff going on.  And, women were really beginning to come out of the sexual straight-jackets that had been imposed on them for, like, forever.  Women, young women in the sixties and seventies could be somewhat sexually aggressive in contrast to their own mothers’ generation.

And that, was a head turner.  If I wasn’t masculinally confident and a bit of a bad boy, I couldn’t get any attention at all.  But, I didn’t have enough confidence to be pushy either.  “NO” was good enough for me – forever.  One “NO” and I was off the block, around the corner and gone.  Somehow, if the interest wasn’t obviously mutual, I (honestly) didn’t have the courage to go any further.  (Just being honest.)  It didn’t matter though because I did fall in love, get married and that was that.  But still, while a student, it seemed to me that a LOT of the smart kids did happen to be female. 

I didn’t have much trouble with school, for whatever reason, and tended to be in the good reader group.  Most of the good reader groups, in my schools anyway, were girls.  It would have been impossible to NOT notice that, even as a kid.  In my High School Daze, we had two basic strata; that is the College Bound and the Not College Bound.  The first group was a smaller group.  Still one of the only ways to avoid the Draft, was to get into college.  Now staying out of the Draft, was a real piece of encouragement for males.  So by that time the strata I found myself in, was pretty evenly balanced, genderwise.  Okay, maybe a few more boys than girls, but that was mostly because their parents put their sons education first.  Just the way it was back then. 

Now, in college there were still more men than women, but once again, that was mostly because of the draft (I believe).  In all of the classes I took, I do not remember any noticeable difference in accomplishments or grades.  Maybe, it was the case, but I don’t remember that being the case.  My first Adviser, was a man and he was a jerk.  My second Adviser was a woman just a few years older than I was, but I thought she was really good.  The Chair of the department I was in was a woman and she was wonderful and probably the reason I became reasonably successful in my chosen profession(s).

When I got back from the Viet Nam War, she was one of the only people who respected that, and didn’t socially shit on me.  I owe her a lot. 

Over the years I have worked for many female bosses and supervisors, some were very good and real leaders and some weren’t.  But, gender or sexual harassment never came up in my experience.  I have two daughters and I never expected less from them than I did from my four sons.  Yes, as a Dad (father) I was (and continue to be) … well … rather more protective of my daughters.  But, when it’s cold everybody hauled firewood.  Their mother was, and is, my best friend and life partner.  I do not have the ability to conceive of being other than respectful to any person who approaches me with a good heart.

So my fellow male dudes… maybe that is the thing to remember.  R_E_S_P_E_C_T.