I get labeled a misogynist all the time. But I'm simply pointing out that men and women are different. Or at least they used to be.
We’ve done away with gender roles. As a culture we decided the smaller the chasm between male and female, the more evolved our society would be. But there’s a reason you have yours and we have ours. We’re different, and that’s a good thing. Why is it that the same people who beat the celebrate-differences drum when it comes to cultures refuse to acknowledge the biggest cultural difference on the planet? Men and women. I guarantee you Japanese men, German men, and black men have a f#$& of a lot more in common than your average dude and chick. Let’s face it. Women are better with the kids when they get a boo-boo, but when it comes time to disarm the roadside bomb, that’s where the fellas come in.
I have a theory that I think will put things into perspective. Look at society as a giant X. Women on one bottom leg, men on the other bottom leg. The date: 1950. Women cooked, cleaned, took care of the kids, and mended torn dungarees. Men provided, fixed the car, patched the roof, and warded off intruders with a baseball bat. Then the sixties arrived. Each gender moved a little higher up the leg of the X. Women stopped shaving their armpits and men grew their hair out. Women started going to work and men started taking their car to the mechanic. Now we get into the eighties. Figure we’re about halfway up the X leg before the cross. Men start applying mousse and eyeliner, women are more worried about having rock- hard abs than they are about their kids. Now the nineties. School districts are being sued for girls’ rights to play on the boys’ football team, and being a woman trapped inside of a man’s body is as real a medical diagnosis as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In the 2000s, we officially hit the intersection of the X. Men are “metrosexuals” getting mani-pedis while their wives drive a jeep to their job as an NFL sideline reporter. If you go to a store today you can find unisex fragrances. This idea would have never worked in the fifties. Women’s perfume came in a glass slipper and smelled like baby powder and lilacs; men’s cologne came in a ship or a football and smelled like a pine cone.
I grew up in the seventies with a steady diet of “the reason girls play with dolls and boys play with trains is because of the Man’s homophobic agenda.” Bull$*%. My son loves trains. All boys love trains. They can’t help it, it’s in their blood. It’s amazing that the train wasn’t invented earlier, considering that young boys have been around for millions of years. It’s heroin for them— they go berserk for it. If you put a boy alone in a room with some Thomas the Tank Engine toys and some Barbies and don’t say a word, I guarantee that he’ll go right for the trains.
What the f*#& were my mom and her angry hippie friends thinking? And why haven’t they apologized?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member