Our Mothers, Our Whores

I was born a male. I have lived my entire life as a male, and barring something unexpected I expect to die a male. It is not a source of pride, really, but an incontrovertible and undeniable aspect of who I am. I am a male, my astrological sign is Leo, I wear a size 11-1/2 shoe. These are simply facts about who I am.

I considered myself an “Enlightened Man” long before I’d even hit puberty. Owing largely to a strong maternal figure and a liberal upbringing, along with generally being more bookish than rowdy, I had a cadre of platonic girl friends at an early age (which, incidentally, endeared me in no way to the boys at school.) I was raised to respect women, to assume their intellect as I would assume any man’s. And for a long time, I thought I did this–even admitting an opposite sort of prejudice where I expect more from women than men, because I think women are generally smarter and better at constructing logical arguments. And so I went in my smug little way, happily traipsing along, silently denouncing the cat-calls of blue-collar workers and frowning disapprovingly at my friends’ misogynistic comments. Whatever vitriol being heaped upon men by feminists certainly did not apply to me, because I was an Enlightened Man.

Recently it began to dawn on me that I may have been, to borrow a French phrase, full of shit. There has been lots of warranted feminist outrage on the internet lately, from GamerGate to the wrongful termination of Jennifer Williams, to the #YesAllWomen twitter campaign, it seems like women are using the digital platform to take a stand for themselves. My gut reaction was to largely ignore these controversies because I didn’t think I should get involved. Surely I’ve never denigrated a woman or made her feel uncomfortable. I’m one of the “good guys,” the fellows that compliment ladies on their clothing and ask women for relationship advice and only look at their boobs for a few seconds rather than entire minutes. I believed I was supporting the fight for feminism by not diluting it with my testosterone. And then I decided to go against common sense and check the comments section.

I was absolutely stunned by the aggressive, angry responses I saw to these current events. Venomous, hateful threats of violence and rape. Denouncing what women wrote as divisive libel, women being called stupid and fake and sluts. Claims that women should take their grievances to lawyers or the police–I suppose to the Men Are Being Mean To Me Department, headed by Sergeant Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Head–instead of bringing these discrepancies to light. It made me ashamed to have been born a male, and that’s when it dawned on me that perhaps I have been an unwitting misogynist all my life.

I have never physically hurt or threatened a woman, I don’t think I’ve even yelled at women. But I’ve definitely dismissed women for being “hysterical” or “crazy” when they complained about inequities. I’ve certainly leered at women inappropriately–and thought I was somehow better because I did it quicker than some other men. I’ve told women I like their blouse or hairstyle, never thinking that maybe women in specific and people in general don’t feel like striking up casual conversations based around the fact that you’ve been scoping them out. At a young age, I was taught that if you like a girl, go ask her out; the worst she could do is say, “no.” I wasn’t taught to respect others’ privacy and not to open a relationship by asking someone to entreat partnership with a stranger. The discrepancies between my thought and deed piled up. I considered myself a swell guy for considering most men idiots while regarding most women as geniuses. It didn’t occur to me that I was actually giving guys a pass while rigorously subjecting women to my expectations.

As it turns out, I am a male, and I feel all of the entitlement that men feel towards women–that they should be grateful for my existence, that they should be buoyed by my attention, that somehow I was doing them a favor with my condescension. I even considered my non-involvement in Feminism as some kind of benevolent acquiescence to women. “You go girls!” I thought in self-satisfaction, “Tell those nasty men off!” Never thinking that I might be one of these “nasty men,” or even that my non-involvement was more evidence that I marginalized women and their silly feelings. It’s both a comforting and terrifying thing to learn that I can have profound realizations about myself this late in life. It’s nice to know I can still learn and grow, but about what else am I kidding myself?

I find I am the subject of a lifetime of conditioning, despite my Ms. Magazine mom, and that my lifetime is but a sliver of societal conditioning stretching back to the dawn of humanity. We all come to accept some things as simply true: sex sells. Women work hard to look pretty and should be regarded for it. If a woman wears certain clothing, she wants you to gawk. These aren’t concepts I arrived to through careful consideration but by observing the world around me and being trained by the same concepts that train everyone else. We are all in this together, men and women, all of us educated from womb to tomb that boys like farts and girls like flowers, and never the twain shall meet. And, if you don’t get my point by now, that’s absolute bullshit.

How will I proceed? Well, for one thing, I’m going to cut the crap. I can silently appreciate a blouse and roundly chastise my friends for misogynistic comments. I can attempt to regard women on their merits and not based on some condescending notion about their superiority. The problem isn’t that women aren’t running the world, it’s that women by and large aren’t running shit. That even well-respected women in positions of power can be called “emotional” for speaking their minds. And I might have counted myself among those who waved off women’s problems as “Woman Problems.” The one thing I know for sure is that women aren’t going to become equal by screaming into a vacuum that no man can hear. It will be up to us, menfolk of the world, to change our perception of women and how we treat them if we’re going to see true gender equality. If you believe in fairness and respecting others as you would want to be respected, then I don’t see how you could do any less. And if you don’t believe in fairness and think women should be seen and not heard, then go fuck yourself and throw yourself into the mouth of the nearest live volcano.

Women Are Grossbuckets

The picture of femininity is a floral-smelling, powdered twit (that’s “twit”) twirling her parasol and, with a lilting giggle, snorting morphine to abate the painful rib bruises caused by her whalebone corset. However the reality of women isn’t that divine, and in fact, once held to scrutiny, the fairer sex comes off looking pretty gross. This is not a relative statement, I’m not saying that women are grosser than men; indeed, both genders are fucking disgusting when you come to ponder it. However, women are grosser than, say, hedgehogs. And frankly, they shouldn’t be.

Most Women Have An Operating Rotation of One to Three Bras

Whenever you spot a busty woman wobbling down the street, consider the strong possibility that her underthings have a day or two of boob funk on them. Bras are goddamned expensive and they fight a losing battle against gravity every time they’re worn. By the time a lady has squirreled away enough cash for a new bra, an old one will have gone useless (except in making catapults), so she never gets above some pitiful quantity for her entire adult life. Even the lesser-bosomed walking among us, while they may have five or even seven bras, they likely cling to two or three “comfy bras” that get worn out like irregular socks. Wearing the same bra may be better than wearing the same genital undies two days in a row, but the bra is essentially skin tight, it’s snug against the pores, and no woman can claim her bra hasn’t gotten a bit whiffy after too many wears. I feel for you, big titted women of the world, but if I wear my comfortable t-shirt with the ripped collar and stain of unknown origin down the front for more than a six-hour stretch you act like I’ve farted in an elevator, so don’t start.

Women Discuss Their Poop. A Lot.

A fellow on the internet suggested that the recent movie Bridesmaids was, contrary to popular belief, geared towards men. He disregarded the fact that the plot is about a maid of honor’s jealousy at her best friend’s impending marriage and instead focused on one scene where Maya Rudolph is forced, due to a sequence of hilarious circumstance, to poop in the middle of the road while wearing a potential wedding dress. “It’s a shit joke!” he opined, “No woman would enjoy a joke about shit.” I wondered if he had met any actual women or if he was merely hypothesizing based on episodes of The Brady Bunch, because anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time with a lady knows that, once she’s comfortable, she won’t shut up about her endocrine system for a fucking second. And it’s not just a bathroom itinerary, mind you, but a detailed description of the size, shape, consistency, and odor of the particular waste in question. Get two or more ladies in a room with cocktails and they’ll start spinning copy for a laxative commercial. On the other hand, I have a friend that I’ve known since nursery school, and we never talk about poop. That’s real camaraderie, women, a friendship that has existed thirty-plus years without either of us delving into anything more meaningful than what’s happening in sports at the moment. My friend could be dying from an obstructed bowel and I wouldn’t know until he was in the casket. And I love him for it.

Those Cute Little Toes Are Encrusted in Crap

Next time you see some fine honey wearing open-toed shoes or outright flip-flops on hot city streets, consider the fact that when she gets home and kicks off those strappy numbers to cool her tootsies, the soles of her feet and any part that was exposed to the sooty air are smeared with the filth of ten-thousand public urination scofflaws. It amazes me, really, that so many women stroll around with their naked feet centimeters above dried vomit and rat droppings, yet they have the nerve to paint their toenails. That’s like hanging a Rembrandt oil painting on a garbage can. What you need to do is wrap those dogs in latex or at least a pair of fucking socks. Because if you come around me with those tire treads looking for a foot rub or your blackened raisin toes suckled, you might wind up losing your hooves at the ankle.

An old joke I heard sums up this diatribe pretty well: why do women wear makeup and perfume? Because they’re ugly and they smell bad. ‘Nuff said.

My Misogyny

It should come as little surprise to my devoted and burgeoning readership that I am a male. A white male, in fact, and I do embody all of the stereotypes and traits that implies. I have been a white male for as long as I can remember, and while there have certainly been times I wished I wasn’t a white male, by and large being a white male has served me well and I am not ashamed of it.

I do have one trait unusual to white males, or males in general: I have a lot of female friends. And not just chicks I make small talk with at work, not women I’d like to fuck but instead got stuck in the Friend Zone, but honest to goodness female friends, whose opinions and consideration I value tremendously, largely over that of my male friends. I think that this propensity of mine is derived from my mother, who had ERA meetings at my house growing up, and who is a great example of an independent, intelligent woman with her own interests and thoughts. Perhaps it also has to do with having been raised a Unitarian Universalist, where I was instructed on the great contributions made by women like Rachel Carson and Sojourner Truth. Whatever the case, I have always had a close cadre of female friends, and I’m not a homosexual.

I don’t really consider myself a feminist, though I do feel like women are equal to men in every strata. To me, it isn’t really something one should use to define one’s self. The default is that people are equal, in my mind. If you disagree, then you’re a bigot, so fuck you. Whatever you want to call me, I believe women to have all the capabilities as a man to do whatever they like, be it running a bank or playing baseball or just loafing around and watching TV. It’s not like I think women are automatically amazing or anything. Plenty of women are just as lazy as the average blog writer.

Here’s where I think my misogyny comes in: I love many of my female friends and depend on their counsel and commiseration tremendously. However, I have no patience for stupid and superficial women. I know a lot of people say that, and it’s not like one should exercise patience for a bimbo. But I really have no patience for them. None. I see a woman giving blow jobs to Corona bottles at the bar, I get disgusted. If I discover a woman has downplayed her own intelligence or personality to be more appealing to a guy, I want nothing to do with her. It’s not a matter of me being too refined or something, because I can appreciate a woman who enjoys bathroom humor. But if her interests begin and end with whatever her last boyfriend was into, I want her to go away permanently.

I have plenty of male friends who are dumb as posts. A couple of them are barely literate, to be honest. This is a trait I would never brook in a female friend. And that’s my misogyny, not that I think women are less than their male counterparts, but because I expect them to be more. And that’s a lot to put on a gender, especially one with such devotion to dieting.