May 4th, 2009

Oodles of words have been written about the differences between men and women. Trying to conceptualize just how many is like those graphics showing how many pennies are in a $10.5 trillion government bailout. For a long time, I wrote off most gender-based rants as a bunch of unenlightened crap–at the end of the day, regardless of sex, we’re all clumps of the same carbon matter. Man, woman, hermaphrodite, Spice Girl–chop us open and do we not all bleed?

Now, after a little more experience–and a delve into the science of it all–I’m willing to admit that when it comes to genders, there are a few minor (in a relative sense) differences that wind up slaughtering any attempt at rational communication or understanding (especially since one of those differences is the definition of “rational”).

If I had to encapsulate it (which I don’t but will anyway) I’d say it comes down to a limitation in imagination/empathy. For both sexes. For instance, I can imagine, at least somewhat, how the parents of a murder victim feel, or how an abused child feels, or a laid-off employee or a harassed waitress or a pregnant woman on the C train. But there’s no way in hell I’ll ever really know, or care to know, what it’s like for some dude who hasn’t been laid in 4 months to be standing in a church receiving line and see the girls’ varsity track team go bouncing by. Apparently, it’s horrible and embarrassing. Cry me a f&*$% river.

See? No empathy.

Of course, there’s another side to all this: If you are in possession of a working penis, then women are women–not people, made of the same matter as you, but alien creatures put on earth to taunt (and sometimes slake) a libido that has evolved to make damn sure you impregnate at least one of us before you get chomped by a tiger or hit by a bus.

Women, it turns out, don’t really feel like being screwed or pregnant (or both) for 85% of their waking (and sleeping) lives. Plus this whole feminism thing came along, so we don’t have to rely on men for food and shelter. So here we have an impasse: You’re biologically programmed to think of us as objects, and socially condemned for doing so. Ha–sucks to be you! Oh wait, except we’re the objects. Shit.

The only way to cure men of this view, apparently, is to hand them a female infant, and tell them she’s the product of their sperm.

All this I discovered at a bar one Saturday night. I’m on the town with my father–hey, parents are people too–and we head to a packed whiskey joint in Brooklyn. We squeeze into a spot beside two thirty-ish men slugging Coors Light spiked with liquid testosterone, and violating every woman in the room with their eyes. The dark haired one, handsome in a “I know I’m hot because I’ve been getting away with shit my entire life” way, yanks his lecherous stare away from the bartender’s exposed belly button and glances at me. Then he eyes the jovial white-haired man standing next to me, and smirks.

Sigh. No, you androstenedione-snorting pervert, I am not his mistress. Jesus.

“Hi there. You, uh, want my chair?” he asks me with a hand flourish and an indelicate grin.

“No thanks. We’re fine.” (Note to men: Don’t hit on a woman in front of her father. It opens up a world of Freudian shit that you’re neither able to nor want to understand.)

“How about for your friend, here?”

“He’s my dad.”

Interested, the testosterone addict turns to my father. “You’re her dad? Really?” He slugs the rest of his drink. “That’s cool. The dad who comes out on Saturday night. That’s cool.”

My dad smiles a “We’re both dudes, and you’re fooling no one by talking to me” kind of smile.

“I’ve got a daughter too,” the would-be impregnator goes on. “She’s the love of my life, easy. Eight years old, already beautiful.”

He glaces at my face to gauge my reaction. Congrats! You procreated! And now you’re a father, who hangs out at bars ogling women. No doubt your child is assured a healthy and balanced view of men in her adult life.

I look to my dad, hoping to share an eye-roll, but he’s grinning like a fiend. “It’s amazing! When you have a daughter, your whole outlook changes,” he gushes. “There’s no getting around it. All of a sudden there’s this little person in your life You look at her, and realize, ‘Wait, women are people!’”

The men jerk their eyes from any exposed breasts in the room and bury guilty gazes in their glasses. The mood has flipped, a proverbial cold shower poured over the bar. Even the women in the room notice, standing up a little taller, no longer hunching to hide mammaries and shoulder blades and other exposed flesh. Now who’s grinning like a fiend.

“I guess you’re right,” Cassanova mumbles, groping in his pocket for his phone.

So there we have it, tried and tested–an anthem for the “new new wave” of the feminist movement (cause let’s face it – the old new wave wasn’t going all that well). The motto we can all shout from the rafters:

Women are people too. Duh.

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