Today I happened across a headline on the Today show website that stopped me cold.
"My daughter punched a boy in the privates - I'm so proud". My first thought was that it had to be sarcasm. Of course, I had to read it.
The article is written by the mother of a preschooler. The gist of the incident is that the little girl got a note sent home from school, alerting her parents that she'd been reprimanded for her behavior in class that day. When asked what she'd done to deserve it, she told her mother that one of the little boys in the class had positioned himself proudly in front of her desk and told her to "Talk to Mr. Weiner". So she proceeded to do what made her mother so proud: she hauled off and punched him in the privates.
But that wasn't the eyebrow-raising part of the story. The mother's reaction was to haul the kid down to the hapless teacher's desk, where she demanded that the little boy be sanctioned for 'sexual harassment' and kicked out of the school, and told her that her kid was a hero for 'standing up for womens rights'. And if the teacher didn't comply? Well then, they'd just sue her and have her job.
I read the multitude of comments at the end of the article. I found the women's comments, for the most part, to be appalling. The cry for blood on the part of the little boy was disturbing. So was lauding the little girl as a 'hero', and a crusader for justice for women. What is this cry for violence?
There were voices of dissention, mercilessly quashed, mostly from men. One struck me as poignant. "Why the cry for sexual violence in response to a non-violent act?" The women said that the little girl was a 'victim', and that she had the right to apply violence in 'self-defense'. Self defense? Really?
Now, let me step back just a moment from this table, to establish a few facts.
I have survived the real thing. I know what molestation looks like, and rape, and sexual harassment. These things are violent acts, in and of themselves. They are power plays masquerading behind masks made of sex, designed to quash and degrade and enslave and subordinate. It has taken me years to get in front of the memories of long ago. I know the import of these words, some of the most powerful in the human language. In no way would I ever degrade anyone who has been victimized by someone else in one of these ways. This story, too, is a story for another time. Suffice to say that I have been branded, and I am in the unwanted sisterhood.
Do I think that little boy, sashaying up to impress the little girl with his sassy remark, meant to degrade or enslave that girl? Do I think that he had any understanding of the (adult) concept of sexual harassment? I do know one thing: weiners are funny, especially at that age, where one is just learning the difference between "I have one thing and you have another". I'm thinking that his quip probably sounded pretty cool to him when he said it. I don't think he's a 'troll' or a 'pervert' or a 'little fiend'. I think he's a pretty normal little boy who made the unfortunate discovery that the things he finds funny aren't necessarily everyone else's bag. Still, I can't sanction the education of discretion at the end of a fist to the genitals.
Would we sanction the punching of a girl in the privates by a boy? Under what circumstances would that be okay? I'll bet 9 of 10 people would say 'never'. Then why the double standard? The potential for pain and damage is twice as great for a girl to hit a boy in the privates. But there it is: the double standard.
Not so very long ago the double standard existed in reverse. I don't think anyone would disagree that women were a ways down the totem pole of importance in the recent past compared to their brothers. We have worked hard to overcome that, and I believe in my heart that we have. I think we have every advantage today that men do, unless you speak of absolutely gender-linked issues. (I don't think we want to share equally in contracting prostate cancer, or erectile dysfunction) If anything, the pendulum has swung further forward than back. Women are able to play the minority card and claim that credit as well. Women are now going to college in numbers far greater than men. We are paid equally in most instances and share the same perks.
But the biggest bonus for women is really the oldest one in the book. We got everything we wanted, and we still got to retain our 'protected' status. We only gotta be liberated if we want to. By default, if we don't feel like paying the bill for dinner, custom and courtesy dictates that the man step up. Or opening the door. Or tackling unpleasant things. Or fighting our own battles.
And here's the rub: you'd think we'd be grateful. But this newfound liberation, God bless it for its wonderful qualities, but it has an ugly underbelly. It seems to be an unwritten law of the cosmos that one group can't exist without stepping on the other. It's not enough to peacefully coexist in equality, happy in our own differentness, enjoying each other and celebrating how each sex compliments the other. No - when we stepped up to take our place at the table, we felt we had to step on men's heads to get there, kind of like a big game hunter with one foot on the trophy.
How many instances of this stereotype can you find on TV today? Beautiful, successful, witty, knowing woman, paired with bumbling, stupid, lazy, slovenly man? How about this one: failure father, who is laughed at and scorned by his children and the superior wife who barely tolerates him but bails him out again and again for comic effect? It may be just TV, or the movies, but we absorb it. We are sheeple, under the skin, and we feed on stereotypes.
How does this affect us? Slowly, it erodes our respect as women for the men around us. We are somehow not able to feel equal without trying to make them aware that we believe them to be inferior. We shame them, laugh at them, stereotype them. We pigeonhole them.
And just as a battered woman will come to believe that she truly is worthless, a man eventually comes to believe it too.
"Slacker" comedy abounds. We laugh, but is this really what we want out of our relationships? I'm with Paula Cole: "where have all the cowboys gone?" Well, Paula, the truth is we confiscated the horse and the job and gave him a shovel and the real important job of shoveling horse dung behind us as we rode around with the spangles in the spotlight that we really and truly deserved after being held down for all those generations and generations of injustice. Where is our cowboy again? No clue... he forgot how to ride and rope after all that time of internalizing that all he was worth to us was either wrapped up in his Wranglers or doing all the tasks we didn't want to do after all.
So now what?
It's a good question. Studies are beginning to show that the children that REALLY need rescuing are our boys. They've lost their stars to navigate by. The grandfathers and great grandfathers that were men back in the generations that appreciated their men have begun to fall by the wayside, and the fathers that have been part of the emasculation generation no longer know how. And we should feel BAD for them. We should - after all, we know how it feels to be deemed worthless. All that they have left is what society shows them is an acceptable role: buffoon, slacker, patsy, spider-killer, dungslinger.
Despite this depressing trend, those little boys who need love and respect are still there, waiting, eager to love and to please. They may be ten or thirty or fifty, but they all need the same thing, the same thing we all need as human beings: Love. Respect. Self-worth.
The world is large enough for all of us, after all. There's no need to push and jostle. We are so much stronger if we stand side by side, rather than fighting to take the top position. The strongest pairs among us realize the truth: that the top position is temporary, and to be traded back and forth as needed by strengths. Today we need his skills to navigate our journey's path. Tomorrow we may need mine.
This post, long and rambling as it is, comes back around to this. This is my love song to men. I appreciate you. I respect you. The human race would not exist without our joint effort.
- Thank you for doing all the things you do, quietly and with no fanfare, without seeking of praise or recognition.
- Thank you for the things you let me do, for encouraging me to be the best woman I can be.
- Thank you for being strong, and holding me up when I falter.
- Thank you for being weak sometimes. I need to feel needed, and to comfort you not only shows me I can be safe with you, but lets me give back to you in your hour of need.
- Thank you for your courage and for your heart. You inspire me and give me hope.
- Thank you for your innate sense of direction, which every man seems to possess, and women can only Garmin!
- Thank you for being my sense of direction, my bright star, which points the way.
- Thank you for my children, and for being a father. Without you, I must do twice the job with half the knowledge.
- Thank you for respecting me, and for respecting yourself. Your faith and justice are a beacon to others.
- Thank you for holding me, and the safety I feel when I am in your arms.
- Thank you for being the yin to my yang, the other half of the puzzle, without whom the universe would be incomplete. A woman CAN live her life without a mate, but was not designed to. There are things we need from you that we can not even put a name to, but the sense of completion when we are mated shows us that something was missing without you.
- Thank you for being YOU.
There is a reason that God is called "the Father". Protector, redeemer, judge, confidant, comforter. He created Man in his image. I am thankful to be a daughter of Eve, and more thankful for my Adam. May we strive to ever be thankful for each other, respectful of each other, and mindful of our own equality, as well as our unique strengths and weaknesses. Let this new world be a world where we treat each other with the same respects that we demand for ourselves, and tolerate no violence against each other.
