mad blogging


I suppose it had to happen sometime — and I'm not sure which I mean more, the inevitability of me blogging an impulse-driven rant or being accosted by a Democrat provoked by my little Bush button:


In any case I'm still shaking from the encounter. Shaking with rage, that is.

It was not long after midnight tonight, and I was waiting on the Pacific St. platform for my Brooklyn-bound D train. Somehow I ended up standing not far from a young, initially somewhat handsome-looking caucasian guy with a messenger bag covered with pro-Democrat buttons, including some for Kerry and some just generally anti-war. Although I don't usually wear my button in the most prominent place — on my shoulder — I was pretty sure he'd seen it as I reached into my purse to retrieve the book I've been reading, Steven Rhoads' fascinating volume, Taking Sex Differences Seriously.

This, it proved, was something akin to waving the proverbial red flag in front of a bull (and my purse is in fact red). Not long before our train approached, the guy broached conversation: "You don't really believe that, do you?"

"Actually I do." I gave him the tight smile one reserves for adversaries. What possible motive could he have for conversing with me other than having an argument? In my peripheral vision, nearby passengers on the crowded platform appeared to be slightly inching away from the anticipated fracas.

I'm not one of those people gifted with a talent for remembering things verbatim, so I don't recall the exact "facts" he mentioned, but basically he cast aspersions on our president's stance regarding women, mentioning something about daycare.

I fumbled for an answer, but responded confidently, "Actually, I'm not convinced daycare is in the interests of the many women who would prefer to stay home and raise their children themselves."

He was visibly shocked at this response, and tried for a snide rejoinder intended to get my goat by aping outdated chauvinism. "You think women should just stay home with the children?"

I respond with fierce über-feminist venom: "That's just the problem. That women are demeaned for choosing to stay home with their children as if that's a less viable or reasonable option."

Sensing a battle he doesn't want to wage, the guy switches to another tack, abortion, and says something about the importance of choice (which is rich, for him, the man — who will never have to actually bear the consequences in his body of ending a life inconveniently sired — to lecture me, the woman — who actually could face that result of sexual misfortune). I've got an answer for this, too: what about the women too young to choose — i.e., the unborn women? But evidently my couching of this point is too subtle and he doesn't get what I mean.

About this time our train enters the station, and he switches to a sort of sympathetic, quasi-Marxist approach about how this success of the Bush administration in "gaining power by duping ignorant women" is akin to what Bush has done with the poor ...

"Don't you think that's pretty arrogant? Presuming that I don't know all the facts or am not fully informed in making this decision?"

"... the poor ..." he responds. People are definitely sidling away at this point.

I repeat my charge of arrogance. There is nothing as infuriating as a liberal-minded male pretending to be a good feminist. And in fact, in almost all my experiences, a man who too assiduously defends the rights of women from a feminist perspective usually isn't quite as woman-friendly as he'd like to let on. It's more like he's learned a language he considers most effective for getting what he wants from us.

Finally I'm forced to say it: "Look, I don't think abortion is in my best interest, and neither is John Kerry."

The train doors open, and I step into the car, finding a seat. A woman approaches and tries to take the vacant middle seat next to me, but the Democrat deters her with some excuse I didn't hear, sitting down so he can continue "talking" to me.

Still stuck on the abortion issue, he mentions something about population problems in Bangladesh and India and I resignedly close the book in my lap. "Actually I have been to India," I respond. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it. He repeats his point about population problems, and I sit there for a moment thinking about this. What if those people don't consider it a problem? In the space of a probably 2-5 minute train ride, there simply isn't the time for the nuanced response I'd like to muster. Ha! Nuance. Coming from me, the Republican. I stare blankly at a name on my book: Christina Hoff Sommers, an early heroine of mine and author of the book Who Stole Feminism? She is one of Rhoads' recommenders on the back-jacket copy.

"Why are we having this conversation?" I ask, finally. "Obviously I'm not changing my views, and neither are you."

He attempts flattery. "Well, you seem like you're well informed, so I'm curious why you're voting for someone who _________" Then he launches into a totally loaded question about Bush and the number of Arabs we're killing.

"That's a pretty loaded question," I object.

"Actually it's pretty simple," He avers. Liar. It presumes an agenda and we both know it.

He mentions some well-rehearsed facts about the number of people we've killed in Afghanistan and then throws in the trump card: he was actually there in 2002 and was horrified by the things he personally saw going on.

"Well I know (of) a woman who was also in Afghanistan around that time, and was very impressed by the things she saw the Bush administration doing for the rights of women," I assert — and throw in my trump: "And she calls herself a liberal!"

He throws out more well-rehearsed "facts" unflattering to the Bush administration. It's like a Mormon moving on to phase II of the Latter-Day sales pitch.

Mercifully we are between the 9th St. station and my own. "Look," I respond wearily. "I'm not trying to say the Bush administration is perfect, or that it hasn't made mistakes, but I would rather trust my future to him than to John Kerry. And this is my stop. Have a good night."

Exeunt Republican.

It was as I walked up the steps that the shakes began. Even still, some sixty minutes later, my cheeks are still flushed from the conversation. (Clearly Rhoads knows a thing or two about how conflict and competition differently affect men and women, even if I am, quite possibly, "high testosterone.")

I wouldn't say I'm distressed exactly. More, frustrated that I didn't think of better rejoinders (interesting, by the way, that none of my remarks stooped to cheap shots at Kerry, and that everything had to do with the demerits of my candidate). And I'm pissed as hell at yet another instance of stupid male arrogance disguised as noble liberal-mindedness.

His is especially enraging because of that tack: pretending to be on my side, care about my interests. Too bad I didn't wield more of the anger and sense-of-injustice stirred up by reading Rhoads' book! This is an analysis, after all, that finds women to have been the real losers of the sexual revolution — a movement that lets men like this Democrat get away with more no-strings-attached sex and less commitment than he could have enjoyed 20 or 30 years ago.

A movement related to which women are entering the workforce in greater numbers (perhaps) only to bear greater responsibility as they now get to juggle the dual burdens of motherhood and career.

A movement as partial result of which women now often put career before the birthing of children, resulting in greater difficulty in conception (because of delaying children till later in life) and the aforementioned motherhood-career challenges (because having a career before children tends to be harder than having children and then a career).

In his chapter "The Sexual Revolution," Rhoads comments that "since the sexual revolution began, woman have been thinking worse of men." One author he cites remarks: "'Lots of women feel rage toward men. It was a revelation to me that you may be the nicest guy in the world and the women you encounter may have had bad experiences with men, and that will affect their dealings with you'" (Stefan Bechtel in a July 4, 2000 cover story for C-Ville Weekly, cited in Rhoads 118).

Generally speaking, I haven't been as hurt as many women, perhaps largely because I haven't had sex. But nonetheless, I can understand the rage. Much of my anger has to do with a feminist movement I find to be profoundly anti-woman, for reasons I have somewhat alluded to already. But it is also anger with men themselves, who in utter selfishness exploit the anti-woman bias of the feminist movement to serve their own interests while pretending, as this guy did, to have a genuine concern for my (our) well-being. That guy didn't care that much about women's rights! He likes the fact that because of our supposed "advances in status" he can now get sex far more easily than he could have in the past, with less obligation to commit or provide resources in exchange, and with less fear about the unintended consequence of a child. Thanks to the ease of abortion, such inconveniences are easily done away with at a cost that is, on his part, merely financial if anything. In saying that, I don't mean to be insensitive to those of you reading this who could have been on either side of such a situation; I am more attacking the men who take advantage of abortion as further license for profligate, irresponsible behavior even though the woman bears the greatest long-term (physical and emotional) costs of such a choice.

Not only that, but as Rhoads points out, the less-onerous consequences of a man's sexual license (STDs) are again likely to be born more heavily by the women he sleeps with: "Women exposed to an STD are biologically more susceptible to becoming infected than are men exposed to an STD. From one act of intercourse, for example, a woman is more than eight times as likely to get HIV and about four times as likely to get gonorrhea as her male partner. ... Since an infected partner is often symptomless, it is very hard to control or protect against these diseases" (108).

So for all these reasons and more ... I'm angry. Rhoads sums up the situation nicely: "Of course, most men want to marry someday, but these days it takes longer for them to commit. I believe this reluctance is a result of the sexual revolution. If sex were not so easily available, young men would undoubtedly be more focused on relationships and on finding and attracting 'the one.' As political scientist James Q. Wilson has said, it should be no surprise that men won't commit 'if they can get sex, cooking and companionship on a trail basis, all the while keeping their eyes peeled for a better opportunity elsewhere.'" (Rhoads, 121, cites Linda Waite, "The Negative Effects of Cohabitation" in The Responsive Community, Winter 1999/2000: p. 15, and Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families.)

To quote the classic movie Network: I'm mad as hell! But I'm not quite sure what "not taking it anymore" would look like. Sigh. Meanwhile I'll keep wearing my button and prepare better retorts for the next cocky Democratic male ...

posted @ 01:59 AM on Sun - September 12, 2004 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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