|
|||
Anglo Women are an endangered species This emergency situation has happened over the last fifteen years. They used to be extremely common, but now are very rare. Perhaps the U.S. Fish (ahem) and Game Commission should be informed to add them to the endangered species list. (After all, they make good eating.) It would be a shame to lose them completely. Some strange disease has converted nearly all of them into female persons. This has, in turn, forced most men to behave most of the time as if they were male persons, and a male person treats female persons and male persons the same way. This has been a radical change, and not all for the good. In particular, a male person is not allowed to notice that there is any difference between a female person and a male person. Depending on the circumstances, doing so can actually get him into a great deal of trouble. The least of his worries is to make the female person mad. But in a working situation, committing such crimes as complimenting her on her looks, or even worse, asking her out on a date, can get him fired for sexual harassment. As a result, most professional workplaces have become filled with persons of indeterminate gender. Or at least that seems to be my experience. Six years ago I broke up with my last girlfriend after eight years together, and what I'm finding is that there are no women around me anymore. I don't remember it being like this 14 years ago. I spent six years trying to accept that I was no longer a man and accepting my role as a male person; trying to become comfortable with the fact that I would spend the rest of my life alone, surrounded by female persons but not having any contact with women, any kind of contact at all, physical or otherwise. What's the difference between the two? A woman knows that she's female, that she's surrounded by men, likes that fact and is completely comfortable with the fact that she's different from a man. Vive la différence! A woman wants a man to love. A female person ultimately doesn't like being female or indeed any gender at all; she wants to be exactly the same as a man; she wants everyone to forget all the differences between them. And yet there's mixed feelings there, because often female persons dress in ways which compliment the physical differences between them and men. Which is all well and good, except that you as a man had better not notice it when she does so because then you'll be committing the cardinal sin of treating her as a woman instead of as a female person. Female persons have noticed that men greet each other by shaking hands, so now all female persons want to shake hands, too. Equality at last! I've got some bad news for them: men don't shake the hands of female persons the way they shake each other's hands. Men use a very strong grip; it's a way of communicating health, strength, vitality and to some extent virility. A man with a very weak grip is suspect. In the old days, a weak grip implied that he was gay. Now it just means he's a wimp. Regardless, a man with a weak grip will not get the respect he'd get if his grip was strong. Thus has it always been, though it's not often talked about. If I used that same grip on a woman's hand that I use on a man, she'd probably scream from the pain, for I am quite capable of crushing her hand, and that's the degree of strength I routinely use when I shake the hand of another man. Unfortunately for female persons, there are irreducible physical differences between men and women that they'll never eradicate. Men are larger and stronger and nothing will change that. And there are other differences, too. But that doesn't stop them from trying. So male persons are not supposed to utilize any capability they have that a female person doesn't also have. And they never, never are permitted to notice the physical differences between female persons and male persons. And God forbid you should actually open a door for a female person, or let her go through it first. Chivalry is discrimination. So for six long years I tried to get used to being a male person and tried to become comfortable with the idea that there would only be no women around, only female persons. And for six years the only women in my life were encoded in JPEG. And then three weeks ago I took a trip to Vegas and blew that all to hell. There are things which women and men can do with each other that female persons never do with male persons. A woman's face lights up when she sees her special man. She hugs him. She puts her arm around his waist and holds him. They sit next to each other with no gap between them. There's no 3-foot privacy boundary between them. They cuddle. They sleep together. They call each other on the phone just to hear the other's voice. They share their triumphs and tragedies. They love each other. They care about each other. They're special to each other. And I realized that I can't live without that. I don't want to meet female persons. I want to meet, get to know, and learn to love a woman and have her love me back as a man. And how did six years of self-indoctrination fall apart so rapidly? I found a place where women are employed and where they treated me like a man. It woke something in me I thought was dead, which I had spent six years trying to kill. Now it's back, full force. It's normal and healthy for a man to love a woman. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not a sin. It's a beautiful thing. It almost seems ludicrous to have to state that explicitly. But to every female person around me, it's a crime. I can't love a female person; I can only love a woman. And I don't know any appropriate women who are single. Which is why I've suddently come to hate female persons now. For six years they've helped the process of trying to emasculate me. And it's the reason why for the last six years I've been miserable: because for six years I've been desperately lonely, and for six years I've been punishing myself because I felt I wasn't supposed to feel such a thing. I finally realized all these things after visiting a place where several women treated me like a man. And where was this wonderful place which actually contained women and not female persons? A strip club. Yup, a place where men go and pay women to take their clothes off. At such a sleazy place, I was actually at peace with myself for the first time in six years. You pay for a "lap dance" and you pay a lot, but I'm not hurting for money. This was a special occasion. The previous month had been extremely bad for me (through no fault of my own) with the entire universe spending that entire time shitting on me, and I took a vacation in Vegas and decided that I was entitled spend some extra money to have someone, anyone, treat me extra nicely for a change. So I went to a strip club and paid beautiful young women to be particularly friendly to me. This is not something I do often. Since moving to San Diego I've done it exactly once here. Partly that's because the rules in San Diego are brain-dead, but mostly because it just isn't my style. And I don't visit Vegas all that often. But in Vegas the dancers can and do dance nude and still get very close to the client (me) – at a very high price. But as I mentioned, I felt like treating myself, so I actually spent many hundreds of dollars on this, something I probably will never do again. (Understand that this represented a minor expense for me; because I am very well off financially.) And they were women and they treated me like a man and I realized that I liked being treated like a man instead of like a male person. Now I certainly don't expect the average single woman I meet (if I should manage to be lucky enough to meet one of this rapidly vanishing species) to act like a stripper from Las Vegas (not, at least, until we get to know each other EXTREMELY well). But there are a lot of ways that women can relate to men which are not scandalous or sexual, things that female persons would never ever consider. I'm a teddy bear. I love to hug and cuddle. That's sufficiently common among men that you all know the term, but sufficiently rare to be worth giving a name to. There's nothing scandalous about that; you can do it in public without anyone getting upset. No-one ever hugs me because female persons don't do that to male persons, and I don't know any women who might consider doing it. It can be a genderfied act without being overtly sexual. (I might mention, just in passing, that every single stripper I patronized hugged me at least once and in many ways that was the part of it I liked the most, for I am starving for hugs. And they were good hugs, not just token squeezes. One dancer let me hug her several times during the lap dance. And she hugged me back, too, and it was wonderful. That was probably the single best lap dance I got while I was there.) I went to one place twice. First on a Sunday, and there was one stripper there named Raven (not her real name, of course). Now I'm what the strippers refer to as a "nice guy". I'm free spending and I'm generous with tips and I'm gallant and talk to them while they do their work, and I'm not bad looking, and I'm friendly and respectful and not lewd but definitely aware of them sexually (as I should be, for that's the point), and I don't try to get away with anything. I'm well behaved. I pay good money for good service, but I don't try to take anything which is not freely offered. I paid Raven $200 plus a big tip for a private dance on Sunday. And she gave me her card. Actually, it's a card the club gives them where the dancers can write in their "names" and mark the nights they'll work. And she invited me back – why not? I was a good customer. Wednesday I returned to the same club. I walked in as she was on the stage, and she recognized me immediately and her face lit up and she said "You came back!" and called me over to the stage and embraced me; later she sat down and talked to me. I again paid her about $200 for private dancing and again tipped well. Later after I'd spent as much money as I could justify to myself (I had more but really needed to stop) I was walking towards the door and she saw me and asked me if I was leaving. And here's where six years of self-indoctrination to be comfortable being a male person fell completely to pieces. She could have just given me a friendly "Good bye" but she didn't. She walked over to me, gave me a big long hug and a kiss on the cheek. She didn't need to do that. Nothing forced her to treat me that way. Nothing whatever. Now I have no illusions about her motivation: it was mostly mercenary (though that doesn't completely explain that last big hug). But it doesn't matter why she treated me the way she did; the point is that way her face lit up upon seeing me when I walked in, that initial embrace, that eagerness to talk to me, that hug as I left – those are the things I need to be happy in life. I need to get that from someone. I need that to happen a lot. I need it daily. I need it as much as I need food or sleep or water to drink. And I haven't got the slightest idea, not the faintest hint, how to get that without paying for it. (And paying for it routinely is not an acceptable answer.) Because I can only get that from a woman, and I'm surrounded by female persons. The only women I know of are married, engaged, or work in strip joints. Every female who's single that I know is a person, not a woman. I'm not a man to any of them and they don't treat me that way. It's been 14 years since I last searched for a woman to love, and I was terrible at it then. I'm completely out of practice now and I don't have the slightest idea what to do. There's a yearning, an aching hunger inside me and I don't know how to feed it, because I need a woman, and there aren't any anymore. Just female persons. Now it's true that this is somewhat exaggerated. You're reading the writings of a middle-aged man who is dreadfully lonely. But there's a great deal in this which is true. If I'm standing in line next to an attractive woman and after talking to her for a while and discovering that I like her and that we seem to be getting along well, I cannot follow the engineer's way, and say to her "You seem to be intelligent, articulate, and well educated, and I would consider myself extraordinarily lucky to become romantically involved with you. My intentions are strictly honorable. May I see you again?" That's what my inclination is to do: very straightforward, very honest, completely unambiguous – it's the engineer's way. Say it and get it out, communicate clearly. (I tried this once and it was an abject failure.) First off, if she's a female person, she'll probably walk away, if she doesn't hit me or call a cop. But even if she's a woman, such frankness is simply not how it's done. It would probably intimidate her and she'd stop talking to me. No, you're not supposed to be straightforward and frank and honest; you're supposed to be subtle. But I'm a dumb engineer and I'm not subtle. You're supposed to sneak up on it, exchange hints and clues, body language, play the game, and I don't know what any of it is anymore, if I ever did. What I remember was that each woman had her own way of hinting whether she was interested, but there was no standard and what meant "Come on" from one woman meant "Buzz off" from another and meant nothing at all from a third. I never figured out how to read it. So I kept making mistakes and getting my nose pushed in. And I got dreadfully tired of rejection. In six years since I broke up with my last girlfriend, I haven't been on a single date. Not one. I've tried a few times to ask women out, but somehow I sent the wrong signals or I'm ugly or something; I got refused each time. Or I meet some nice lady and begin talking to her and when it seems as if we're getting along well, suddenly she'll pointedly mention a boyfriend. 14 years ago I tried dating services and ads in singles papers, with less than satisfactory results. I have no reason to believe that they'll work any better here. A church is out of the question: I'm an atheist. There are groups which have singles parties – but that means that you're rewarded for dressing well and being good at small talk, and I have no sense of fashion at all and find small-talk incredibly tedious. Which doesn't mean that I'm a bad person; I just don't have those skills, and that's what's selected for at those kinds of soirees. But the number of women I've even tried to get to know has been small, because most of the females I've been surrounded with during that time have actually been female persons, and female persons don't date. (That would require them to acknowledge male/female differences, and we can't have that.) And almost all the women I've known have been married. That basically didn't leave much. I'm tired of being a male person. I want to be a man again. That doesn't mean being an MCP; I was never like that back when I was a man before. I'm gallant and polite and friendly and respectful with normal women who are single, just as I was with the strippers. I try to be that way with everyone under all circumstances. But I want to be a man, relating to women, not a male person relating to female persons. I'm tired of being castrated. And there is an ironic twist to all this, because it's clear that it's cultural and deliberate. A year and a half ago, a married female coworker who was Hispanic felt sorry for me and invited me to a party being held by some of her friends. (And also, I think, it was because from her point of view I'm a "good catch".) And it had a mix of Hispanics (mostly Mexicans, but some Spaniards) and Anglos. And every single Hispanic female there was a woman. And every single Anglo female there was a person. The contrast could not have been more vivid. It was astonishing, and to me even a bit intimidating: every single Hispanic woman there liked being a woman and liked men. You sure couldn't say that about the Anglos, though. Unfortunately, two months later she was laid off, and as an upper class professional Anglo, I no longer have a way to make contact with that culture, where I'm sure I could have found what I'm looking for. Had she remained employed there, I suspect I'd be married by now. The point is that it doesn't have to be the way it is. Anglo women have done this deliberately, and I'm not sure they realize just how much they've damaged Anglo men in their search for professional equality. There's a price for everything, and in this case it's the male persons who have paid most of it. By changing from women to female persons, they've forced all their male coworkers to change from men to male persons, whether they wanted to or not. And that was a very high price for the men to pay, because unlike the women, the men got no benefit whatever out of this change. Just pain and loneliness and confusion and fear. It doesn't have to be 100% one way or the other. You can be a woman and a person at the same time. It isn't an insult to be asked out on a date, and it sure as hell isn't sexual discrimination. It's OK to be professionally respected and beautiful too. (And most women are beautiful, whether they're "pretty" or not.) It shouldn't be against the rules for a male coworker to express romantic interest. It doesn't indicate that he doesn't respect the woman professionally. I emphasize again that it seems ludicrous that I should even have to say this: There's nothing wrong with a man loving a woman. This page has been viewed times since 20010726. |
|||
