Women ain’t funny, even if they make you laugh

June 18, 2009 at 6:41 pm (Society, love & relationships, politics, sexuality)
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Christopher Hitchens is a writer I really respect and even, dare I say, love. He has no fear of getting right up your nose and twitching the short & straighties. He’ll even give a yank, hold up one of those snotty pieces of dead keratin, and say, look at what came out of you! Tsk tsk.

I won’t say I always agree with him, because I don’t, but we generally find ourselves on the same side of the primordial fence. Slightly left of center, slightly more on the side of the little guy, slightly mistrustful of authority, and more than slightly pissed off at the way that power not only corrupts but that that corruption is apparently the only thing that follows the supposed law of trickle-down economics.

But, man oh man, Chris-baby. On this point you are so wrong, and I don’t even know how to begin.

A progressive in many ways, Hitchens seems determined that, in the field of sexual politics, we are incapable of behaving in anything but the most stereotypical and base ways.

Take a look at this Vanity Fair article from 2007, in which he propounds his theory that men are funny because they are supposed to impress women, and women aren’t because we were merely put on this earth to laugh at men’s jokes.

It would be laughable, except I don’t want to encourage him in thinking I find HIM funny…

The corollary to this intellectually insulting supposition is that women appeal to men enough just by our existence, and therefore need do nothing more than be objects to get a man.

Can I stop right here; are you laughing enough?

I won’t just trot out a list of very funny women in the entertainment biz (or for that matter in my own life). That kind of argument is the easiest to counter. What, for example, if he has never found Megan Mullally the least bit amusing, or figures that Sandra Bullock is a comic actress and not a comedian, so it doesn’t really count?

Hitchens, who has a well-deserved rep for seeing through the bullshit to what’s really going on seems to, when it comes to women at least, see only what he wants to.

For example, when he is forced to admit that women have been successful in comedy or comic writings (and no journalist can really dismiss Dorothy Parker as unfunny, or else burn in a special hell fired by Press Club brandy), he is quick to state that it’s no wonder some women are celebrated as wits: after all, men are stupid and will laugh at anything.

What a fine double-edged sword. If they make us laugh, it is a triumph, because we are coldly intelligent and look down our fine long noses at the ape-like man who must impress us with his humor because we are not naturally inclined to sexuality otherwise. And if we make them laugh, it’s because they can’t tell a pun from a fart-joke, and find both equally amusing, and by the way, do that think where the milk comes out your nose again.

Maybe Hitchens is not so far off his view of man as dumb ape?

Maybe Hitchens not so far off in view of man as dumb ape?

Underlying it all seems to be the premise that Hitchens just thinks humor is unladylike, while laughing politely is not.

Hitchens nails the seedy core of his own argument when he states that “…Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals.”

He goes on to talk about the “huge, brimming reservoir of male unease, which it would be too easy for women to exploit.”

Well, duh. Chris, baby. What you’re really saying is that you’re not ready for the same kind of exploitation used ON you that has typically been the province of people LIKE you.

Welcome to an egalitarian world.

I thought this was what you wanted, a world in which Western values of freedom and democracy could apply to everyone, where religious pluralism and universal emancipation as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson could be a global phenomena.

Or do you share Jefferson’s opinion that husband, hearth and children was a woman’s natural lot, and we should leave the big stuff to the men?

The men, who in your estimation, are less intelligent, unable to overcome either their prejudices or their sexual urges?

Damn, it’s enough to make a girl lose her sense of humor altogether. And then where will you be, Chris?

LINKS

WILDsound Film Festival

jen frankel dot com

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A Modest “Proposition”

November 12, 2008 at 9:27 pm (Uncategorized)

Jen Frankel is only responsible for the below opinions as long as you consider her tongue firmly in her cheek.

I am no bigot, but I feel compelled to address a social injustice that simply make me ill.

Marriage is a sacred union, sanctified by God, between two people created in his image, just as the Bible says. So how, therefore, can any true Christian condone the hideous desecration of this venerable institution by persons who by their mere existence laugh in the face of God’s truth?

I speak of course of marriage between the so-called “hearing impaired.”

These “deafies” as I prefer to call them have their advocates, their loud and insistent partisan lobbies that pushed for special rights to be accorded to them. They behave as if we should all have to put up with their obviously deviance, accepting their “culture” as equal to or in fact superior to our own. How can you see it in any other light, when deafies insist on close captioning, variable volume controls on public telephones, and special devices for watching films and theatre, to name just a few ways in which they have prevailed on the government for special treatment?

I know there are those who see being deaf as something genetic, something that can’t be helped. But a lot of deafies aren’t in fact born that way but become “hearing impaired” later in life, and still expect us to treat them as if they deserve more consideration than a normal, hard-working, hearing person.

But I say, if there is something genetic to the creation of a deaf person, then shouldn’t we at all costs stop them from marrying and creating MORE deafies who will demand MORE concessions the rest of us will have to pay for?

Just Say NO, LOUDLY!

Just Say NO, LOUDLY!

Critics will say that deafies deserve equal treatment because they are people too. Well, I say that the law of Christ applies to everyone created in God’s image. Does that describe a deafie? Is God deaf too? If He was, could He possibly hear our prayers?

So I say no, religion and the law were meant to shield those whose nature is in fact natural, not some aberration that flouts the laws of God and man. When will the rights of the hearing be considered as seriously as those of the deaf? When will the government respect our right to maintain the sanctity of marriage as a union between two people who can hear?

When you see a ballot proposition according rights to a small minority, make sure you understand the risks of allowing genetic and physical deviants to hold the same rights as we do. Vote no!

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Beauty Tips for Real Women

October 30, 2008 at 1:40 am (love & relationships, politics, sexuality)
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What happened to the idea that dressing up is fun?

I’m calling for a full-out revolt here, against the revolting brainwashing that has made so many otherwise sane women believe that clothes, shoes, makeup, jewellery, and handbags are anywhere on the list of the important things in life.

Please, god, there must be a place in this world for people who don’t need a hour of lead-time to leave the house, who don’t rate their success as an attractive human being on the evenness of their skin-tone, who don’t spend more on footwear than on promoting their own career.

I remember my first makeup kit, a Christmas present received as a miniature rug-rat with a definite yen for getting got-up as something else. My dad’s only caveat was that I was not allowed to wear the stuff out of the house. I can still remember the horror dropping down on my over-made face as I realized I’d run out into the street after the ice cream man.

Ah, the good old days!

Now, it’s painful to imagine the number of hours persons of my gender spend prepping like a chef before the dinner rush: wash, tone, moisturize, foundation, eyes, cheeks, lips… Not to mention the money.

Not to mention the underlying thesis, that there is something wrong with us that requires all the resources of the cosmetics industry to solve. And even then, it’s clearly framed as a losing battle.

Well, I say, screw it all. Not the hair and makeup and fun clothes. But the attached concept that dress-up is anything more than fun, that should go down in a bonfire of night creams and hair gel and tweezers and diet pills.

Put your looks before your insides, and you’re asking for more than trouble and less than a worthwhile life. It’s time to get a little perspective on vanity, because while yes, being overweight can cause you health problems, it won’t kill you.

The sad part is that we’ve come to believe that being anything other than a perfectly polished and turned-out 10 means that we are failures. We are unlovable and in all probability worthless.

I can’t say I’m even particularly impressed with the Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty,” although it’s a teeny step in the right direction. Really, how seriously can you take a self-esteem campaign launched by the very guys who’ve been selling you the shit for years? It’s like a drug lord spouting, “Just say no!”

There’s nothing stopping you from flipping off the fear-merchants who need you to obsess about what’s wrong with you to make their cash. What you need to do is look in the mirror and say, what do I want to look like, today and now, not “what’s intrinsically wrong with my appearance that I may be able to minimize with the latest beauty product?”

So join me in a little bit of social disobedience. Dress for yourself, not to be loved or lusted after, not to be admired or bitched about by the girl who didn’t get the latest Gucci whatever. Dress up, dress down. Go out without a scrap of makeup because you can’t be bothered. Laugh at anyone who suggests that your uneven skin tone is going to cost you any potential happiness that otherwise might have entered your life.

Who knows? Maybe you can take the time you’d have spent shopping and primping, and get to know something more substantial about yourself.

Of course, maybe you think I’m some kind of weirdo, like the chick who ridiculed me for not knowing what kind of handbag she was carrying. I have to admit to being rather disinterested in most things commercial, including any product name emerging from the mouths of Sex and the City women with the possible exception of “Stoli.”

Maybe you think I’m just being a bitch to suggest that your wardrobe does not in fact make a big impact on the world, and contribute vastly to your self-esteem.

So be it. I’m not out to demean what you love. All I want to do is give you a bit of perspective on two things: what the time you spend working on your looks might say about you, and what you might otherwise be able to accomplish in that time.

And put the primping in its proper place – make it fun and flirty, and an expression of your mood and yourself, instead of a societal imperative. And have a LOT of fun this Halloween!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

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Spelling Doesn’t Count, But Denotation Does

October 24, 2008 at 6:40 pm (politics, writing)
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When I think of how much time is spent by bloggers and professors alike obsessing over the accuracy of spelling and grammar, it gets my goat that a similar discussion on the meanings of words is all but non-existent.

While u probly hv no trubl undrstndin dis sentance despit me havin tttly f!$*ed up the use of the gerund…. our true problem with communication seems to have far more to do with the fact that not only do we not agree on what words MEAN, the idea that we might NOT agree is not even in the line of fire.

Consider, for example, the obvious confusion resulting when any two people don’t, for example, agree to the same rules for a game. Not only does it make for unsatisfying play, but you could never build something as complex as the National Football League if teams refused to discuss, and accept, a common set of parameters.

Define your terms and use those to build more complicated ideas. This is basic to success, and basic to understanding.

It’s like our obsession with the concept of “freedom” has extended to the belief that you can use a word however you want, and through sheer force of will or personality make it mean what you want.

For a solipsist, maybe this is a fine idea. But communication is about mutual understanding, and that understanding requires that at least the building blocks of discourse are agreed upon.

My fascination with language results primarily from the observation that everyone communicates slightly differently, even given the same basic tools. Add to that a world culture constantly in flux, with new words drifting between languages, new words being coined to address new situations, and you have a dynamic system with the complexity and subtlety with the potential to facilitate any number of brilliant new descriptions and synergies.

But if you decide that the tools don’t matter, you halt exploration and growth at its most primative level.

Is it ignorance or deliberate deception that causes people to redefine language to mean what suits their purpose instead of what would make their intentions plain?

The blatant misuse of simple terms has made the current American Presidential race into less of a discourse and more of a marketing campaign. After all, what the hell does “Family Values” even mean? It’s a slogan, not a concept. It may carry a certain emotional connotation, but the words themselves are empty.

You have to wonder every time a politician is caught in an adulterous relationship after espousing those phantom “values.” Without definition, a word or phrase can mean whatever someone wants it to, and can change its definition on a whim. What’s to say that adultery wasn’t considered part and parcel with Family Values if no one said it wasn’t? Who’s to say that asking for forgiveness after an affair doesn’t make it all go away?

If you refuse to agree on your terms, nothing is a lie. Your words were merely misinterpreted by someone who didn’t know how you were using them.

If “freedom” can include giving up the rights that the American founding fathers considered unalienable, we’re in big trouble. If words cannot be redefined by common consent so that “All men are created equal” can be understood to include blacks and women, we are similarly, in a word that has managed to never really be misunderstood, fucked.

You don’t have to go as far back as Orwell to watch people redefining language at will, calling Freedom Slavery or War Peace. You don’t even have to look at the greater, more sinister uses of misdefined language.

Communication problems exist everywhere in everyday life. If you and your spouse don’t have a definition of “sharing the housework,” you’re going to have problems. If you and your spouse don’t have a solid understanding of “infidelity,” you’ll probably have more.

Bad spelling and grammar are a combination of laziness, lack of standard education, fluid communication techniques like texting and blogging, and of course a sense that they really don’t matter that much.

But please, let’s try to decide that the meanings of the words we use are important, no matter how we choose to spell them or what language we say them in. After all, my freedom includes the dictionary definition.

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XX Bang Bang…

October 12, 2008 at 3:39 pm (communication)

From the Archive, January 22, 2007. Just in the interest of reusing the Yoda smiley. Believe it or not, I don’t have a lot of call for it in my life. Progress in emoticon world since I first wrote this? Well, my blog automatically replaces colon-bracket with an actual emoticon, which is why I needed to add a space between them in the post in order to demonstrate how we used to do it “old school. . . “

Emoticons have become so much a part of our email / Messenger culture there’s hardly anyone who doesn’t recognize them anymore – with the exception of my word processor spell checker.

For those of you not in the know, here are a few examples of the “old school” standard character type:

: ) – happy face smiley
; ) – wink, or “I forgot to hit the “shift” key”
: (#@*^#) – my mother’s about to wash my mouth out with soap

There’s also a whole range of pictoral emoticons from the purely classic smiley face:
(*smile!*)

to the more esoteric:
(…uh, *Do or do not do. There is no try?*  *Smiling, I am?*)

There’s animated emoticons, emoticons with sound effects, talking emoticons… A literally virtual embarrassment of Cyrano de Bergerac proxy communicators, in fact.

I notice, though, that I’m apparently not a big user. I only stick an emoticon in as a reply to someone who’s emoticoned me – which sounds a little like they’re fooling me somehow, huh?

I’m much more prone to an older kind of sign-off, which could probably be called the classic Kiss Off, if that didn’t have a negative connotation.

It’s what we all put on our Valentines in grade school, or ended cards for our Mom made out of doilies. Maybe it’s a little old fashioned, but I like the kiss-hug “xo.”

The best part is that although you only have two symbols to work with – “x” and “o” – the possibilities are endless for a creative soul. With a little imagination, it could be the binary code of goodbyes.

Here’s some ideas of how to get the most from yours:

xo — my friend, I love you!
xox – going back in for a second smooch
x! – peck on the cheek!

And my fave –

xxxxooxoooxooxooxoooxooxoooxo etc… – I LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EVER WITH TONS OF MUSH I CAN’T POSSIBLY PUT DOWN WITHOUT EITHER YOU GETTING PHYSICALLY ILL OR THE CENSORS DESCENDING WITH BLACK PENS IN HAND…

See? Saves a lot of time, and really gets the point across, if you know how to read ‘em.

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Getting It Out There

October 8, 2008 at 8:43 pm (writing)
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Art, in my opinion, is not really finished until it goes out into the world. It’s always a great and admirable thing to express yourself creatively, but the last step, the one that solidifies a piece of your personal output, is to release it into the cold light of day.

For many people, that’s also the hardest thing. Truth is though, it’s both the best and worst part of doing art:

. . .art is fifty percent what the artist puts in it, and fifty percent what the observer brings when viewing it. . .this is wonderful, when you decide you want to be an artist or a writer or something, and then find that showing anybody anything is like cutting off an arm, giving it to someone, then every time you go over to that person’s house, you find they’re using it for something completely wrong, like they’ve got it stuck in an umbrella stand or holding up a bunch of peas in the garden or something. I mean, when I do something, I want it to say what I want it to say. I don’t want to be mistaken, misused, mishandled. I want you to understand, from my point of view, what I meant when I meant it. Even if I don’t mean it now.

— from Talking Drum (stage play, Jen Frankel)

Self-promotion is also a bitch. Seriously a bitch. We spent all that time writing our book; why should we be responsible for telling people about it too?

Unfortunately, two hard truths apply here. First, is that no one is as capable as you of believing in your own creation. Second, no one understands it like you.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably need that input from your audience for more than just proof of end-use. You’ll need to share your work just to get how to sell it to the world. You need that outside perspective to solidify your own impressions of what you’ve created.

The greatest blocks to success for an artist are, strangely and apparently contradictorily, lack of self-confidence and overblown ego. The first stops us from showing our work to others, and the second discounts their impressions when we do. You have to find the middle place with ego, to listen effectively to feedback, no matter how critical, then evaluate it based on what you truly know about your own work.

All right, enough of the philosophy. What I’m really here for today is to bring you into my favorite world, or at least to get you to bring it temporarily into yours.

I started writing “The Last Rite” after a particularly vivid dream when I was 13, the same age as the novel’s heroine, Maggie Stuart. Maggie is Everygirl, only maybe a little more so. She’s having a hell of a time at elementary school: crushing on an unapproachable classmate, dealing badly with her single mom and homelife, and trying hard to deny she’d ever want to fit in.

Enter Mr. Hunt, Maggie’s science teacher, who uses the cover of a lesson on blood typing to run some tests of his own. What he discovers about Maggie launches her into a world she could never have dreamed of, an underground of magic, blood, death, deceit, and self-discovery where it may be her own deep insecurity that provide her only way home.

“I have been waiting for this book to come out for like 4 or 5 years.. i need more!!!”

“The characters kept me up all night until I was done!”

“When will there be MORE??!?!?!
Still one of the best books i have EVER read!”

“Awesome story, so complex and intricate. I love it!”

–Some of the feedback from Maggie Fans

Read “The Last Rite,” available through www.wildsound.ca and Amazon.com.

More of Jen’s essays on writing on The Writer’s Way.

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Hail to the Procrastinator

October 6, 2008 at 11:48 pm (writing)

This will be the. . . I’m embarrassed to even begin to guess at the number of years I’ve been promising the sequel to my novel.

Truly embarrassing, because the first one was very well-received. I know I hit a chord, especially with young female readers, and that’s a demographic I was a part of so long I really like the idea that someone’s catering to them. Purely selfish, but there it is.

Why do I procrastinate? Yeah, it’s hard work, but when I do it, it’s energizing. Getting my ass to a chair is the hardest part of the day by far. As soon as I’m faced with a blank page or screen, I get edgy, not anxious, and I want to fill up that tabula rasa as fast as possible.

Maggie Stuart

Maggie Stuart, heroine of "The Last Rite"

I am a total binge writer; I go until the coffee’s gone and I’m a puddle of intellectual slobber. But getting to that lovely state of discombobulated bliss requires getting the fingers solidly connected to the keyboard.

There’s a part of me that I fight every single day, just for the privilege of doing what I was born to do. It’s a deeply ingrained sense of my own potential for failure.

It’s the little voice that says, “Why bother?” that somehow, quiet and tiny as it is, manages to make itself heard over all the bluster of my best intentions.

It also manages to criticize when I’ve done a great day’s work, whispering, “But is it enough?”

It’s like being in lust, and having your thoughts circling, circling constantly to the adored, derailing all your attempts to think of something else.

I know the technique to get the train of thought rolling again. It’s all about self-distraction. Get myself intrigued by some aspect of a character, or rediscover a plot point hidden in a scrawled note, and before you know it, the sound of the clacking keys is drowning that little voice out completely.

But until I get myself distracted, and turn the circling focus of my attention to good use instead of running in neutral, it’s with me always.

I love to believe there’s a permanent cure for the little voice. It’s part of an artist’s life for certain. It’s necessary, in a way, because it keeps a good rein on the ego and stops you from believing whatever your own press may become.

Why is it so easy to remember your insecurities, and so hard to remember the things you love? I figure it’s only a matter of training, of forming the habit of making the trip through the circling thoughts to the blank page.

Check out “The Last Rite” on www.wildsound.ca – a new e-book download is available for just $7, full of new illustrations.

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The Mistate of the Union

October 6, 2008 at 11:26 pm (politics)
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This comes from January 25th, 2007. Now here we are in the “end times,” the last few weeks of the double-whammy Bush regime, and I realize — I still haven’t got used to the idea that they’d put this guy in charge of a WalMart, much less a whole country.

All this time has gone by and it still sounds so wrong:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

And he walks out, and all that goes through my head is – you’ve got to be kidding.

I’ve really tried to warm to George. He’s supposedly a very likable guy. I’m sure I would have fun with him at a barbecue, if I could get over the fact I’m almost certain he would mostly ignore me.

He’d want to talk baseball, one of his favourite subjects. I think he’d assume I knew nothing about sports, so would tacitly exclude me.

Or maybe when I spoke up, if I found something to say that caught his attention, he would do what some guys have done before if I surprise them, cock his head and suddenly give me a disproportionate amount of attention.

Maybe he’d even call attention to me, around the grill, handing me a beer.

“Here you go, Jenny, I guess you’re drinking with the boys!”

I might even be charmed by it.

That’s how I see George W. Bush’s likability working, on a very down-home, casual conversational level. He’s the kind of guy you want to hang out with, to tailgate with. The kind of guy you want running your son’s little league.

I don’t quite get why anyone would want him for President. How far can likable get you in the tangled world of politics, semantics, religion… How far is it supposed to get you, in other words, when you can’t just invite everyone out to a barbecue to charm them with brewskies and good old-fashioned common sense?

My partner has a theory, and I’d probably put money on it. I wonder if Vegas already has odds.

Matt met Bush once a long time ago, at a ball game, when he was just a good old boy who happened to be wealthy enough to have his own team. He knew every stat; he understood every nuance of the game.

I’ve seen nothing like that kind of attention paid to his current job, nothing like that paid to the intricacies of domestic policy, or the minefield of world affairs.

So yes, I’d put money on it.

Just like people often take jobs they don’t really want as a stepping stone to their true ambitions, so I believe Matt when he says he thinks it’s true of Bush:

He’s only President so that someday, he might get to be Commissioner of Baseball.

Comforting thought.


Footnote:
Forgive me, but I can never tell during his speeches if Bush is saying “tourists” or “terrorists.” And they say we Canadians talk funny.

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If You Build It, They Will Complain

July 16, 2008 at 10:22 pm (Society)
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When I was six or seven, I thought the best business idea in the world would be to make some cookies and a Thermos of hot chocolate, and take ‘em down to sell at construction sites.

Not to the workers, mind. The unexploited gold mine my seething little brain pinpointed, even at that young age, was all them guys who like to watch construction workers at work.

I like big trucks and earth movers too. You can catch me peeping through gaps in chipboard barriers around big holes in the ground. I have a fetish for cranes too. Big! Strong! Powerful! What’s not to love?

It’s not supposed to be in girl-DNA to be a truckist, but my little niece always seemed to be more attracted to zoom-zooms than stuffed animals – at least until someone introduced her to Dora the Explorer, and I mean, who can blame her for jumping the proverbial ship? Besides, Dora’s always on the go. Emma can have her Spanish lessons, her girl power, and her love of vehicles all in one.

Construction also means hassle, if your place is the one under construction. Take, well, me for example.

Last year was one big hot, dusty noisy, uncertain hell. Our landlord needed to replace the balconies on our 300 apartment building, and it was the work of about 14 months of pounding, bad smells, and loud shouting in foreign languages at seven in the morning.

I get the necessity, and the impossibility that major construction can happen without any loss of quality of life. But what I learned most over the extended war zone around what I had trouble thinking of as “Home Sweet Home” was that people, faced with construction of their own, lose their fascination and love to gripe.

Not that it’s not warranted to be put out when your home becomes a no-man’s-land of rubble and dead grass. Or when the carpenters move in all the tools to your kitchen, and promptly vanish. Or when you’ve paid in full for the replacement furnace that still hasn’t arrived, and you’re still, well, freezing.

It’s all part of the ebb and flow of benefit and responsibility that we are afforded so many lessons on during the course of our lives, I guess. Yes, it’s terrific to avoid the responsibility of mortgage payments in favor of renting — but that means that any repairs are done on someone else’s schedule. It’s terrific and freeing to have the privacy of your own home — but when the water mains break, it’s all down to you.

I can imagine that when a contractor gets a straight-ahead demolition, there’s a certain sense of relief. Before you even start, you get to rid the property of all those pesky, complaining humans that will never look on the bright side of inconvenience. Provided you don’t let the building fall on anyone else’s, you can pretty much do your job and go home.

It must be the same when you’re putting up a building from square one, unless of course you have a lot of over-anxious condo-buyers breathing down your neck to meet the completion date.

And instead of the complainers who are waiting to get their homes back, you’ll see just the usual complement of onlookers who are standing by the construction site not to complain, but to marvel at your grown-up toys and the majesty of walls coming tumbling down or going up.

You may even see me out there, with my little cart and my carafe of hot beverages and oatmeal cookies. If I haven’t franchised the business out.

For a true horror story of a landlord/tenant relationship, check out:

The Devil Is A Landlord

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Two Minutes on a Hot Stove

July 14, 2008 at 11:03 pm (love & relationships, sexuality)
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Came across an unlikely Einstein quote the other day:

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that’s relativity.” — Albert Einstein

Now, that’s pithy.

Lately, though, I can’t help wishing for the hot stove.

I’ve waded back a bit into the world of “getting to know members of the opposite sex while single,” and I must admit, it’s about as depressing an exercise as ever.

In the almost three years since I was single the last time, I’d say I’m a good deal more confident and less prone to depression. I’ve developed the most important relationship of my life with my former boyfriend, now my solid business partner. I am learning to be a little more sensitive to myself, and treat myself with more gentleness than I did a few years back.

None of that changes the fact that what’s going on around me seems to be basically the same shit, different year.

Men and women are not as different from each other as we’d like to believe. That’s a theory of mine – by which I mean a solid, demonstrable idea based on a lengthy investigation and dependent on a large number of unique facts which, although each of them may or may not be true, lead to a general preponderance of evidence that has a good chance of being the way things really are.

Which, I mean to say, is something I’ve come to believe through experience and investigation.

Men and women both feel insecure around people they’re attracted to. Hell, we tend to feel insecure around people we aren’t attracted to who we fear may be attracted to us.

We worry about the fragile nature of our natures, our tender feelings, our desires. Life is one big, constantly looping replay of the song “I Want You To Want Me.”

But we like to pretend we’re different, because it reduces the possibility that we’ll have to genuinely get and empathize with someone we want something from. That “something” could be unconditional love and understanding, or it could be “stay the hell away.” But if we start off with the theory that true communication between the sexes is impossible, we take away any thought that the responsibility for communication problems is actually our fault.

Take a recent case.

I’ve been flirting on Facebook. Yes, I know. Yes, I know. Yeah, I get that too.

So, I managed one face-to-face, un-Facebook meeting in the midst of a slew of chat. Two phone calls. More chat.

At some point, I realized that I liked the guy, but that I had no idea AT ALL about whether or not I could get along with him.

Eventually, it was pretty clear that assumptions was all we had. Without really meeting, we were both safe – safe from any kind of vulnerability at least. But we could only rely on what I call the “low denominator facts,” the pretense that we can almost guess what a member of the opposite sex is thinking or will do based solely on stereotypes.

Besides the fact that this is monumentally insulting for anyone who considers his- or herself an individual, it totally defeats the purpose of getting to know a person. If I can predict he’ll do “guy-things” when I do “girl-things,” it ain’t a relationship, it’s a sitcom.

All I ask anytime is to be treated like a person. If you get to know me and discover I’m a walking, breathing Barbie doll, then for sure treat me like plastic. Otherwise, keep your damn assumptions to yourself.

We’re at our worst when we lock ourselves into those narrow camps of “man” and “woman.” There’s a huge richness of experience and connection available that has nothing to do with gender – although it’s nice when it has something to do with sex…

And, to paraphrase Einstein, sometimes a guy is like two minutes on a hot stove.

Some new stuff to check out on my site:

  • Night Music - a short story with guns, unrequited love, and jazz.
  • Boxer (“Pride”) - acrylic painting

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