Dude, Seriously

I am not now nor have I ever been a lady person. Oh sure, the question has been raised, from the usual quarters like PE teachers upon seeing me run for the first time. Or close male friends doing that close-male-friend thing where they try to destroy even your deepest secreted caches of self-confidence and identity in a jocular--but relentlessly persistent over years if not decades--way. Or consistently frustrated sexual partners when all reserves of patience have been exhausted. You know, typical American butch-guy motivational stuff.

The good news is that if I were compelled to be a lady person, as tough as it still can be, now would probably be as good a time as any for me to live that truth if it lived in me. But my inner and outer gender have always matched, so the shape I cut through the air as I remain above ground in this world has always been the dude one. Not literally the circle thing with the boner-arrow pointing up to the northeast, but you know, with the wider shoulders and all the body hair. Or at least the body hair I in no way feel socially compelled to cut off.

Since I am also not a religious fundamentalist nor a social deaf-blind-mute, I try to stay woke (hello, young people!) to the reality of the differences of the social experiences of men and women in a modern western culture, even one as ostensibly progressive and sophisticated as the West Coast of the United States in 2017. The best way to do this, obviously, is an incessant stream of invasive questions to all the women around me, regardless of age, personal relationship or even basic social familiarity. Look, I'm a middle class white dude. Most of the women I know are middle class white ladies. Should I limit satisfying my personal need to be the best-informed self-proclaimed ally of feminism in the world to those few people lucky enough to have me in their lives? No way, man. That bubble is a trap of complacency. Besides, I find if you go way down to the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder, those ladies are more than happy to talk your ear off. Even if you just want to get inside the 7-Eleven and you're pretending to be engrossed in your phone as you walk past.

The election this past November was obviously a bit more starkly illuminating than I would have liked it to be. I have one facebook friend who has latched on to the undercurrent of misogyny that dragged the Clinton campaign under and refuses any and all entreaties (none of them particularly subtle or even friendly) to "just let it go" because "not everything is about feminism, dude." And I will admit that in my need to distance myself from the trauma of Election Day, I have (silently) wished that particular narrative thread away along with the rest about aggrieved working-class white people or just what kind of sociopaths Jill Stein voters really are.

But I don't know, misogyny is sometimes like a new car: once you buy one, you start seeing the same make and model everywhere on the road. Sure, they've always been there, but now you're primed to pick out the Nissan Leafs wherever you go. They kind of just jump out at you.*

Just this week, obviously Senate Republican dudes famously shushed another adult human in public who happened to be a lady and then went ahead and let a bunch of Penis-Americans carry on doing exactly what they'd censured her for the very next day.

And on the other side, someone can engage in unprecedented levels of financial counter-transparency and obvious fraud in violation of specific parts of the actual Constitution and still get to be, without challenge, president of all the United States. Meanwhile, a spokes-flack for the same president engages in some dopey public defiance on behalf of said president's daughter, and the next day hearings are empaneled at the Congressional level. Is the only difference between the two that the latter is burdened with ovaries?

Still, it's not all comparing plums to peaches. There are some similarities between Kellyanne Conway and Donald Trump. For example, neither of them won more popular votes than Hillary Clinton in the election.

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*And then immediately slow down. Those electric motors produce a ton of torque on the low end, but the top speed, oy...