Shit, meet fan...

I am confused, which I tend to think is a good thing.  A wise teacher once told me that confusion is the first step in creating a new understanding – that one needs to dismantle what one believes to be true and truly question it before recognizing a new pattern.  Sometimes I have found this to be true.  Other times I just stay confused until the ADD train comes by to take me somewhere shinier.  So we shall see.

The shiny today is the distinction between the sexes that is, for a man of my generation, a vast stretch of war-torn landscape, hiding dangers both modern and ancient.  Primitive pit traps -  some still well-hidden, some long exposed – lay in wait alongside heat-sensitive airborne drones.  The detritus of battles forgotten or fresh ought shine some light on what we have wrought, but just when one thinks some fair generalizations might be made, another explosion shifts the ground, and what had seemed clear moments ago is lost.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.  Yeah – self evident.  When I was young, it seemed self-evident that “men”, in this case, included women.  It was common usage.  When one referred to a group of people that included both men and women, the proper term to use was “men”.   It was just grammar.  Then, around the end of high school, it seemed self-evident that this rule was wrong and wrong-headed.  To simply fold women into “men” was disrespectful and diminishing.  Women were not a mere subset of the larger group of men, but an entity to be evaluated and appreciated on their own and on their own terms.  And so we, and our language, had to change.  The process of altering the language was less than elegant, but we struggled through “personhood” and a somewhat awkward use of plurals until we seemed able to speak to one another again.  But there was still the damn door.

And here we have arrived at the first of the mines.  Even mentioning this invites scorn and judgement for being hopelessly clueless, but there it is.  The door.  Shall I open it for you?

Of course.  I am a man, and I will open the door.  But it will mean nothing other than that I am not a complete clod.  It will mean nothing.  It will not imply that you cannot open your own door, and it will not imply that we are in any way not equal.  Yes, I must open the door.  And no, it means nothing regarding a distinction between the sexes.  Except that it shows the respect that I am to express for the other, equal sex.  It’s a silly thing, but it is a thing, and the reason that it is never mentioned is that men, by the time they reach an age where some women might take them seriously, have learned to not mention it.  But it is not alone.  Our society is loaded with distinctions in how we treat the other sex, and we have not resolved this.  Nor do we need to - at least not on any particular timetable.  My guess is that sometime in the future, people who have come of age in a different time will find a balance.  And, frankly, we can all live with the ambiguity, usually.  It does no harm, and it rarely causes hard feelings, generally.  Until the shit hits the fan.

The shit, in this case, goes by the name of Todd Akin, candidate for the US Senate in Missouri.  Perhaps not Mr. Akin himself, but perhaps his now infamous words: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  The fan, in this case, is pretty much the whole country.

I’ve seen the anger of women who believe themselves condescended to, ignored, or dismissed.  It is not pretty, and it is not a summer thunderstorm of intense energy but short duration.  Oh no it is not.

I cannot speak to the diminution of rape in this comment.  I have never been raped, and I am not attempting to advance an opinion on what rape victims have experienced or what they feel.  I am offended by the comment, but it is my own response, and I leave it for others better qualified to respond to him.  This is the best response that I have seen from that perspective.  I have no desire to enter into the abortion debate.  I have my opinion.  I know what facts and what values I bring to the discussion, and I believe that they are irrelevant to the phenomena we are seeing.  Akin is opposed to abortion, for his own reasons, but his basic ignorance, wilful or not, of female biology is terrifying.  This man wants to tell women what they can and cannot do regarding procreation, but either has never bothered to study how procreation works, or he has been willing to believe a patently silly idea supported by no evidence and refuted by academics and medical doctors.  All  in order to give his ideas authority.  And he believes that this will be sufficient to rally the true believers to his cause.  He wants to have the government decide intimate details of a woman’s life, using a cartoon of an idea that most high school juniors can dissect.  He is a fool, and he will come to a fool’s end.

But look a the anger, look at the rage.  And look at those who are nodding and agreeing, but who believe that this is being blown out of proportion.  Here is the danger.  We know that things are wrong, but we don’t really know if we agree on what those things are.  We want a world where we respect, care for, and love each other, but we live in a world where we really do not see and cannot safely comment on certain basic realities in our lives, and the seeming contradictions in our accommodations.  The doors.  And as long as we live like this, we will step on long hidden trip wires or, like Mr. Akin, throw ourselves on grenades of our own making.

Just over a month ago, a crazed man shot and killed a dozen people in Colorado.  The reporting of the incident detailed the weapons used, the background of the murderer, and the booby-traps he had set in his apartment.  The reporting also included stories of people desperately throwing their bodies between the killer and their loved ones -  adults shielding children, friends shielding each other, husbands and boyfriends shielding their wives and girlfriends.  But I heard not one story of a wife or girlfriend, in the panic and mayhem of the moment, offering herself up to protect her man.  Until we can also recognize this, just notice and talk about it, we are a long way from resolution.  Pax.