Women: Driving Me Crazy

[seal_clubber]

Last night I was regaling mrs_clubber with a personal tale of adventure, which I concluded by saying, "It was a mystery". To which the love of my life burst out, "There was no mystery! You're just dumb!"¹

♣     ♣     ♣This morning I was seated at the end of one of the two "give up this seat for elderly or handicapped" rows on the bus. Every other person

Comments

[singofmyself]

Regarding your coworker, I do that. I do it because I'll lose what question I had if I don't interrupt people. I've tried to break the habit but it's so hard when one loses your train of though.

And I'm 100% behind you on the bus thing!! There are more times where I have gotten up for an elderly or handicapped person and I'll do it over again and again. It's just polite! Shoot, I've held doors open for men before.

I'm not taking sides on the Clubber home. Good luck with that. (I like Mrs Clubber's Nemi posts and don't want to be excluded).

[seal_clubber]

mrs_clubber wouldn't exclude you. ;-)

And I was just pointing out that my very own wife called me "dumb". Excuse me now while I go and weep bitter, wounded tears in this cold, comfortless world.

[singofmyself]

*pats you on the back with much sympathy*

[dogofthefuture]

Is it, and let me assure you, I do hesitate to ask... is it at all possible that in this one instance, perhaps you had done something dumb?

[wraithgirl]

It's a weird 1950s holdover that many women will still expect the man to give up a seat, hold a door, etc. when the same women will demand equality in every other circumstance. I can only surmise that this is because equality is still rather new to our culture and imperfectly applied. Perhaps these are just "growing pains".

I like to think that I don't get caught in this trap, but I imagine that I have on occasion. Probably, it's just laziness - I don't actually *want* to give up my seat, so I search for someone else to lay the responsibility on. Change the rules to suit my needs at the moment.

I certainly do remember expecting the man to pay for dinner or tickets when he was the one doing the inviting. When I did the inviting, I expected to pay...but very often wasn't allowed to. On some occasions though, I let it go rather than arguing the point. Not because I felt the man *should* pay, but because I was broke and couldn't afford to pay. How sad is that?

[seal_clubber]

I think it might be "growing pains", too, sort of like those of us who started learning Imperial before the country switched to Metric still think of some stuff in Imperial (for me, people heights are still in feet and inches, and weights are in pounds -- telling me something wighs 50 grams is meaningless).

Hopefully, that means that a generation or two down the road "full" equality will be the norm.

[wraithgirl]

I'd really like to think so. Then, I go to Toys R Us and wonder if we'll *ever* really have equality, with the aisles and aisles of pink-packaged dolls and dishes and kitchen sets and the camo-coloured shelves of trucks and racecars.

Even better, I would love to see true equality and a respect for diversity and difference. Because we can all be *equal* without all being *the same*.

[wraithgirl]

I remember that my first job out of university had a dress code. Women were not permitted to wear pants - women had to wear skirts or dresses. It was explained that pants on women, even suits pants were not appropriate as they were often too tight and revealing.