“WHAT IS IS ABOUT YOUNG MEN?”, her friend asks, the next day, over coffee.
She’s considered this subject so often, the answer comes easily.
“Apart from their youth and beauty, you mean?”
and her friend, “Yes, apart from that.”
“Ok, obviously this is a sweeping generalisation, but from my own personal experience, men of my era seem, at large, to be arrogant, patronising fools….they delight in either second guessing or belittling women. It takes all the little control I have, to not simply slap them.”
She’s suddenly back in the early years of marriage, sitting across a crowded dinner table with her ex husband. She’s telling a story, everyone is laughing….then her husband interrupts, criticises her, foolishly. Tries to rob her of this small moment of humour , saying she has exaggerated. It’s a subtle form of public humiliation, something he seems to revel in, does often, when a guest turns to him suddenly, saying, “we don’t care if she’s downright lying…..we LOVE her stories.” Thinking about this scene so many years later.
“Young men aren’t threatened by women, they generally really like them. They have after all, been raised by women like us, feminists. Mostly, they regard us as equals, even tho we never will be, physically.”