Random Thought # 4 (RT4)

4. I don't think that men are evil, even men who open doors for me.

Not only do I not hate men….I like men. Yes, I do, and I am not speaking in just a romantic sense or because they can open jars and lift heavy stuff.

There are lots of reasons why and these are just a few of them:

I love to be around men because they think so differently than I do and I enjoy hearing different ideas and perspectives because it makes me think.

Men are also great to be around because they seem to have an ability to boil things down to the bottom line and separate fact from emotion. That is a skill I am in need of.

I greatly prefer to have some men in my classes. I teach people how to practice a profession that has been traditionally female so the gender mix in most of my courses is about 10% male and 90% female and sometimes even 100% female. I consistently find that even a few men in a class cuts the estrogen enough to make the group as a whole much more pleasant and easier to deal with (less drama and complaining). The male students will also volunteer to do things for me generally more often than the girls.

Men make me feel safer. If I am frightened or nervous about something and as much as I love and respect my female friends and relatives I’d much rather be around a man. There is something comforting about the presence of a man who you trust.

I like men because they call me out on my crap when lots of women won’t. I really like the ones who even put up with my sometimes emotional initial reaction to that and are willing to go through it all over again the next time.

I like men because lots of them are still willing to take the chance of helping a woman even though she may repay their kindness and concern with rudeness because of some perceived threat to her “power”. A few months ago I was in an auto accident where my little car was squashed by a huge pickup truck when I was stopped in traffic. As soon as the accident happened both the man in the vehicle in front of me and the vehicle behind the truck who hit me stopped. The guy behind the truck immediately called the police whereas I would have been inclined to let it go. It turned out that the guy who hit me had an expired license and the wrong insurance information so it was good for me that the police were called. The man in the vehicle in front of me jumped out of his truck and gave the guy who hit me a “look”, asked me if I was ok, then talked to the man who called the police about which of them was going to stay with me till the police came (and neither asked me if I wanted them to stay, they just assumed they should). When I kept insisting I was fine, even though I wasn’t, the one who stayed with me took my arm and led me to the guard rail, sat me down, and listened to me nervously prattle on without getting visibly annoyed with me for the 30 minutes it took the police to get through traffic. How can you not respect that?