First a French lesson.
To have hired somebody, in French, is engagé which sounds a lot like engaged. Like, to be married.
So. At a recent meeting I attended, a man who is critiquing the wording we chose for a write up says he was attracted to the word engagé and thinks it works well.
A colleague says snidely,
“Wow, that’s rare for a man”
Said man flies into a mini-rage about sexism and gender stereotypes and what have you and I ask myself, between yawns and pencil twirling…
Seriously? Was that sexist?
Said man argues that if we want people to behave differently we should stop painting them with labels and clichés.
Okay, I agree. But at the same time. Can’t we have a little fun with what we know to be true?
Yes, it’s a generalization that doesn’t apply to every man on earth but not every bee stings and you don’t see them marching up and down the clover fields waving placards do you?
I consider myself a feminist but when a man makes sexist jokes at me; I laugh at the joke if it’s funny and point at his penis and laugh if it’s not.
Men and women are different.
That’s a fact.
It seems silly to pretend we’re not.
I know some men who claim to get their “period”.
I don’t know a man alive who has tried to fix a bad face day but applying 16 coats of make-up only to realize that they’ve gone from bad to drag queen, called in sick to work, eaten a gallon of ice cream for breakfast and cried themselves back to sleep.
I know several men who gained “baby weight” during their wives’ pregnancy.
I don’t know a man alive who plans his wedding or vacations around the cycles of the moon.
I know a man who recently coined the phrase manvulation.
I know a man who takes 2 hours to do his hair.
I know a man who shaves off all his pubes.
I absolutely, most definitely do not know a man alive who has worked all day, run from one end of the city to then next in the blazing hot sun, hopped into the pharmacy to buy insoles and “personal cleansing cloths” on the way to a meeting, ducked quickly into the bathroom, wiped himself down with 8 individually wrapped pre-moistened towelettes, from head to butt crack to the soles of his feet, changed insoles, slipped back into high heels, finish his meeting and run like the wind to the spa for his pedicure/Brazilian wax appointment.
… what?
I’m not trying to undo 3 centuries of hard work. I’m all for equality but I don’t think equal means the same.
I’m just saying. We’re different.
