Fifth Wheel

Or: Standing On The Sidelines

I am watching the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. S slowly disintegrate, and it is a sad thing to see. Mrs. S has for some time now (counted in years) had the notion in her head that she wanted to go to Africa through the Peace Corps; she has also had the notion that she was waiting for Mr. S to finish his degree before going. After much fence-riding, Mr. S finally told the Mrs. that he really wasn't going to uproot his life to live in a grass hut for two years afterall. She did not take it well.

Badness

I have had a certain misandry percolating in my brain for several weeks now. I know there are good men out there -- Mr. S is one of them, and I have met others.

Men can be sexy. I think there is nothing hotter than a man at work. Especially if it's physical, but really it can be anything. Brain-work is sexy too. But all that work and motion and effect on the world? So rarely a good thing.

Because, really, men are evil. Men from the lowliest officeboy all the way up to the men on top, they all make decisions that affect people in negative ways. It is men who destroy -- forests, rivers, mountains, air, and water. It is men who start and fight wars. It is men who rape, steal, torture, and kill.

There was a story on NPR recently that talked about a (American) woman who had been sexually brutalized by some Blackwater men. Women don't do that sort of thing.

Women don't strip the earth of its resources.

Women don't make or drop atom bombs.

Women aren't 90% of the prison population.

Women aren't perfect, not by any means. Women can be subtle and vicious, and when pushed can be even more dangerous than men. But women don't make a practice of destruction.

And so I think about these things, and I begin to dread the men around me. I dread their destructive ways, their thieving ways, their pure self-centered to-hell-with-you ways. And I wonder, what was so sexy?