Happy New Year!   Here it is 2020, another year, another decade.   And the future beckons.   But I still haven’t gotten over 2017.   It was a heady time, where a dazzling light of scrutiny finally shone on men who were once considered untouchable by virtue of their gender and their achievements.   The prohibition to speaking out against sexual harassment broke, unleashing story after story of what before mostly existed in darkness, under cover, and unchallenged.   But as the stories crashed, wave after wave, onto the shores of public consciousness, did anyone notice that men were for the most part Shocked-Shocked-Shocked that sexual predation was so pervasive, while women were, well, uh, not so shocked?

Plenty of stories have been written about sexual harassment, but I haven’t read much about this gap between those who were shocked and those who weren’t.  There seems to be a reality gap between female experience and male perception of female experience.   It’s a gap about awareness, where male perception, even when it’s limited, still remains the lens through which collective reality is agreed upon.  This is what I’m still hung up on.   Where is simple curiosity?   If so many men were stunned about the 2017 revelations, and so many women were not, then isn’t it reasonable to assume that there’s more female reality that remains hidden and unchallenged?

If the reality of male predation is only now integrated into our collective reality then isn’t it probable that there are other areas of female experience which we’re reluctant to look at?   What else, if finally talked about, would half the population be shocked to learn while the other half simply shrugs?

Here’s one dynamic that could use a little more exploration:   Earlier this year I had dinner with two male acquaintances at a popular Santa Monica pub.   It was Friday evening and the place was hopping.   Loud and crowded.   We had to shout to hear each other.   A young, pretty server arrived at our table.   After she took our order, one of my dinner mates handed her his menu, looked up at her, and ventured a funny quip.   I couldn’t hear what he said because of the noise level and by the look on the waitress’s face, it was obvious that she couldn’t hear him either.   My dinner companion’s expression briefly cratered, and revealed a momentary dejection when she failed to smile and acknowledge his wit.   He quickly said “never mind,” and the waitress left us.   Then he turned to us and asserted, “She has no sense of humor.”  I understood that he was attempting to save face.   And I wanted to help him, so I explained that she didn’t hear him.   My other dinner companion disagreed and piped in, “She heard alright…she’s just a bitch.”  Wow.  I was shocked.   How did a waitress not laughing at his joke merit this declaration?   I sat there looking back and forth between them, wondering what just happened.   Clearly, my dinner mates felt that female attention was on the menu, and the waitress refused to serve it up.   In fact, they believed she actively withheld it.

I believe my companion’s “bitch” comment was unusual, but was the underlying sentiment so unusual?   Is there an unspoken expectation that some men have towards women?   Even from strange women whom they don’t know?   And what is it that they feel is due them?

As an aside, I have to point out that my dinner mates were both left-leaning liberal Trump-hating Democrats.  They would be stunned at the suggestion that they possessed any unconscious expectations from a server because the server is female.  I doubt that women are stunned by this.   By the time girls reach puberty, it’s not uncommon for strange men to ask for a smile.   As if it’s their due.   And her obligation is to please him, lest she be assessed a bitch.

The whole episode reminded me of times at work when I’ve witnessed women ingratiating themselves to men, smiling to please.   In general, there’s a lot of acting going on at work between employees and employers, whether male or female.  But there is a particular kind of acting, an ingratiation that men unconsciously expect from women.   Women know this, and often accommodate.  Women know that men want their attention, their admiration, and they know that there will be a price to pay for withholding it.   But how pervasive is this dynamic?   And how does it affect a woman’s career, advancement, pay?   Is this dynamic foundational in allowing sexual harassment to flourish?   And how often do both men and women just slip unconsciously into these roles?

As 2018 and 2019 rolled on, I had hoped that the monstrous revelations of 2017 would give rise to a broader examination of the stubborn dynamics that are central to the persistence of inequality.   But there seems to be little appetite for this.   Instead, I see an inclination towards retreat.   For many perhaps the last three years have been exhausting.   Maybe there’s a sense of fatigue and a hope to return to normal.   But normal, when it comes to male-female relations, so often implies silence.   Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein both benefited from decades of silence.   Until they didn’t.

The revelations from 2017 about sexual predation emerged into public consciousness because they were monstrous, salacious, and shocking.   They made good copy.   But they were  simply the most extreme manifestation of more subtle dynamics that still remain hidden.   They were, as many have commented, the tip of the iceberg.   My hope for 2020 is for an increase in collective stamina, so necessary for the examination of the rest of this iceberg, no matter how far below the surface it extends.

 

 

There’s two things I want to say about Quentin Tarantino’s new movie.   One:  I enjoyed it.   And two:  I remain appalled at how easy it still is to enjoy a movie that contains gratuitous violence toward women.

Tarantino characterizes femicide for comic effect, but no worries, it doesn’t inhibit the movie-going pleasure.   Hostility to women remains cultural wallpaper that barely registers, particularly if delivered by a cool, winning, handsome actor.   That actor, in this case, is Brad Pitt.

A confession:   Ever since Brad Pitt beguiled his way into Geena Davis’s motel room in Thelma & Louise, I’ve been a sucker for his charms.   And in Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood, Pitt is no less winning.   He plays a Steve McQueen-Paul Newman-ish movie stuntman and man-Friday to a down-on-his-luck TV Star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio).  There’s only one thing we learn about his character’s backstory, only one thing Tarantino thought was vital for us to know about him — he was rumored to have murdered his wife.

In a quick flashback, we see Pitt’s wife nagging him in the most grating, annoying way.   The camera is on her as she drones on and on — a shrew, a harridan, a virago.   And then the camera cuts back to Pitt’s reaction – a tiny, mischievous, murderous grin.   Yes, she deserves to die.   Because she’s so annoying.   The audience laughed.   And I laughed, too.   Why?   Because annoying, nagging, grating women deserve what they get?   Because we know what Brad is thinking and we know what he’s going to do.   And, well, he’s Brad Pitt, so of course, I’m on his side.   I’m on his side before I know it, before I can check myself.   It takes so little for me to be on his side because there’s so much cultural capital already firmly in place that concurs, yes, women like this woman are uncool, unlikeable.  Women who interfere with male pleasure deserve what they get.   And in this case, what she deserved was murder if delivered by someone as likeable and charming as Brad Pitt.

It’s important to note that the rumor of murdering his wife had no plot significance.  It didn’t move the story along.   It didn’t have to be there.   It was completely gratuitous.  The movie wouldn’t suffer one iota if it was left out.   It was clearly there for one reason and one reason only — humor.   Comic texture.

Would it have been funny, if instead of his wife, he was rumored to have murdered an annoying, grating gay man?   Or rumored to have murdered an annoying, grating black man?    I doubt it.   It would have crossed a line.   So what is the variable that makes one movie murder comic while another unacceptable?   There’s gender.   It’s not the ‘annoying, grating’ stuff that condones murder as much as the female stuff.   And there’s also context.   A cool actor murdering an annoying, grating wife can be a joke because in the larger social context, violence against women remains just something that sometimes happens to women.   A private issue rather than a public outrage.

I don’t blame Tarantino.   He’s part of the culture.   He’s trying to make an entertaining movie and he’s just using the cultural assumptions that are available to him.   He’s steeped in it, been steeped in it since birth.   Like all of us.   His movie is a symptom and a sign.   It reflects how deep and dark and pervasive and unconscious hostility toward women remains…in everyone.   Because, like I said, I laughed too.

 

 

Last week I had lunch with a colleague whom I hadn’t seen in some time.  I was eager to catch up and hear about her recent adventures.  During the past year, she headed up a non-profit organization that ended up exerting huge demands on her life, in terms of time, labor and emotional commitment.  She explained that before she accepted the job she was promised the aid of a board of directors to help lighten the load, a board consisting of eight members split equally among women and men.  It didn’t take long to discover that the male board members did zero of the work necessary to keep the organization flowing and had zero compunction about letting the women shoulder all of the work.  I didn’t know this kind of thing was still happening at such an obvious and brazen level.  And lest anyone think this happened in Alabama…no, it was in a non-profit arts organization right here in left-leaning, liberal Los Angeles.

What were the men thinking?  Were they even thinking at all or was their behavior just a reflex, a ‘normal’ reaction when there’s grunt work to do and half of the people in the room are women?   Did both the men and women on this board harbor unconscious assumptions about whose time and energy are important and deserve honoring?   It reminded me once again how far we’ve haven’t come.   It also reminded me of how deep the tentacles of misogyny are when liberal men, whom I like to count as friends of equal rights, have so little awareness of their sexist behavior.

 

 

Last week I was watching ABC’s World News Tonight when anchor David Muir reported that a comatose woman in an Arizona facility gave birth to a boy.   The woman had been in a vegetative state for 14 years so it was easy to conclude that she had been raped.   Oddly, Muir continued to report that “local police are determined to find the father, gathering DNA from male workers at the facility”

“The father?”  What a strange and inaccurate appellation to use for the man who raped an unconscious woman.

Newscasts are planned, discussed, written, then edited.   They are not spontaneous utterances by an anchor.  Writers and producers must approve the ‘scripts’ before they go up on the monitor for the news anchor to read.   A bevy of smart, savvy professionals at ABC saw ‘the father’ in writing and no one thought to edit it out.  No one thought to change ‘the father’ to the correct appellation:  ‘the rapist.’

ABC World News Tonight is a mainstream 30 minute news program with nearly 8 million nightly viewers.  It is not a niche cable station.  ABC wants to appeal to as many viewers as possible.

I can’t help but wonder, did ABC intentionally choose to characterize the woman’s assailant as ‘the father’ over ‘the rapist’ so that the story would appeal to a mainstream audience?   Does calling a rapist a rapist offend a mainstream audience?   Or, despite reading from a script, perhaps David Muir made a mistake?   He misspoke.  It could happen to anyone, right?   Okay, but if it was a slip of the tongue, why land in this particular way, turning a rapist into ‘the father’ as opposed to landing another way, like calling the rapist ‘the attacker’ or ‘the assaulter?’

There’s another possibility which I believe is more likely.   We live enmeshed in a rape culture and aren’t conscious of how words are used to hide this reality.

World News Tonight’s staff’s use of ‘father’ vs ‘rapist’ was probably unconscious.  Their mistake simply mirrors the culture’s inability to take violence against women seriously.  By using a word that possesses positive associations (i.e. father), the crime’s brutality gets softened in our collective imagination.   It’s an unconscious cover up of sorts, an attempt to re-characterize sexual violence into something more palatable.   It makes us more receptive to accepting rape as just something that on occasion happens to women instead of the urgent public safety issue that it is.  Words matter.

For most of my writing life, I’ve been plagued with an unrealistic belief that success is only possible if my work is perfect, or near perfect.  A fool’s errand, to be sure.   Since this ridiculous belief, at its worst, causes so much mental anguish, I’ve often wondered where it came from and why it continues to have such a persistent hold.   My friends and family can attest that I’m not a perfectionist and I don’t hold myself to standards of perfection in other areas of my life.   It’s only in my professional life – which is a public life — where unrealistic demands on my performance dog me.

Last month, watching the public testimony of Professor Christine Blasey Ford, I observed a woman attempting perfection.   And it has helped me understand some of the covert forces at play.

Credibility was the goal of her testimony.   To achieve credibility, she had to tell her story and answer questions with a perfectly calibrated demeanor.   There was no margin for error.   Her tone of voice couldn’t be too loud or too emotional.   Her facial expressions had to show some emotion but not be too expressive.   The slightest deviation from perfect comportment threatened to invite an onslaught of condemnation.   Words like “hysterical,” “emotional,” “unhinged” lurked in the wings, ready to make a quick entrance if she made the mistake of speaking too loudly, too angrily.   But by the close of her testimony, it was clear that Dr. Blasey Ford had succeeded despite the constraints of testifying-while-female.

Kavanaugh testified under no such similar constraints.   He was afforded a wide berth.   In his opening statement he yelled, sneered, cried, ranted.   In his responses to Democratic Senators, he was pugilistic, evasive, and misleading.  He also lied.  But none of it ultimately mattered.   His demeanor and tone were rationalized away.

The playing field was wildly tilted in Kavanaugh’s favor for much of the same reason, twenty seven years ago, that it was tilted in Clarence Thomas’s favor.   Nothing much has changed in a generation.   Testifying-while-male confers authority even when credibility is lacking.

The rationalization Republican Senators used to confer credibility on Kavanaugh’s testimony is worth noting.   Many GOP Senators told the media that they too would sound angry if they had been unfairly accused of sexual assault, if they were innocent. Of course this begs the question, if Kavanaugh’s ranting is what an innocent man sounds like, then what does a guilty man sound like?

And not one Republican Senator said, “If I had been sexually assaulted, I would’ve sounded just like Dr. Blasey Ford.”  It says something tragic about our world that that sentence rings silly.   Empathizing with a woman isn’t even on the menu.

Male reality remains consensus reality, a place where there’s little room for the reality of female experience.  And this is where I believe my forlorn strategy for perfection comes from.   There’s no place for me.   My body and mind know this at a very deep level.   I know, no matter what I do publicly, I will always be evaluated through a male lens, a distorted, biased perspective that discounts and devalues my experience even before I act.   And there’s no escape because I can’t be anything but female.   So perfection, an impossible requirement, becomes an attempt to compensate for being female.   And it doesn’t work.  Just like it didn’t work for Professor Blasey Ford.

After the hearing, I turned on CNN where a panel of pundits was asked to weigh in.  CNN Chief Legal Analyst, Jeff Toobin, started on an ironic note, saying “I’m going to give you my most sophisticated legal opinion,” and then his tone darkened and he stated solemnly, “Women always lose.  That’s my analysis.  Women always lose.”   A stark, depressing indictment that right now feels more true than untrue.  Two women on the same CNN panel jumped in, immediately disagreeing with Toobin, protesting vociferously by alluding to a couple of feminist victories from decades ago.   I wished I could be as hopeful as they were but their dissent possessed a “They-doth-protest-too-much” ring to it, as if the truth was too much to bear, and must be shooed away.

Right now it does seem like women always lose, that the obstacles against women remain overwhelming, that the game is rigged, that justice is a sham.   And the attempt to overcome being female, through perfection, is a pathetic strategy, albeit the only one available to Blasey Ford.  It’s a strategy aimed to keep women hoping that there is actually something that can be done about being female, some perfect testimony, some brave act, good grades, a college degree, anything, something, but in fact, it only reinforces how the entire system remains unrelentingly hostile.

In this environment hope feels more like a necessary delusion to keep one’s spirit up rather than a reality around which to rally.   Conditions may change and I should always leave open that possibility.  But I don’t believe a substantive realignment of the world – one where a woman could succeed with the same appalling imperfections as Kavanaugh — is anywhere in our near future.

 

As a follow up to my last post on August 26, 2018, I want to bring your attention to an article by Lili Loofbourow where she introduces the concept of The Male Glance.  It’s tremendously insightful.   Loofbourow argues that we all see what we’re told to see, what we’re acculturated to see.   Seeing potential is irrationally skewed when gender gets in the way.  And this isn’t just the case of men judging women’s work differently; this is a case of both women and men judging women’s work in superficial ways, with a glance.

I don’t say this often but Loofbourow’s article will expand your consciousness.

Check it out:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/06/the-male-glance-how-we-fail-to-take-womens-stories-seriously

 

PBS recently re-aired a wonderful documentary about The Beatles’ early years.

In one segment, Paul McCartney held that it wasn’t until manager Brian Epstein came aboard that the band took off.   He said “Brian saw potential in us that we didn’t see in ourselves.”  McCartney continued to attribute Epstein with having had “the vision to take a scrappy Liverpool band to worldwide fame.”

This reminded me of another documentary I saw a few years ago about Woody Allen’s early years.   I already knew that he started his career writing jokes for Sid Caesar, and then became a stand-up comic, before moving on to world fame as an auteur filmmaker.  What I didn’t know was how badly he initially performed as a stand-up.   He was so terrified of being in front of an audience that he regularly vomited before going on stage.

Apparently, he didn’t even want to pursue a stand-up career.  It was his managers, Joffe and Rollins, who saw potential in Allen.   They encouraged him, worked with him, helped him develop his act and thus his confidence.   They turned raw potential into a polished performance.   And it didn’t stop there.  Joffe and Rollins also pushed Allen to write and direct his own movies.   They were instrumental in raising money, convincing backers that he was a capable director, even though he had zero experience, having never directed a movie.  Joffe and Rollins, like Brian Epstein, saw potential.   And that made all the difference.

Joffe and Rollins, like Brian Epstein, imagined their client.

These two scenarios got me thinking about how important it is to have someone imagine you, see your promise, even if, no, especially if, you don’t see it in yourself.

There’s a great myth about talent, and by extension, success.  The myth holds that talent emerges full-blown, potent and great.   But the reality has a lot more to do with how hard work and perseverance get rewarded when someone with influence sees potential and then acts on it by opening doors.   Success, in any endeavor, is dependent on someone imagining you as someone you may not yet be, but could be.

If you are a scrappy band or a stand-up comic or an assistant manager at Burger King, someone has to imagine that hidden promise lies within you before another stage of success is possible.   And for that to happen, you have to be taken seriously.   There has to be a complete societal infrastructure – family, school, church, etc. — that envisions you as having standing as a full human being.   For most of history, that vision has been the province of men.

If The Beatles were a girl band, would there have been anyone to hear their music?    If Woody Allen was a woman, would there be a connected, influential manager duo spending valuable time developing her act and then encouraging her to direct movies?

These examples are from two generations ago so it’s tempting to pretend this is a thing of the past.  After all, women now participate in the work force in a way that would’ve been unimaginable two generations ago, right?   Not so fast.  The opportunity to work is not the same as the opportunities that gets put into motion when one’s promise is imagined.

Women continue to be judged on their performance while men are judged on both their performance and their potential.   The most obvious consequences are found in promotion inequity and pay inequity.   But there are many less obvious consequences.   And that’s the crux of the matter.   It is harder to see what has never been seen.

The world runs on a male narrative.   It’s as old as civilization.   Imagining male talent is easy.   We live buried within a twenty-five-hundred year heritage, going all the way back to the Ancients.  We’re on the lookout for male talent, receptive to it, encouraging it whether in the arts, the sciences, business, politics or technology.   The expectation of male talent has reaped enormous benefits for all of humankind.   Imagine how much richer our lives would be if seeing potential – which would demand a radical enlargement of imagination — were given to the entire species, and not just half.

 

For most of my adult life, I’ve lived in either New York or Los Angeles.  So it’s fair to say I travel in liberal circles.  Nearly all of the straight men with whom I come into contact are liberals.  We share an enthusiastic support for equal rights for all, regardless of race, religion, orientation, etc.  And yet, when it comes to feminism, I’ve noticed there’s often a subtle waning of enthusiasm, even defensiveness, among some of my liberal brethren.

Sure, they believe in equal pay for equal work.  Sure, they’re against rape and work place sexual harassment.  But who wouldn’t be against these crimes?   Even right-wingers will rally against rape.

Instead, I’ve noticed that conversations about the more complex and nuanced biases women face are often met by liberal straight men with resistance.  If I dare to recount an experience of bias that doesn’t sit squarely on the already agreed upon sexual-misconduct-spectrum, I find many liberal straight men are quick to shut down the conversation by injecting “but it’s getting better,” or “it’s not that bad,” or “but that only happened in the past.” Comments like these may seem innocuous but the message sent is clear:  “Enough already.”  I usually oblige, pull back, realizing a limit has been reached and there’s nothing to gain by persisting.  In other words, I’m silenced by the demands of polite conversation.

So what’s going on here?  Why do so many liberal straight men enthusiastically support, with zero equivocation, the equal rights struggle of every other marginalized group, but hedge, equivocate when it comes to women?

There are a whole slew of reasons but for right now I want to focus on only one:  Intimacy.

Being intimate, living together creates all sorts of emotional entanglements, power struggles that make it difficult to see the most normative realities of sexism.

Intimacy may be a place of succor, comfort, and pleasure but it also can turn into a place where monstrous pain is inflicted.   Hearts get broken.  Promises betrayed.  And we don’t forget.  There are wounds that burrow deep in the psyche.

It’s difficult to believe your wife is part of an oppressed group if she’s cheated on you.

It’s difficult to believe your mother is part of an oppressed group if she spent your childhood belittling you.

And then there are the minor irritations of intimacy.   Your partner refuses to put the milk back in the fridge…or she refuses to clean her hair out of the shower drain…or put away dirty dishes…or countless other annoyances that after years solidify into the belief that “if anything, she’s the one with the power.  Not me.”

Here’s a multiple choice sentence that illustrates my point.   Choose one option in each set.

“My [wife, girlfriend, mother], [drives me crazy, bosses me around, spends my money, criticizes me, cheats on me, denies me sex, runs everything, nags me, makes all of the big decisions] so there’s little legitimacy in the claim that women have less power than men.”

No advances for women have ever been secured without the support of liberal straight men.   So it’s crucial to start shedding light on how intimacy clouds perceptions of gender equality.

As a first step in finding a solution, I propose taking the same sentence as above but revising it:

“My [wife, girlfriend, mother], [drives me crazy, bosses me around, spends my money, criticizes me, cheats on me, denies me sex, runs everything, nags me, makes all of the big decisions] AND my [wife, girlfriend, mother] is a woman who lives in a sexist world that irrationally devalues her in ways I am both aware of, and in ways which I am not yet aware of, but which I do want to know about.”

This is a start based on the fact that liberal straight men are already allies, already on board with the values of equal rights.  It’s a small shift of awareness that could lead to a larger conversation, one not so easily shut down.

I know a man who doesn’t believe that sexism exists.

This isn’t, in itself, unusual.   Many men – and women – turn a blind eye to the global presence of sexism, despite mountains of evidence.  There are also legions who do acknowledge sexism, but who are eager to proclaim that “it’s not that bad” or that “it’s getting better.”

But I want to focus on this particular man, the man I know who doesn’t believe sexism exists (as if sexism is a religion that demands faith in order to have legitimacy).  He is highly educated with two advanced degrees from Harvard.  He is, by all standards, successful, smart, well-traveled and open-minded about a whole array of other global issues.

He prides himself on being rational, a man of logic.  When asked about any other subject, he assiduously relies on evidence, data, studies to draw conclusions and make decisions.   But when it comes to sexism, he finds creative ways to dismiss the data.   For example, he will concede pay inequity exists but he rushes to defend its presence with rationalizations that make the head spin.

There’s another man:   Marc Benioff.   He’s the CEO of Salesforce, a large, successful software company that employs 30,000 people.  About a month ago, CBS’ 60 minutes profiled Benioff, focusing on his commitment to bring pay-and-opportunity equity to all Salesforce employees.

In 2017, Salesforce’s Human Resources Chief presented Benioff with some unpleasant news.  She had conducted a company-wide salary audit which revealed that Salesforce’s women earned 20% less than the men who were performing the same job.  The audit also revealed that promotions for men took 18 to 24 months while promotions for women took 24 to 48 months.  Benioff confessed that he was shocked upon learning this.  He prided himself on being a leader and an advocate on progressive issues, including battling sexism, so he assumed that his company treated every employee the same.

When he received evidence to the contrary, he set about rectifying the situation at a cost to Salesforce’s bottom line.   And he didn’t stop there.  Every year Salesforce buys many smaller companies, and in the process, imports the sexist cultures of those companies.  Benioff charged his HR department to audit each of these companies and to make the changes necessary to ensure pay-and-opportunity equity for all.

A tale of two men.   Both educated, intelligent and successful.   One impervious to facts;  one in service to them.

I’ve noticed that many educated men construct their masculinity around a belief that they possess superior logic, that their thinking is never muddled by emotion (i.e. a womanly faculty).   Appealing to this vanity is one tactical prong in the struggle for equality.  But I’ve also noticed that facts, evidence and data are often no match against entrenched bias.  Benioff is unique.  That’s precisely why he warranted a 60 Minutes story.

Pay-and-opportunity inequity is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.   Below the surface, irrational fears and hatred of all-things-female continue to churn, impervious to logic.  And until there are more Benioffs — a critical mass of Benioffs to tip the scale — it is below-the surface, in this roiling, where the most impenetrable battles lie.

For many years I’ve regularly visited my neighborhood gym.   My workout consists of a combination of treadmill and weight machines, usually lasting about ninety minutes.   It’s a routine I enjoy as much for the exercise as for the opportunity it provides away from my desk (whatever I’m working on at the moment continues to develop in all sorts of productive ways while working out).

Several months ago, while on the adductor machine, I noticed an older man talking at – as opposed to speaking with — a young woman.  It was evident by her body language that she was barely tolerating him.   It was also evident, as he continued his monologue, that he was absolutely indifferent to her disinterest.

In subsequent gym visits, I saw him many times continuing to annoy more young women.  I mentally dubbed him Annoying-Old-Guy (AOG).  I recognized in the women’s attempts at evasion some similar tactics that I had used when I was in my twenties – a weak smile calibrated to disinvite further engagement without triggering a confrontation, averting eye contact, curt responses.  But none of these worked with AOG.  I felt relief and gratitude that I had aged out of this all-too-familiar scenario where strange men demand attention and refuse to read basic social cues.  Luckily, I’m older now and men are less inclined to insert themselves so aggressively into my life.

Or at least that’s what I believed until last Sunday.   The gym was particularly crowded, which usually indicates long waits for certain exercise machines.   From across the room I had my eye on the leg lift.   It was occupied.  From my angle, I couldn’t see who was using it but I could see a pair of legs lifting the bar.   When I saw the legs disappear – signaling the machine was free — I made my move, quickly dashing over before anyone else could.   As I came around the corner, there he was, Annoying-Old-Guy.   And he was delighted to see me.   He smiled broadly at me and made a grand show of gallantry, cleaning off the seat for me (it wasn’t dirty), all the while telling me “I will clean seat for you.  See?  See?”  He spoke broken English.  I gave a polite nod, then turned away, reaching down to set the weights — a cue for him to move away.   But he remained and announced proudly, “I lift 180 lbs.”

I gave him a perfunctory nod then sat and placed my legs and hands in ready-to-begin position.  I noted he was not moving.  He remained standing very close to me, pleased with himself.   He thumped his chest and announced: “I’m 85, can you believe it?”  I could feel myself growing irritated.   I said politely, “Okay, I’m going to exercise now.”  Instead of moving away, he displayed his bicep, slapped it hard and said, “Do you know Popeye?”   He didn’t wait for a response.  “I am Popeye and women are my spinach,” he trumpeted proudly.  Then he leaned in closer, in conspiratorial mode and ‘confided’: “Not all women at this gym are nice like you.”  Using his index finger, he pushed his nose up, indicating that the women in this gym are snobs.   And he repeated the gesture several times for emphasis as if I’m-in-on-this with him.   I tried to illuminate him by saying “Well, you never really know what’s going on inside a person–”   Suddenly, he interrupted me, raising his voice, becoming enraged and bellowed, “I know women!  I know women!  I’ve been married eight times!”  (You can’t make this stuff up.)  He continued yelling at me for another five or six seconds before abruptly walking away.

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