Gender Wars

Where's It Going?

Unsettling conversation with Sally, a new friend from coffee shop gatherings.

She spoke about when her college age daughter caught her up on how gender issues were shaping up among her friends.

“You know,” she said – clearly understanding that he mother didn’t know – “80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. Which means those 80% basically have to trick women into going on dates with them.”

Gave Sally a little insight into one of the dynamics of social media that is so puzzling to older people. (BTY, this site is the closest I come to social media).

It put me in mind of a cartoon in a recent New Yorker.

I’ve long had morbid fascination with Praying Mantis’ mating. It seems the male mounts the female. When the mating has been accomplished, the female bites off her mate’s head.

I assume the benefit of this is that the female now has exclusive claim on that gene pool.

I don’t know that Praying Mantis have some sort of legacy they want to protect.

In this weird time there is an attempt to underscore some sort of “Manosphere,” in which virile, muscular men become the model for success. Largely, it seems, through intimidation.

I’ve wondered what it might mean that male sperm counts (is there any other kind?) have been diminishing worldwide. And that scientists have succeeded in creating DNA from a single cell that can reproduce without sperm.

Yet another instance of feeling as if I have become a spectator at so much of what seems to be shaping our species.

I wonder how scary it may be for ordinary, gum-chewing, men to risk love affairs if women – who may soon reproduce without them – wondering if, once they have made good on their end, the woman may bite their head off?

Do women and men still love each other? Want to raise children together? Grow old together?

The marriage vows are surprisingly candid about what that means: “For better and for worse; for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

At 85, married for 46 years, more than half my life, having tasted all of the above, it looks as if I may make the final vow: “Until we are parted by death.”

Am I a dinosaur?