The Presence of Men

Lisa Griffis tells of a man — two, actually:

Immediately I realized he was some belligerent jerk who enjoys pushing people around - y'know, a Big Important Guy. I wasn't about to get in a tangle with him, so I said, "Okay, okay" and turned away to finish paying for my groceries. I just wanted to finish up and get away from him. He responded, "Yeah, 'okay' is right! Yeah, that's right!", and moved closer breathing down my neck. ...

At this point Paul spoke up, quite calmly saying, "You could have waited." I said, "No, obviously he can't". But the guy looked surprised to see Paul, and managed a chuckle before shutting the heck up. So, he's a tough guy when he thinks he's dealing with a woman by herself, but when he notices her husband is there suddenly he puts his tail between his legs.

Such men (the other guy, not Paul the husband) bother me more than they should, and I think it may have something to do with their forcing me to consider whether, when I take up the cause of men generally, the points I make don't hold for some significant portion of us. I wonder if most women have had such encounters. Heck, I've got a similar story.

Back in college, my future wife was dropping me off in a parking lot where I'd left my own car in the back corner. We drove straight across the lot, and coming from the perpendicular aisle on the far side, a huge black Dodge pickup truck turned into a space directly in front of us. As my wife steered her tiny car to the left behind it, the Dodge began to back up very quickly and barely missed us. Apparently, its driver had pulled into that spot only to back into another in the aisle that we'd driven down.

With some nervous laughter at the close call, we pulled up near my car, and it took until I'd walked around it and taken out my keys for me to notice a man with gray hair and a beard stomping toward my wife's open window. "Why don't you watch where you're going?"

I heard my wife's reply, "I thought you were parked."

"You want me to ram that Dodge up your ass!?"

From where I now stood by my trunk, I spoke in measured tones, "Hey, there's no need for that."

"Yeah right!" he said, visibly surprised at my presence, and stormed away.

One could speculate on the psychology involved — big truck and all — but for my part, I think it's more interesting to compare a character type on the other side. Michele Catalano spots an example in a piece by Neil Cavuto:

She went onto explain the [opening the] door thing was part and parcel of a bigger thing: An attempt by men, she said, to make women feel like they're lesser.

Me, I hold doors for women. (I hold them for men, too, but they have to be closer, benefiting from the mechanics of the swing.) I'd bet Lisa's Paul holds doors for women, too. I'd also bet that Big Important Guy and Proctological Dodge Guy don't. I wonder which of the following unfortunate social developments applies, or whether it's both:

• The feministas (as Michele calls them) mistakenly attribute both the obnoxious and the gentlemanly behavior to the same group of men (probably to men as a group).
• We're dealing with one of those insidious post-modern distortions whereby the concerned helper is shown to be the true oppressor by his implicit subjugation of the Other.

If the second contributor is a significant one, perhaps women should make an attempt to play matchmaker between the feministas and the BIGs:

"Why don't you watch where you're going, lady?"

"Hey, are you single? You don't hold doors, do you?"