In This Future, You Demonstrate Great Courage

Yesterday, I was standing in a friend's foyer discussing the current furor in the reality-based blogosphere. If you don't know what happened or is happening at this moment, it's not likely that linking to the participants' blogs will help. On Saturday, when the first shots were fired, I was at the bottom of a pile of refreshing beverages and cats with medical conditions and catching up has proven remarkably difficult. Mamie joins us in the foyer, takes one look at me.

Mamie: You're talking about Shakespeare's Sister?
Tata: Yeah, how'd you know?
Mamie: That's the expression your face gets everytime.
Tata: What? I have a look just for a person I've never met?
Mamie: At least she makes you think!

Life is short, unless you're in prison. A gal's got to pick her battles and fewer of them as age creeps up and metabolism slows. For instance: that I get to work in the morning is a daily miracle; there's no way I'd have the time or energy to pick a fight with a bigtime blogger and pin him to the mat. So I'm watching the fracas with the expression on my face that says, "Look at that girl go! She's gonna run out of stomach lining before she runs out of opponents." This is how I know I must be nearly old enough for a red New Yorker and the early bird special: the fire that drove me for decades has burned down to embers.

Plus, Vanessa Marcil is on the cover of Maxim. And I love Vanessa Marcil.

The initial fight was over an ad on a progressive website, and that degenerated into the bigtime blogger calling feminists tired, tired insulting names, dismissing the point, and backing up so, so close to dismissing women altogether. What I see here, and what the dozens of women participating in the story see is nothing new: many men, no matter what they say, want women to stop challenging them.

Personally - because that's where the political stream meets the ocean of day-to-day results - I have watched affection and interest disappear from the eyes of men who chased me when they realized that what they caught was just as smart as they were. Men who really liked me tried to keep me a secret from their friends because I wouldn't shut up. I have seen men who loved me lose their nerve and break things off, and I hate them for being such cowards because the only love worth having is brave love.

Personally, I have a band of female friends who say the exact same thing. We have a mantra: "Maybe this one is different. Maybe this one is brave." Over and over, we find that no matter what his politics, the new man is terrified of vivacious women with their own opinions and ideas (the utterly fearless Paulie Gonzalez being one exception.) The more single women I meet, the more often I hear this story.

Menfolk of the Left: women are watching you, and every. last. one. has heard some form of the old horseshit about spreading her legs for the Revolution. You are not slick. You have to take us seriously whether you like it or not. We simply will not behave for you. We will not be quiet. We will not go cook you something.

The best thing you could do is cultivate a shiny-new steel-reinforced spine where your smart female counterparts are concerned. Plenty of us are going on with lives without you because you've lost your nerve. Wouldn't it be better for everyone if you grew the hell up and we could go on together?