THE REFORMED FEMINIST
by
Louis Lopez
© 2023 by Louis Lopez.
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"I think she's getting ready to give me the old heave-ho," Sid tells me as he slumps into my living room couch on a Saturday afternoon. I've been anticipating what I think he's going to tell me.
"You must have a date tonight," I say.
"Yeah, probably the last with Carla. It's obvious she's been leading up to it lately."
"You've been going with her for a long time, haven't you? Seems like almost a year."
"It'll be a year in September, but I think she's lost interest. Maybe never had any. I think she wants someone more exciting."
"Has she been honest with you about it? Have you talked about doing more exciting things together? It doesn't seem like you have any kind of insurmountable problem."
"The problem isn't excitement. She isn't exactly the type that is always doing things. She's not athletic, doesn't like the outdoors particularly, generally leads a pretty dull life, I would say. No, I think the problem is me. She doesn't find me exciting."
"Yeah, I see. I have a feeling I know what she's going to tell you. 'You're too nice.' That's what she'll say. But I told you a long time ago about that. I told you you were just too nice to these women you go out with. I've seen it when you bring them here or when we've all gone places together. It just doesn't work that way."
"Well, maybe you're right. Maybe I was too nice to my ex, too."
I met Sid back in 1971 when he had just gotten married and appeared to be very happy. He was still in college then, his wife Donna was working, and they seemed to be getting along well. After he finished, she went back to school to finish her degree. He only had a hint of the potbelly he subsequently developed. He's struggled since then to make a living. In trying to become a free-lance writer, he found it wasn't as easy to make money as the articles in Writer's Digest said. He's now a copy editor with the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. He's got a two-room apartment, drives an old '73 Datsun that's in reasonably good shape. Doesn't worry about things like keeping it washed. I've told him that's important in finding a woman, but he laughs at me.
The following Thursday I get a call from him. "She did it," he says. "She dumped me."
"What did she say?" I ask.
"It was just like you said. She said I was too nice for her. She didn't deserve someone as nice as me."
"What a nice compliment."
"Yeah, just what I wanted to hear." After a pause. "I just can't figure it out. I thought she was a liberated woman. I wouldn't go out with any other kind. I thought liberated women were supposed to like guys who are kind and sensitive and gentle."
"Yes, but they're a bore."
Two months later to my complete surprise, Sid is seeing another woman. I figured he would probably sit and mope for at least six months before getting out and dating again. It's this woman he met at his job at the newspaper. He brings her to the apartment one day, and she seems to like him. He's a good conversationalist, always informed on what is going on behind the scenes. Gets a lot of information at the newspaper.
He comes by our apartment on another day, and my wife is around and half- listens as she reads some material for her job. It turns out the problem is that it's not clear whether his new love-interest has completely severed the tie with the ex-boyfriend. Sid is trying to be cool about it, but it isn't easy. I keep trying to tell him it's better not to let her know that he's torn up about it.
"I'll try to be calm for my own good, but I don't see why I should try to pretend to her that it doesn't bother me. I believe in honesty. Besides she should be flattered that I care that much about her."
"Believe me. I don't want to come off like some stud that knows everything, but I learned it from experience, from getting shot down a bunch of times." I was certain that I had dated a lot more than Sid. I didn't get married until I was 29 while he got married his sophomore year in college, and I don't think he had dated much before that.
"So you think nice guys finish last with women."
"No, I'd say there's a few out there that really appreciate nice guys. It's the rest you have to worry about, can't come off too soft for them."
"I guess the catch is that women are supposed to like sensitive guys. That was part of the feminist agenda that all women were going to follow."
"They followed all right. Polls showed that the majority of women were opposed to the ERA."
"Well, I've always been a faithful feminist right from the start. I used to side with Donna on that issue all the time," he said dejectedly.
"I remember all too clearly. I was never right if I differed with Women's Lib, as it was called then. You know I was mostly in agreement but there were some points with which I took exception."
"Yea, like you used to argue that men and women were more biologically different than feminists cared to admit, and I have to say you were right."
"I also remember thinking feminism should have been called the New Prudishness from the way some women talked. It seemed like almost any advance could be interpreted as sexist by some."
"Boy," he said laughing, "all you wanted was for feminism to set the stage for you to get laid all the time. You thought feminism was going to encourage women to be as promiscuous as men, but instead the line was that women should stop allowing themselves to be used as 'sex objects.'"
"The problem was that most of the guys, like you and me, that believed that feminism was a good thing and that all women were paying attention, went around worrying and trying to be sensitive to what women were supposedly saying and then too many times we came off as wimps."
"Most women rejected feminism, even from the very start."
"You're ex-wife didn't reject it," I pointed out. "I guess she's still a big feminist."
"Yeah and she's hypocritical as hell. I wish I'd seen through that a lot sooner. Here there was supposed to be this equality that would help everyone out of stereotyped roles. Men would be free from the pressures of being the sole breadwinner and would be more relaxed and in touch with their 'inner souls.' But the reality was we were still expected just as much as ever to be responsible financially when the chips were down. I was perfectly willing and ready to take care of Sarah at home while Donna had a full-fledged career."
"Heck, you were taking care of your daughter most of the time when Donna was going to school anyway."
"She couldn't admit it to herself, but the thing is she couldn't rid herself of the stereotypical notion that a man has to be out there working at a good job or he's not worth anything. Not only have women in general not accepted that, even most feminists haven't, but they won't admit it."
"Remember that reporter from KQED that came out a few years ago on some TV special about women? She admitted she had divorced her husband because he wasn't making as much money as she was. She said she just couldn't respect him. At least I'll give her credit for being honest about it."
"I'm beginning to think that feminist criticism is just a new name for the age-old feminine tradition of 'bitching.'"
"I remember how it was going to visit you guys at your apartment when you were married," I reminisced. "I had to be real careful not to let out any sexist remarks and couldn't refer to women as 'broads' but I could call them 'cunts.'"
"Yeah, Henry Miller's favorite designation for women. Donna was a big fan of his because she fancied herself a big fuckstress, a female version of Henry Miller."
"Is she still pushing the Polygamy Movement?"
"I don't know. Probably," he speculated. "As for my present situation with this new woman, you think I should play the game of not showing that I'm jealous about her lingering interest in her ex-boyfriend? I think that we're both too real as persons to be playing games."
"It's natural to feel jealous, but it may be better to show some indifference. If you think about it, you're probably the same. Your interest is probably greater in a woman who shows some indifference to you."
"You may have a point. She's told me this other guy's abusive. I mean he's hit her several times, and she's broken up with him over it before. Now she says she wants to break it completely again, but she's still seeing him because he's insisting it'll work this time."
"That makes my point. You've got to be careful not to come off too nice. See, this guy is downright nasty, and she's still going for him. There's probably some attraction to that macho toughness even though she's not aware of it. Do you remember that book you thought was so good by a . . Dorothy Dinnerstein, that admitted that men sought to control women and women wanted to be controlled by men because of some Freudian reasons in early childhood?"
"The Mermaid and the Minotaur. I don't know that I accept all the mumbo jumbo Freudian reasons anymore, but one thing I know is that she doesn't like getting beat up."
"I'm sure but there's the contradiction, and I'm sure part of the reason she keeps trying to make it work is that she doesn't want to desert the guy. She feels a certain loyalty and wants to help him reform."
"So you think I should tell her that I like to beat up women, too?"
"No, not exactly but you might want to throw a few tantrums. Have you heard that old song by Joanie Summers, 'Johnny Get Angry'?
"Johnny get angry,
Johnny get mad,
Give me the biggest lecture,
I ever had.
I wanna cave man,
I wanna brave man.
Johnny, show me that you care,
Really care for me."
"Yeah, I've heard that. I guess that's what some of these women want. I remember now that I saw Love Connection last week where this guy was insisting that you had to give women a little bit of a run-around so they would become interested. I laughed when I heard that but maybe it wouldn't hurt to try it."
Sid's new woman can't make up her mind what she wants to do for several months which puts him through serious turmoil. He knows he has no guarantee that she will go for him and that he shouldn't get his hopes up, but he says he can't help but get huge feelings of jealousy. She's apparently still screwing ex, or about-to-be-ex, boyfriend or so he keeps imagining. Then about three months later, he makes one of his regular visits to my apartment. He acts dejected.
"She says she's decided to go back to him. I just can't believe it."
"I bet you kept on just being a nice guy and came off too much like you were just dangling there in desperation."
"I tried acting tough and cool but I just couldn't pull it off. I'm not used to it. I can't believe it would work anyway."
"There's no guarantee it'll work, but once again, being nice didn't work. You have to admit that."
"You've got a definite point there."
This time about six months go by before he gets close to a woman he meets at the swimming pool he often goes to. He doesn't talk too much about her at first, but eventually starts to tell me that he is telling her that he's dating other women--a highly unusual move for him. It's not true, of course. He's very picky and so doesn't date that much. He brings this woman Karen to the apartment. He acts detached and doesn't pay constant attention to her like he used to with the other women he's dated. I'm surprised. Karen's a medical assistant, an intelligent woman with lots of interests.
Another six months go by and then I start getting slight signals that maybe things are starting to slide. He's probably being too nice again. I have an idea and I talk to my wife. We invite them over for dinner one Sunday evening. Halfway through the meal of pinto beans and brown rice that I prepare, we start talking of what Sid was like before he got married.
"Sid went through one woman after another," I mention right away. "Wouldn't take any gaff from any of them. The sad thing is there were some broken hearts left along the way." Sid looks at me strangely out of the corner of his eye and tries to suppress a smile.
"You would never imagine he would have been that way knowing him now," my wife Cheryl adds.
"Yeah," I go on, "he's a super gentleman now, soft spoken and very attentive, but he was very different then. He was the epitome of your strong, independent male. I didn't see it myself but I heard he even duked out a couple of guys in fights in bars."
"That's unbelievable," Karen says with a look of amazement. She doesn't notice Sid as he makes a quick frown at me, apparently to show his disapproval.
"He's mellowed quite a bit, but I would still be careful," my wife adds. "I don't think you'd ever want to cross him." By now Sid looks totally bewildered and is probably upset at me, but I decide to risk it and go on.
"That's another one," I say. "I wouldn't be surprised if he told me he slapped his ex-wife when they were married. Nothing serious but it does show what he might do if pushed far enough." Sid is now about to have a conniption. "I wouldn't worry about it, though," I add.
"Don't believe any of it," he protests loudly. "This is just their idea of a funny joke, but it's not true. I never did any of those things, especially hitting my wife. I would never even dream of doing something like that." I detect a definite tone of anger in his voice and figure I've gone too far.
I say, "It's just surprising that Sid could be such a hard guy."
"Yeah, it sure is," Karen agrees. She seems surprised to hear all this but it doesn't appear to make her afraid of Sid. We continue eating in silence for a long moment, and nothing more is said about Sid's toughness. Later when he has a chance out of the earshot of Karen, he quickly asks me, "What the hell were you trying to do?" and I just smile. He acts morose after the conversation and finds an excuse to leave early even though Karen says she is enjoying herself and doesn't want to leave yet. I know now he is definitely angry at me.
Several months go by and we don't hear anything from him. My wife and I decide that he was so offended that he doesn't want anything to do with us anymore. Then he shows up and seems real happy. He proudly announces that he and Karen are discussing plans for getting married.
"I want to thank you for that night we ate here. It made a big difference in her attitude toward me. I was afraid you had really ruined it for me, but you were right, she seemed to have more admiration for me after that. And I started playing it more aloof, although it was hard. Can you believe I even stood her up once?"
"Incredible," I say.
"To think all those years I wasted. That's what I get for listening to the prattle from my ex-wife and some of my own progressive friends."
THE END