A few random thoughts

I was dropped my son off at school this morning and as we pulled up to the drop-off line, he looked at the girl getting out of the car in front and blurted, "I hate that girl."

Whoa ... hang on ... "why?"
"I don't know, I just do."
"You can't drop a bomb like that and not explain yourself."
"Well, it is not so much that I hate her, but more that the girls are just so ... so ... smug, the way the laugh at people and make fun of people. It hurts."
Oh. "So they laugh at you?"
"No, not really -- they just kind of ignore me like I don't exist, I am something like a cockroach to them. But they laugh at my friends and other people."
"So this is a 'popular kids' issue?"
"No, most of the girls are like that."

He got out of the car, wished me and his younger sister a good day and trundled off with a 50 lb. bag of books on his back.

The girl in question: tall, mid-back length chestnut hair, already filling out very tight jeans in a disturbing way for a 14 year old, Uggs ... zits. Would I have found her attractive at my son's age? Probably. Would I recommend that my son have anything to do with her? Absolutely not.

I don't have any fancy statistics or resources on the subject, except for personal observations -- which involve making generalizations. So here goes: from a boy's point of view, girls from the age of ... oh, ten onwards until ... maybe college (at the earliest) are simply not worth the effort. And just maybe, the emotional anguish many women go through from marriage age onwards, bemoaning what assholes men are, is largely their own fault: reaping the seeds that they themselves (and mothers) have sown.

Look, girls practice the systematic torture of boys from a disturbingly early age. Humiliation, ridicule and disdain are the weapons and boys largely have no recourse. Boys are physical, but that option has been out of fashion (at least in the educated or upper classes) for at least a hundred years. Of course, in a Muslim nation, you simply smack the offending woman or girl in the face and move on. Their brothers or fathers might even save you the effort. Here in the US, you can't hit girls. And boys have at least one figurative hand tied behind their backs, jumping on one foot trying to fight back in the verbal war: girls are more advanced in verbal ability from ... just about birth.

But it is puberty and the rush of hormones that starts the 10+ year assault on male-kind. Schools don't help any of this: since the 1960's, educational systems have bent over backwards to address perceived injustices -- and the politically correct philosophy is that boys are fundamentally evil and girls need protection and every advantage to get ahead to achieve "equality." What ever that means. So with impunity, girls assault the egos of the boys, strip them of their dignity, crush ambition and, most importantly, sow the seeds of mistrust and resentment. Boys ... well are for the most part simply not interested in messing with girls' minds and egos. It is not generally speaking a boy's sport.

I know that intra-girl warfare can be brutal, too, merciless and with extreme malice -- that is the residue of the competition for mates exhibited by our ancestors tramping around in the filth of caves and huts. But back then gender roles were pretty well defined: women tended to kids and food preparation (and gathering) and men hunted and protected the clan from violence from other clans trying to get more women or food. Men ruled through violence, not wit. I am not advocating a return to violence, certainly not. But the genetic predisposition of each sex is defined.

Thusly assaulted, wounded and bewildered, boys retreat to the company of each other and learn to mistrust girls and women. The "alpha" males, showboat and grandstand for the assembled company of admiring girls who, contrary to all reason (but not genetic urge) throw themselves at a small select groups of physically advanced and coordinated boys (who are often less than bright). If solely these boys bred with the most "popular" (read socially adept or vicious) girls and all others were excluded, I imagine the human race would have long since died out. But the geeks of this world have an ace up their sleeves, or Bill Gates' case a whole deck of them and a printing machine out back. Brains. So they survive, but they do not forget.

So, when after girls become women and suddenly realize that the "popular" or "alpha" males of secondary school (which have been trained by the girls themselves to be self-absorbed jerks) are less than they have been looking for and likely to mow their lawn in the future as a full time occupation, they join the moaning feminist chorus that there are no good men out there.

Hmmm. What qualities would they be looking for in the non-existent men? Assertiveness? Well, any attempt at assertiveness by the men in question (apart from the aforementioned lawn-mowers) resulted in ridicule at the hands of girls for the best part of the decade, that period in time when habits and outlook are formed. Kindness? Kindness was a weakness to be exploited by girls for the amusement of others and intellectual sport. Intelligence? The intelligent male in high school was a nerd or geek. So by the time women want to find a good partner, the intelligent male had long since found other things else to occupy his mind -- he had to, since sex or a caring girlfriend was out of the question. He decided that work and golf were the next best thing, maybe even better because it meant money. And money, they learned, was indeed good: you could buy all the gadgets you wanted, drive cool cars, fly to Pinehurst to play golf, drink, go scuba diving, see the Red Sox ... and you didn't need women for any of this. And if you happened to get lucky, well that is alright -- get sexual release move on. The much sought-after intelligent men had learned to do without women ... precisely because of the treatment received at the sharp end of women, the tongue.

The Glass Ceiling? It used to exist in the sense that very few women ever got to test it through choice (babies) and simple prejudice. Men at the highest levels of business were unaccustomed to women as equals in their presence and resented having to adjust their behavior. It is bizarre that the UK (where sexism is alive and well) had Maggie Thatcher and three long-serving queens, but the US balks at the concept of a woman President. But do not forget that something else may be at work: if the intelligent male succeeds in business (they may also be "alpha" in the sense of popular when they were at school), who is he going to trust for his most important positions? Likely, it will be his wingman, his buddy or someone like him when times were tough. And not a female. It works the other way too: go to an organization run by women -- spot the male with any sort of power at all. You can't, because inverse sexism is permitted in politically correct society. There are tons of all-women schools, clubs and gyms. Try joining one as a man -- you'd be laughed out of the building. More importantly, men don't want to. If you say inverse sexism is OK because it is "tit for tat" (no pun intended), then you are an idiot because it is precisely that sort of attitude that intelligent people are meant to rise above.

Back to boys and girls.... It is all about trust. It takes time to rebuild trust with women when all that has ever happened to you as a geeky boy was downright awful. It happens to girls too. Some or even many men and women never do recover or even develop into haters of the opposite sex. (Of course, there is the whole "mother" thing -- someone that same boys trusts with his life, but that only serves to confuse the matter. Interestingly, that mother may have been an "alpha" girl and only hung out with the popular jocks, but she simply cannot see why girls are so horrible to her boy.)

Is it happenstance that at least 50% of all marriage today end in divorce? Is it even surprising? I don't think so. I think that it can only get worse as each sex gets more -- not less -- polarized in attitude towards the other. Every women's magazine loudly trumpets how to get equal -- or even -- with men. Every one of these rags spouts venom about the unworthiness of men and how women must stand up for themselves to put things right. In essence, these publications teach women how and why they must hate men: a sort of on-going graduate course in the art of diminishing men women first learned while teenagers. No man can live (I did not say "up") to those standards. I am not even sure that something that could is in fact a man at all. Perhaps, you women want a woman? But then the same women listen to misogynist rap music? What kind of mixed message are men being sent?

But back to the topic at hand. What advice to offer my boy? Son, do not get involved with girls at your age. It can bring you nothing but grief. Don't even try. Just work as hard as you can and keep sane, get the best grades you can, hang out with your buddies and do whatever juvenile things that would other wise earn the scorn of the XX's in your class -- out of their sight or knowledge. Get through this period emotionally intact. So what if you decide to skip the prom? Go to a movie with three of your pals and yuck it up. So what if Jocko Popular managed to get laid? It was probably a horrible and awkward experience for the girl involved. When girls get into their late teens and twenties, they change a little -- or some do at any rate. You will find that there are plenty of simply wonderful, nice, caring girls out there (who at your age are hiding out from the rest of the girls in the library or art room) who will love you, make you happy and content. They will be your best buddy and your wingman. Don't lose the ability to trust them, it will be hard for them too because amazingly, their experience will not be too far dissimilar to your own.

Also remember that a leopard does not change its spots -- no matter how convincing they may be. Once someone is amused at the misfortune of others, count on it in the future. If you need to associate with girls now and you just can't stand it otherwise, go the library, find a math geek or a drama nerd, someone under the radar scope. They're a far better bet for humanity and might actually have something interesting to say.