Men Who Explain Things

Excellent op-ed in the LA times about gender, authority, and confidence.

A week or so ago, my boyfriend/bandmate/best friend and I went to meet with a guy who will be recording his album.   For the record, a very nice guy who obviously knows sound and is going to do a great job.

Andrew’s band consists of him (obviously), me (bass/vocals), our friend ChAka on keys, and this awesome girl named Courtney who plays the drums.   The biggest thing we were discussing that day was drums, so Andrew said a lot of sentences like this: “My drummer Courtney __________”, “She will probably want to record with the bass player there,” “I’m not sure if she has ever played on an electric drum kit…”

Our recording friend couldn’t get it through his head that Courtney was a female.  Andrew continuously referred to her with a litany of female pronouns,  and the guy would throw the same sentences and ideas right back at Andrew as if he had never said “she” and they were both talking about a guy.  “Your drummer, does he play with ___?” “He’ll want to ____” etc.

Kind of harmless and amusing, and again, the guy seems like a real good guy.  It was a funny story for Courtney the next time we had practice.

Still, this shows two things:
1.  Certain men have a complete inability  to conceive of females in  what they view as  Male roles, to the point where they actually are unable to process information that is repeatedly given to them.

2.  Certain men are so sure of themselves that they will doggedly pursue their own line of thought even when it’s painfully clear to everyone else in the room that they don’t have all the facts.

I think this is totally a gendered thing.  I think men are brought up to act confident whether or not they’re actually sure of themselves, and women are brought up to be willing to hear others’ points of view, even when we already know we’re right.  I further think that it’s so ingrained in male culture that they’re not even really aware it’s happening (someone needs to write The Masculine Mystique, like whoa).

The lady who wrote the op-ed discusses this all in a much more eloquent fashion than I have here.  Read it.

Today is the national Day of Silence, aimed at ending harrassment of LGBT youth. I seem to always have a gig on the Day of Silence, which kind of precludes silence, but I’m happy to switch over to Not Silent and get the word out instead.

FYI: “4 out of 5 LGBT students report verbal, sexual or physical harassment at school and more than 30% report missing at least a day of school in the past month out of fear for their personal safety. ” This year’s day of silence is in memory of Lawrence King, a 15-year old boy who was shot and killed IN CLASS, by a fellow classmate, because of his sexuality and gender expression.

None of this is OK. Hiding behind religion, fear, or mainstream homophobia is not OK. I could give a crap what your personal beliefs are: if you think God doesn’t like it when same sex people sleep together, then don’t do it yourself. If your God doesn’t like that, then He EXTRA SUPER would not like you passing your highfalutin’ judgment on others, or harassing, assaulting, or killing people because of who they are.

More info about the day of silence here. Educate yourself.

So a few months ago I managed to step on my own glasses and break them in half (don’t ask). At the time, it warranted a brief panic followed by a midnight trip to Pathmark for some krazy glue. Which worked like a charm.

This morning, they fell off my dresser and promptly broke again. This time, the krazy glue didn’t work.

So I spent the day at Pearle Vision spending a whopping $505.97 on new glasses. (To be fair, I got a pair of prescription sunglasses with this, but that is actually NOT included in the price because the wonderful sales woman found a way to give me 50% off the order.)

FYI, my glasses did not cost so much because I just had to have the designer-est, brand-iest frames. They cost so much because my eyes are so incredibly bad that they have to do some magical thin-the-glass process, just to make the lenses be able to fit in the frames.

$500 for glasses.

I am a woman who won’t spend more than $10 on a pair of jeans. No matter what. Ever.

Further, because they have to take the time to do this magical thinny process, I have to wait a week to ten days to actually get my new glasses. So I’m sitting here with my old glasses taped together and drooping off my face periodically. It makes it pretty hard to judge distances of things, actually.

Like YAYYY.

So, if anyone feels like seeing me stumble around in public with tapey glasses, I’ve got two shows this weekend — Friday night at Vox Pop (1022 Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn) starting at 8, and Saturday night at the Pisces (14A Railroad Avenue, Babylon — I go on last).

Note: approximately 45 seconds after this picture was taken, my glasses fell off my face again.