Strength, Gender, and Tipping Points

Yesterday I went to sign for a whiteboard that was being delivered.  The delivery man looked at me and said, "I'm gonna need a man."

I thought about the snappy things I could say:  making a sexual joke or a consciousness raising comment or something insulting.  In the end, I said, "Why?"

Turns out that the delivery man only gets the delivery to the door of the building; we have to get it upstairs.  I said, "Do we need one man or two?"

The man said, "It weighs 105 pounds."

I decided it was a two man job, and luckily, I was able to find two people on the more male end of the gender spectrum to help.  They slid the unwieldy package across the floor; I refrained from pointing out that most of us could have managed that.

Once I'd have moved the thing myself, just to make a point.  These days, I think about the larger point.  If I moved the box, would the delivery man go away a changed man with changed views about gender and strength?  Doubtful.

We stand at an interesting time in our nation in terms of gender.  I want to believe that we'll see an upsurge in women elected in 2018 because of all the revelations of sexual abuse and harassment that have been coming to light in the past 6 weeks.  I want to believe that we're at a time similar to the Anita Hill hearings in 1991 that led to historic wins by women in 1992.

But perhaps my vision is too limited.  The gender binary is so hard to leave behind.  Maybe I should be looking to the recent election of the transgender candidate in Virginia.  Maybe what I should want to see is the election of people all along the gender spectrum:  women who can move 105 pound boxes by themselves and men who are tenderhearted with babies and people whose gender we can't quantify but we like their stands on certain policies.  I want the same for race, for religion, for immigrant status.  I want a more diverse group of people making policies.

I know that it's only with a wider group of people that we'll begin to see the world I want to see:  a world where women and children are not prey.  They aren't in need of protection, for the most part, because we all agree that it's wrong to see them as prey.  I include teenagers in that group.

It's been a bit triggering to see the photos of the young women that Roy Moore reportedly hunted.  It was the late 70's.  I have similar pictures of myself yellowing in an album.  In what world is it OK that men who are decades older tried to date teenagers?

The world we live in, sadly.  I'm ready for a time period where we make some quantum leaps in terms of human rights.  I want to believe that it's already underway.