Gender Wars

Tonight online I saw an article about what guy's bad habits say about them. The picture showed a toilet seat up and my mind went back in time...

Many moons ago when I was an impressionable young lad of 21 or so I had a girlfriend who remarked one day with some vehemence how she HATED it when guys left the toilet seat up. I'm sure I was somewhere between often and always guilty of the same offense at the time. On reflection it seemed a reasonable complaint and I was duly ashamed of my entire gender for causing distress to such gentle, fair-minded creatures. I was so ashamed I resolved to never do that again and it became such a habit that I got a little peeved at guys who did that in a communal bathroom (obviously not applicable to guys only bathrooms).

Then, gradually, over the years I began to ponder the odds that nearly all the virtues possessed by humanity happened to reside in one half of humanity. I wondered why, if men needed the seat up and women needed it down, the obvious conclusion was that men who didn't put the seat down were sadly lacking in character and consideration. Apparently women won that argument. Not surprising. After all, men are outmatched in verbal exchanges with women. We wander away, vaguely confused, thinking we've been had but unable to figure out how it happened and convinced we must have done something wrong.

What have I learned? That we both are what we are, unthinking slaves in many ways to the hormones and socialization that rule us and set us up for conflict at times but often capable of bridging the gap with a little effort. I still put the seat down. Mainly out of long habit (I think), but also out of consideration. After all, how much effort does it take?