i really hope that i’m PMSing right now, because if that’s not the root cause for the waterworks going on right now (runny nose and all), then there’s something wrong with me.  (or perhaps i’m just coming to terms with my more emotional/feminine side, that’s always a possibility.)

at any rate, this has to do with the post that i wrote a few days ago about straight white guys.  when i wrote the aforementioned post, i’ll be honest and say that there were a few (okay probably more than a few) specific instances where i felt completely marginalized, treated with condescension or sexually objectified, that i was thinking of when i wrote it, and all of those instances involved…?  yep!  you guessed it: straight white guys.

here’s one example: when i was in high school, me, my boyfriend, and his parents went out for dinner once night. we were all casually conversing with each other, when i hear his dad mutter “red sweater” under his breath.  i thought that this was a really odd thing to say, completely random, and why was he talking so quietly?  then i saw something out of the corner of my eye, i looked up at the front door, and a well-endowed blonde woman wearing a red sweater walked in.  in the space of a few seconds, my boyfriend’s father had whittled a human being down into nothing more than an article of clothing and a pair of breasts.  in addition, he was training my boyfriend to do the very same thing.  and let’s not even discuss the fact that he had done this right in front of his wife and his son’s girlfriend.  some people have a lot of fucking nerve.

i was completely incredulous. i mean, he couldn’t have been more obvious than if he would have said “hey, son, check out the tits on that one walking in the door! dayyy-um!” my boyfriend looked up at her, then caught my eye and then went back to eating like nothing had happened.  i looked at my boyfriend’s mom.  she was sitting there pleasantly smiling to herself as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

FUCK.  THAT.

i was so angry i had to excuse myself and go to the restroom to cool down.  at the time, i didn’t truly understand why i was so angry, and i lacked the self-confidence to call him out on his behaviour like i would do now.  needless to say, i ended the relationship shortly after that occurrence (but not before he decided to share with me that his friends thought that i was fat).  (in retrospect, what the fuck was i doing dating this guy?)

and that’s just ONE example.

so, not long after writing the aforementioned post, i realized that, shit, my best friend is a straight white guy.  but then i sat, wondering why i had failed to realize this when i was writing the post.  after giving our 11-year friendship a fair amount of consideration, i’ve realized that i don’t ever recall even one instance where dug condescended to me because of my gender, or treated me as “less than” because of my race.  he’s always respected me and my opinions, even when we haven’t agreed (like my republican years – they were a very dark period of my life, i don’t like to talk about it), although we definitely bickered/debated a lot…and still do from time to time.  but bickering aside, he’s never respected me any less for my opinions regardless of how they align (or don’t align) with his.

from what i can see, he treats every woman in his life this way: his wife, his sister, his mother, and all of his other female friends. to be fair, i honestly think that he simply prefers the company of women to men, and i’m pretty sure that if he were a woman, he would probably be a lesbian.  but to clarify, he doesn’t put women on a pedestal (because while it’s nice, being a goddess does get tiring after a while) , but he simply treats us as equals…which is really all that girls like me want anyway.