I have a problem with women.

I have a problem with women. No it is NOT my usual problem of wandering eyes and “lust of the flesh” etc! My problem is with relating to women. I am sure it stems from my relationship with my mother. She was, and had to be, a very organised and assertive woman. She never had life easy and was left a widow with five children. My issue is that I find it hard to cope with bossy women who love to tell men how to think and what to do.

Women in my life

I am not bereft of women friendships. I have a loving wife. One of my best friends is a woman. In chaplaincy I have women bosses. I have a woman counsellor/supervisor. ( the poor lady) I have people who come to Space2B who are women who I enjoy a friendship with. I enjoy conversations with Maureen, a stroppy good-humoured Irish woman who runs sustainability courses. I have women I would class as friends in Hungary and Australia, so you need to know it is not really a major debilitating problem. But it is an issue.

Handling Conflict

The problem is really that I have a problem with conflict. I am not good at constructive conflict anyway. I shy away from conflict. I often keep quiet when there are issues I disagree with.  Part of this is that I don’t like the rejection and disharmony disagreement brings.  Sometimes I think, “These people are not on my wavelength I will not waste my breath trying to convince them otherwise.” (Jesus said something about “pearls before swine” – though that sounds arrogant.) I often do not do conflict well, waiting till the issue has got big before I express my mind. This problem with conflict is exasperated when the person I disagree with is a woman. I am never sure how to argue with a woman, especially when it is a subject that engenders strong emotions. I also have an inner reaction to an overbearing woman.

“I’m smiling but inside I’m ….”

Sometimes when discussing stuff with a woman I find that they talk to you in a patronising way. You disagree with them so they say in effect, “Poor you, you must be stressed.” or “Poor you, you have not got the experience in life, to see it the correct way.” or “Poor you, your male perspective has distorted your view.”  I want to say, “No! I have a valid point of view. Listen to it and at least respect it as a valid point of view.”  Another patronising thing I react to is they will often put on the same parental tone of voice and start giving advice, or more bluntly, telling you what to do. “You need to….” “You’ve got to…”.  Now I don’t know how to say “Shut up!” to a woman nicely! I just smile, nod my head and say something lame like, “Maybe” but inside I am like a rebellious child giving them “the finger” or screaming, “Don’t tell me what to do!”

Don’t be a mother all the time.

To women I would say, “Don’t be a mother all the time!” Sometimes we men just want an adult-to-adult relationship, not a parent-to-child relationship. Patronising comments or actions, like a parent would do for a child just gets our backs up. If you treat us like you are the parent and we are the child, do not be surprised if we respond in childish ways.  Or, the thing men most often do, struggling to cope constructively with our reactions, we just withdraw and stop trying to communicate.  (After all, you are taught not to talk back to your mother.)  We then get told off in a mother-like fashion for not talking! Men want an equal to talk with, not a mother. I realise that women spend a great deal of time being mothers, but sometimes please make an effort to switch that off! I don’t want another mother; I had one and she raised me well, stop trying to raise me again! (this does not just apply to husband/wife relationships, I see the same dynamic happening in all sorts of other male/female relationships.) Let me give you a relatively harmless example from my husband/ wife experience. I started driving the car on a sunny day the other day. My wife was putting sunscreen on herself. Then she continued to put sunscreen on my exposed arms and skin while I was driving. It was, from her point of view an act of love and kindness. But I reacted. If I was her friend, or sister or her parent she would ask first, “Would you like some sunscreen?” and respect my response. If I was her child, she could assume the right to put sunscreen on without asking, after all “Mother knows best.” So when I as an adult am treated as if I was a child, a loving act feels like a belittling act. It feels like she is saying, “You are a child, you don’t know what’s good for you, mother knows best.” That’s what these actions, advice and patronising comments often feel like to us men.  (It is not just me, I listen to lots of men talk about relationships with women) Now I can hear women readers saying, “Well that’s just ridiculous!” To which I would reply, “I rest my case.” You often do not respect us guy’s feelings as having any validity. In some ways that refusal is your loss.

“You’re male therefore inferior”

When I was doing a social work class one facilitator was doing a word association exercise with us. We had to respond with our first thoughts to words she mentioned. She said the words “little boy” and one woman responded immediately, “Potential rapist.” This woman was an ardent feminist though in other ways desperate for male sexual contact. It feels like many women are like that. Any thoughts, feelings or ways of reacting a male has is to them somehow wrong, immature and inferior to the ways women react. It is assumed the truly “mature way” to act is the way women see things. Men may legitimately see things differently. I went to a workshop on “bullying in the workplace” run by a woman psychologist. As I sat and listened I got to thinking every time a male opens his mouth he could be branded a bully! The way guys get jobs done and communicate in male workplaces would be seen as “bullying” by these women. It is not (most often), it is just the way men communicate, it is just different. Don’t assume men’s way of coping is inferior or wrong- it is just different. I get annoyed with women who seem to think men do not handle life as maturely as they do. For example they think we do not feel, because we do not express our feelings in the same way as they do. It is just different, hear and respect the difference.

Let me give you two examples. At a workplace there was a group of us guys having lunch together. We were all in our late fifties or early sixties. Billy Connelly the Scottish comedian expressed men’s experience well. He said that when men reach the age of 50, the Doctor stops looking down your throat and starts to take an “inordinate interest in the other end of a man’s anatomy”.  We were a group of guys sitting talking prostate examinations, prostate biopsies, prostate peeing problems and other rear end medical examinations. There was a lot of laughter as we shared experiences and talked over the issues facing us as we age.  Perhaps too we did not use the right medical terminology, but it was earnest, honest and open discussion. We were alone in the lunchroom, but in an adjacent area, tucked around an open door, was a woman who obviously could hear our conversation. We were unaware of her presence. She was called away by the intercom. She stood up stepped into our room, levelled her parental eyes on me (as the chaplain in the group) “Well” she said, “At least I won’t have to put up with listening to your dirty conversation.” Then with a sort of superior “humph!” she walked out of the room. One of us spluttered, “We were just talking men’s problems!” but she wasn’t listening. I wanted to “give her the finger” and say, “Hey, we have men here open and honest enough to talk seriously through men’s health issues. That is good constructive stuff. Do not put it down because the way we are doing it is different than you would do! It is good, constructive sharing and caring!”   Second illustration. -  I was at a professional development day. The facilitator of this group was talking about the subject of leaving chaplaincies. She was laying down “professional boundaries” which may be fair enough, but sometimes Christian care crosses cultural and professional boundaries. She was also assuming that we all react to the loss of chaplaincy in the same way and need to deal with it in the same way.  The way of course is the way women deal with it. I felt uneasy about it all and by sharing a “what if” story raised a question and my hesitations about what was being said. The facilitator looked at me over the top of her glasses and said, “That’s not the way it is!”  I wanted to scream, “Well it is for me!” In a very firm, mother-knows-best slow determined way she laid down the law. I “smiled and nodded but inside I was giving her the finger!”  I was being nice and trying not to undermine her authority but I caught the eye of another very experienced guy across the room from me and he openly rolled his eyes in disgust. At the end of the session both he and I were headed out to the toilet. He is a very religious, loving man, but I heard him sigh as he followed me down the passage. “That is just utter bullshit isn’t it Dave?” he said. “I can’t go along with it. It is women’s crap!”  Another man joined us expressing a similar frustration and we commiserated with each other.  As I say, I have a problem with women. I have stopped attending some monthly meetings because for me they feel like a waste of time. Women’s perspectives dominate them and I can’t get into them. We have to reflect on how we felt about programmes etc. We have filled out evaluation forms now we regurgitate our feelings on things. What’s done is done, lets get on and do something else useful!  I raised this with my supervisor and she said that I should raise it and talk about it. I don’t think I’ll waste my breath, I will get another “mother-knows-best” lecture and my thinking will be belittled again.

As I say, I have a problem with women. The older I get the more impatient I get. Anyway that’s my rant.