Bathrooms and Changing Perceptions

The recent controversy over the “right” of transvestites to use women’s restrooms has understandably made me recall the changing perceptions regarding my own masculinity. I grew up in the 1950’s. The most admired children on our block had fathers who owned Lugers and Mausers from German officers they had killed and ID’d. If I had a time machine I would have joined 14 year old Johnny Tremaine and the Sons of Liberty dumping British tea into Boston harbor. Davy Crockett was another of my heroes. My father was a strong male figure who had kept his own while having to deal with organized crime to make a living since he was 14. I was quite secure in my maleness. But at the same time I was raised by three feminists, my mother and both grandmothers.

My mother’s mother was a suffragette and had traveled around the country before the First World War as the secretary to a leading suffragette. Her picture may even be in some history books. She raised my mother to be a trailblazing female journalist. In college my mother was in freshman Introduction to Journalism with Mike Wallace who she said grilled the instructor in the same style he used years later on 60 Minutes. But my mother was not allowed to continue. The scene with her advisor sounded just like the scene in the Autobiography of Malcolm X when his 8^th grade guidance counselor asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Malcolm said a lawyer and his guidance counselor answered by asking if he had ever considered a carpentry apprenticeship.

I went out into the world during the women’s movement in the 1960’s. Many women I met assumed that I had a sister and were shocked when I answered no. Later when I had my first professional job all the female assistants were assigned to me because most of the other men there had treated the women as if their wife had burnt the morning toast. It was disgusting. But much of the women’s movement for equality and freedom degenerated into a man hating radical feminism. In today’s news we see a parallel with Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panther Party. When I listen to them I remember the desegregation sit ins and hearing the arrested sing: “Black and white together, we shall not be moved.”

A type of woman has emerged that Rush Limbaugh as aptly called feminazi. They always sense a 1950’s maleness in me, and hate me immediately. This even happened in my own congregation in LA. Once some chit chat while waiting in line at a chain store turned into a glare so hateful that I swear she would have killed me given the opportunity. When my bank account got transferred to another branch the female manager’s instant dislike was so intense I had to threaten violence in a subtle way to conclude a transaction. That was the only time in my life I ever had to act like that in a commercial transaction and the memory still unsettles me.

But I still believed in the American Way. I was hired as a part time instructor at ITT Tech in Lathrop. I worked hard, won every award they gave, and got promoted to full time instructor followed by a promotion to chair of two academic departments.  Then the accrediting association visited and I was interrogated by a feminazi with a definite political agenda. She asked me to lie and I refused. As a result I lost my position. Aside from the financial loss and the ending of career advancement, others suffered. I was counseling a student working three jobs to pay her tuition along with a crippling math anxiety. We got her finances straightened out and weekly meeting began to conquer her math anxiety. But that ended when I lost my academic chair position. She responded by dropping out.  Obviously this feminazi didn’t care about what she did to people, her political agenda was far too important. This seems standard today. Once upon a time liberal meant liberal minded. Then it became Liberal which transformed itself into Progressive. That means it’s acceptable and perhaps even noble to sacrifice the individual to the collective.

Recently a women interested in me told me that she liked my shirt. I answered by saying I always wear green because it lights up my eyes.  Her countenance changed with a certain realization of who I was. I have never hidden my “feminine side” or my 1950’s maleness. I’ve not changed, but the attitudes of the world around me have been in maelstrom mode.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett