Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: dating

  • a man in the house

    I went to a Sunday afternoon gathering of people I didn’t know, who regularly host discussions of thoughtful topics. In a little while I was deep in conversation with two women, one of us Chinese, one of us Brazilian, and we were so relaxed and open together that our peels of laughter attracted a man in a blue linen shirt. He came and joined us, and when the Chinese woman kindly made him part of our intimacy by explaining, we were talking about online dating and what a minefield it is for women, he said, “I wouldn’t know about that, I met my wife before all this happened.”

    That is, rather than ask questions and be curious about the rapport which had drawn him, he winched the conversational topic out of our grasp and put it firmly inside his own experience.

    In fact he wasn’t just conversing, he was pontificating, complete with didactic finger wagging and pompous tone. Within five minutes the man was doing all the talking as the three of us women supplied what Dale Spender has called ‘housework’. “So how did you meet? Wow, that’s interesting. Gosh!”

    I pointed this out, in a friendly tone, thinking that in a group based on thinking, he might be interested to learn something from a perspective he has not considered. Instead he took immediate and lasting offense. “Or,” he said, “it could be that you just have a negative attitude.”

    Some men, even whilst literally setting straight a group of women whose discourse they have interrupted and whom they don’t know, cannot bear to be resisted or corrected by any insubordinate females. Their only recourse is, I must hate men. Imagine being so accustomed to civil obedience that any disagreement must be read as hatred.

    When I told him that in a group of people of colour talking about the experience of Blackness in a white-dominated world, he would not expect (one hopes) to come into a discussion and begin pontificating about his own experience, he looked blank. “This is no different to any other conversation I have experienced,” he said, and when I said, “Exactly my point,” he didn’t know what I meant.

    Eventually the woman to my left, who is from China, graciously took him on so that the remaining two of us could return to our rapport. We talked until she had worked out what she wants to do with her career, having qualified in law in Brazil and her qualifications not considered applicable in Australia. This insight, which was merry and nourishing, arose through the free and open discourse in which strangers respected and made room for each other; if we had submitted without protest to the domineering man, we would have had a less pleasant afternoon and she might not have gained it.

  • mansplanity

    I went on a date with a guy who for nearly a month had been pestering me to meet. Then he literally did not let me finish a sentence. I pointed this out and he said, grandly, “That’s because I already know what you are going to say.”

    I explained to him how self-perpetuating this fallacy is. He would never hear all the stuff he’s not learning from other people. I said, you’ve been at me to spend time with you for a month. Now here it is. Your big chance to get to know this woman. Tell me one thing you know about me that you didn’t already know at the beginning of the evening.

    Sulkily he said, “Well I can tell you’re a bit of a feminist.”

    Poor guy. I was trying not to laugh with pity. So I continued to interrupt his interruptions until finally he stopped and said, Right then. What is it? That’s so important that you’ve just got to say?

    I explained to him the deteriorated version of my original thought that had now survived the eight interruptions and side-swipes.

    He sat with his arms folded. Then he said, “Are you done?”

    And I said, “Yes. I’m done. Thanks for the drink!” and picked up my bag and walked away.

  • cafe dating

    First date in a cafe. “They always play such excellent jazz here,” he is saying. “Try the cakes, they’re always good.”

    “Right,” the girl says lightly. He has over-ordered, wanting to induct her into his routines. “I think heaven must be an eternal breakfast,” he says. The girl is drinking coffee as though it were ice cream, with a spoon. Elbow on the table she slumps onto her hand. “May I?” She tears the best bit off his croissant, the fresh, unbroken, creamy end of the horn. I watch him watching it all the way into her mouth, his resentment almost audible.

    Now the waitress brings his fruit salad, poignant with yoghurt. The yoghurt shimmers fat and glossy and unbroken. “Go ahead,” he says, “try.” She shakes her head. The third dish arrives, two soft-boiled eggs in a glass, with pretty salad arranged all around it in a tide. “I’ll just try a bit of your egg,” says the girl to her date, having presumably told him she is not hungry, that she never eats breakfast. “Or maybe I can just take half, some salad, a little of your bread?” She draws the saucer from underneath her coffee cup and holds it out.

    “I usually don’t ruin it,” he says. “They always arrange it so nicely here. But – yes! Please! Of course you can! Please: help yourself.” They are neither of them native speakers but both speak in English. I think she is Spanish and I think he is German. His voice is soft and seducing but I think the relationship is off to a stony start. Now they are talking about her work. “It’s an animal. No, it’s a fung, a fungus, right?” “Ja,” she says, “a fungus.” “Have you ever given a name to a bacteria?” he asks her. “There must be some good bacteria out there.” Maybe tonight this girl will call one of her closest friends. “There must be some good men out there,” they will say. Maybe the man will ask himself how come a woman can be so resistant to being induced into the world he has already arranged so perfectly for her. It just has this one hole to be filled, a her-shaped vacancy. Why won’t she fill it? Don’t women want love?