Day 12

Today's piece merits a bit of explanation. For the past several years, there have been a number of conversations in various places, various fields, about how to attract more women, how to promote women, how to elect women. In a true spirit of helpfulness, many men have rung in to give their opinion on, essentially, "What women want". One of these men was world-renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who has been so kind as to let us know that we women in the west actually don't have it so bad, that a little grope at the water cooler isn't really worth getting that upset about, and we should basically be glad to have achieved so much. So, in honor of Dr. Dawkins, I present this little fantasy piece about how great it would be if only it was possible to attract more Dawkinses to the atheist movement (a movement he is very famous for being part of, and where his initial comments were registered). Thank you, Dr. Dawkins, for shining so much light on the subject for us, and we hope you continue to be able to explain what the world is like for women for a very long time.

SMILE

The man behind the counter looked up as the bell clanged to announce a new visitor to the store.

“Smile, sweetie”, he purred in his most fatherly tone. “You look so much prettier when you smile.”

The customer, a sharply dressed professional, scowled at him; the proprietor smirked and repeated his admonition.

“Smile. You make the world an uglier place when you don’t have a smile on your pretty little face.”

The customer snarled “What business is it of yours whether I smile? I’ll smile when I damn well please, and not a moment before!”

The cashier gathered up the items dropped on the counter, pretending not to notice the fury in his customer’s voice. He rang up the items, and accepted payment, but couldn’t resist a parting shot as his customer left the store.

 “Somebody sure got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!”

The street was crowded, in spite of the light drizzle, and Richard walked along the street, puzzled by the recent encounter. Why did the clerk think it was any of his business to tell him to smile? It wasn’t like he was frowning…was he? He glanced at his reflection in the window, and noticed he was wearing a thoughtful expression, not particularly unpleasant, and certainly not surly. Looking around him on the street, he saw few of the people around him smiling, most of them just looking preoccupied, which was the basic look he had on his own face. He decided the store keeper had an obsession with smiling…though he was totally out of line calling him sweetie…when a gentleman walking toward him spoke, obviously to him.

“Smile, hon.”

He jerked his head around as the gentleman passed, but it was too late to say anything. What was going on? Why was he all of a sudden being told to smile? It really wasn’t anything to anyone else if he was smiling…besides, no one else was being instructed to smile constantly.

“Aren’t we in a grouchy  mood this morning? Give us a little smile, make the day brighten up a bit.”

There it was again! Another stranger, insisting he smile! All these directives to smile weren’t making him feel any more like smiling; in fact, they were having the opposite effect entirely. He was starting to feel downright peevish.

By the time he reached his destination, he counted at least seven people telling him to smile. Five of them used some form of endearment, as though they were somehow entitled to assume an intimate familiarity with him just from seeing him on the street. He was positively fuming as he turned into the campus store. He selected the books he was interested in silently, not even nodding to the clerk in the friendly manner he often adopted.

The clerk grinned at him as he packaged up the books.

“Pretty heavy reading, huh? Whaddya want all these books for, doll?”  

“Doll?!? Doll?! I am Richard Dawkins, a noted scientist, and you’re calling me doll? Where do you get the gall to refer to me in such a way?”

“A scientist? Wow. I would never have guessed it. You’re way too pretty to be a scientist, doll. Don’t you think we could get you some more suitable line of work? You ever thought about making movies? Or, maybe, yes, you’d make a great model.”

The clerk gave him a friendly wink as he bagged the books, and slid one of his business cards in with the package.

“If you ever need anything, doll, you know where to find me. I’ll be right here.”

Richard grabbed the bag and stomped out, vowing never to set foot in that bookstore again. Clearly the clerk was a clueless cretin, he thought, speaking to a customer in such a way. Too pretty to be a scientist? Oh, it was just outrageous.

Dawkins joined a group of colleagues piling into the lecture hall for the scheduled conference. Finally, he was among his own, and he’d be safe here, away from these rude beasts who ordered him around all morning, treating him like a brainless twit. Here, he could relax and expect fair treatment.

“Hey, Dawkins, over here!”

It was his friend P. Zed, gesturing from across the room. He joined the crowd at the bar in relief, and the conversation turned to more pleasant things. His experiences of the morning were forgotten as he basked in the warmth of friendship and witty conversation. This was more like it; yes, he was right, he was indeed Richard Dawkins, biologist, well regarded and successful in his field.

Richard climbed the stairs to the podium. It was his turn to speak, and he came prepared with a slide show and a witty presentation, but he found his subject had been changed by the moderators. With a frown, he glanced over his new topic, hoping he would be comfortable going on cold. He frowned, and thrust the topic back at the moderator.

“What is this? What sort of ridiculous topic is this? How we can attract more Dawkinses to the atheist movement. What sort of silliness are you foisting off on me?”

“Well, Richard, it’s like this. We’ve taken surveys, and we’ve discovered our movement is heavily tilted toward non-Dawkinses, so we thought, to get a bit more balance, we should get a more representative supply of Dawkinses, to have roughly the same percentage of Dawkinses in our movement as in society as a whole. We thought you could address the topic of what would make our group more appealing to attract more Dawkinses.”

 Richard cringed inside; this was going to be another ridiculous morning! But, yes, he was a Dawkins, surely he could address the topic of what would attract more Dawkinses into the movement. He cleared his throat, and began to speak. He spoke comfortably and calmly for about a half an hour, then thought it was time to open it for questions. The line formed at the mike quickly.

“Well, Richard, I know what you said would attract more Dawkinses, but I’m not so sure. Don’t you think it would be more Dawkins-friendly if we had, like, more cooking and knitting talks? You know, like Knitting with an Atheist, or Cooking for the Hellbound?”

Richard opened his mouth to speak, though he wasn’t sure what to say to such a silly question. He needn’t have worried; before he could say anything, the next person in line elbowed aside his questioner, and was pursuing a new line of thought.

“Hey, look, I’m a Dawkins myself, and I just want to say, I appreciate what you’re doing here. But I think you might have got it all wrong. After all, I’ve never felt uncomfortable here, like it was a Dawkins-unfriendly atmosphere. I’ve never had anyone tell me to smile, like you were describing this morning. I’ve never felt like people were being overly intimate with me, so why do you think it might be insulting to have that sort of attention? If I were you, I’d just enjoy it. I like it when people pay attention to me, and tell me I’m pretty.”

Richard gaped at his questioner, his mind unable to comprehend the question, or formulate an answer. For the first time in his life, he found himself utterly speechless. Another person in the audience waved, and he turned his attention to a new question.

“Richard, I just think…well, seriously, these conferences are too…sciency and so forth. Most Dawkinses just don’t like science much, and our brains don’t work quite the same as the non-Dawkinses, so perhaps if we had a bit more…you know…poetry, or something? Not so much critical thought, and science, and all. We just can’t comprehend all that science stuff, and we don’t like to be around it.”

All of a sudden, the room exploded in conversation, everyone talking over everyone else, trying to get the next word in. The conferences needed to be nicer if they wanted to attract Dawkinses, because Dawkinses hated confrontation and preferred peaceful interactions. The conferences needed more Dawkins speakers…no, of course not, because the Dawkins speakers weren’t as compelling or as qualified as the non-Dawkins speakers, so we need the non-Dawkinses to pull in the big crowds…do we really want to have just token Dawkinses? Wouldn’t it be better to just let it happen spontaneously?...Well, there are a lot of good Dawkinses who are perfectly qualified and interesting; they don’t need to be token, just put them on and let people hear them…how would we find all these so-called qualified Dawkinses?...the noise went on and on, and he was starting to get a headache. As soon as he could get away gracefully, he slipped out of the room, leaving the cacophony of noises behind him. What the hell was going on here? This was a nightmare! Everyone talking around him, or explaining to him, rather than listening to anything he had to say.  Before he could get a word in, there was someone explaining something to him. And why were people assuming you couldn’t do science or math if you were a Dawkins?

As he headed toward his room, another man joined him, and walked beside him all the way to the elevator. As the door closed behind them, the other man leaned over and said, “You know, I’d love to talk this over with you some more. Why don’t we continue this conversation in my room over coffee?”  Dawkins stared hard at him, trying to determine exactly what he was meaning; the look on his face seemed innocent enough, but there was something in his words that…well, seemed to suggest something less innocent. Dawkins demurred, and when the elevator door opened, he fled.  

Richard left the conference totally puzzled, and flew back home in a daze. Strange things continued to happen. All the way home, people winked at him, and called him sweetie. He felt so put down by the patronizing manner they affected, and his anger continued to surge. The whole time, everyone kept urging him to smile…smile….smile. What was this sudden obsession with smiling? Why did people think it was any of their business what he did with his face? And why did so many people seem to believe it was his role to make their day brighter? The constant references to his pretty face were distressing; he began to feel more like an object than a man.

With relief, Richard headed toward the lecture hall. He enjoyed speaking to college students as a guest lecturer, and he was finally going to get away from the madness of the last couple of days. He walked into the large hall, and greeted the professor warmly; they’d known each other for years, and Dawkins felt totally at home with him. It was a great surprise, then, to hear the other man introduce him to the class, and tell them he was a well-known Dawkins biologist, as though somehow it were unusual for a Dawkins to be able to do biology, and a modifier was required. He began to feel slightly humiliated, as he stood in front of the silent class, staring resentfully at him as though he was about to ask them to eat something disgusting.

For the first time in his life, Dawkins came out of a lecture hall feeling humiliated. The professor, the class, everyone, treated him politely, but there was an aura of patronization underneath everything they said. It was evident they had no real respect for his education, and the students felt quite comfortable talking to each other through his talk, winking at him occasionally, and…flirting with him! It was the most incredible thing he ever witnessed. How could anyone possibly lecture a class which behaved this way? And why hadn’t the professor stopped it? In fact, he seemed to encourage it, just a little.

As he stopped off to pick up his honorarium, he received another surprise. The check was only 70% of what he usually received, but there had been no indication this lecture was any different. He asked the clerk if there was something wrong, the check wasn’t quite what he expected. The clerk checked the amount, and then shook his head.

“No, that’s exactly right. That’s what we always pay for these lectures.”

“But…but the going rate is usually…..”

Before he could finish, the clerk diverted his attention elsewhere, totally uninterested in continuing the conversation. He tapped his finger on the desk, commanding attention. The clerk jerked his head toward the closed door of the dark office.

“Well, honey, if you really want to appeal the amount, you’ll need to talk to the bursar. But he won’t be here for a while…he’s out on holiday. But you look like a nice Dawkins….you wouldn’t want to be pushy, would you?”

Richard shook his head, and stumbled out, shaken. Clutching the check, he fled across campus, mumbling to himself, wondering exactly what it was that rendered your education suspect and got you less pay if you were a Dawkins. Surely a Dawkins was just as worthy as a non-Dawkins, right? Surely the fact he’d worked and studied and paid his dues all his life should count for something.

Dawkins wheeled his car into the mechanic for a tune-up. At least this was a place where everyone was equal, he thought. This was a place where men were men, and everyone was equal, no matter how many degrees they had. No one was above anyone else.

The mechanic lurched out of the garage into the tiny office. He sidled up close to Dawkins, and leaned over intimately as the other man explained what the car needed. Leering, he nodded, and patted Richard on the hand.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, sweetie. We’ll take care of everything for you.”

As Dawkins left the garage, he shook his head again. He couldn’t be totally sure, but it seemed as if the mechanic had just grabbed his ass.

Richard Dawkins woke up screaming. A cold sweat popped out on his brow. The clock registered one a.m. Sighing slightly to himself, realizing it was only a dream, he vowed he would never again have a nightcap with P. Zed before retiring. Boy, wouldn’t it be a horrible world if anyone really had to deal with all that? He sighed, relaxing. No, it was all right. Here in America, there was zero bad.