Another International Woman’s Day becomes history. I’m sure it changed a lot…oh wait, it didn’t? Wow. Imagine that. Giving women a day to call their own…even a month to call their own…doesn’t actually do anything substantive. Who would have thought?

Tonight I have an essay for you, the first for this year. This is an issue I have tried for years to write into a short story (I sort of did a couple of years ago on this site, but it needed to be addressed again), and in a play, but I decided it needed the non-fiction treatment. So here it is, Day 9 of Women’s History Month 2021.

THE EYES OF A WOMAN

There is a lot to being a woman. Some people think it’s easy, that the hardest part is figuring out what to wear in the morning. I don’t know; it only takes me a couple of minutes to figure out what to wear. The major factor in making my decision is weather. I can coordinate with anything I’ve got, and it just isn’t that important. Yes, I like to dress, and I dress for fun, but there are way too many things waiting for me every day to waste time on fussing over what to wear.

The complexities of being a woman are as complex as…as…as…the complexities of being a man. There are many ways to be a woman, and only one of them that I can be at a single time. So I have to decide…what woman am I going to be today? The woman who cleans her house so obsessively that no one could find a single speck of dust? (I kicked that woman to the curb two decades ago; she was a drag.) The woman who teaches science to college students? The woman who writes snarky essays for Women’s History Month? The woman who loves cats? The woman who cooks new dishes from recipes clipped out of a magazine? Maybe some combination?

One thing I did learn a long time ago about being a woman: whatever you choose, whether it is how you dress, your hairdo, your shoes, your occupation, your housework, even your name, you will be wrong. There will be someone on hand to say no, you’re doing it wrong. You are too feminine. You are not feminine enough. You are too smart. You aren’t smart enough. You are too pretty. You are not pretty enough. You are just…wrong.

So I decided I would just be the woman I wanted to be. It’s not easy, when there are so many expectations and you are often judged, graded, promoted, or hired based on whether you fit the expectations. I live in a conservative area, so when I moved here for a new job, I dressed conservatively. It didn’t seem to help how people viewed me, so I thought, what the hell? I’ll dress like I enjoy. So I added scarves and hats and traded my tan pants for black from head to toe. I have fun with my outfits. People sometimes find my clothes…different…but, well, I don’t really care. I’m different, why shouldn’t my clothes be?

But I wanted to talk about a particular complexity in being a woman. That is the complexity of being a working woman and a mother. This particular woman is living in a mine field. Many women, perhaps most, must work to support their children. A married woman who leaves her child in daycare will be regarded as something less than human…I know. I’ve been there. “Oh, I would never let someone else take care of my child!” A single woman who leaves her child in daycare is regarded as something less than human. “Why aren’t you home with your child?” In custody cases, it may become an issue…will the mother be at home or at work during the day? (This is never a case with the father; it is assumed he will be at work supporting the child.)

A woman who does not work may find herself on the receiving end of abuse when she is unable to provide adequate support for her child. If she goes on food stamps or welfare, she is a “welfare queen” that is “milking the system”. She is seen as a lazy tramp that pumps out babies for the extra money. Never mind that food stamps are inadequate to feed the children, and welfare checks last for a total of five years of your entire life…no, we all know the woman is having babies for us to pay for. She must get a job…then she will have to leave her kids in daycare, and will be regarded as something less than human.

Of course, men have the same problem, right? No, actually, they don’t. A married man who works and rarely sees his children is an upstanding citizen who is doing what he needs to do to care for his family and support his community. A single man who is raising his children is a brave soul who is facing the world in a leaky canoe with only one broken paddle. And he is doing it admirably, of course. Sympathy pours out for the divorced or widowed man who must find someone to watch his children while he works. Admiration pours out for the married man who works a full shift and collapses in front of the TV to let his wife (also working, usually) feed him, wash his clothes, and take care of the children. If he should opt to “help’ with the family, the admiration increases by many orders of magnitude. What a great man, to help his wife!

When I got divorced, I allowed my ex to take our son. I was ill, and in and out of the hospital. We agreed that he would take custody, but I had liberal visitation. I often was asked “How did you happen to lose custody of your son?” I didn’t lose it; I had a good chance of winning if I had protested. I wanted to do what was best for him. For this, I was deemed a pariah. “How could you do that? How could you let someone else raise your child?” I was letting his father raise him…with my help. The gasps of horror that arose if I happened to explain our custody arrangements were such that you would think I was letting Jason hack him to bits, or something.

What if I had gotten custody? Would my ex have received the same horror, the same disgust I received? Would he have been regarded as less than human? Of course not. He’s the father, and taking care of a child is not his role…even in a world that pretends we don’t do that silly sexist crap anymore. You don’t believe me? Put on a wig and a fake nose (or better yet, your Richard Nixon mask…no, wait, that won’t work. Nixon was a man) and tell people about how you let your child’s father take custody because he could give him a more stable home for now. Tell your friends you need to make sure you are well before you take custody. You will soon understand.

I did eventually regain custody, after a period of equally shared custody, but the stain of the time he was with his father never completely disappeared in the face of those who knew me. It was almost like I had murdered him to let him live with the man who fathered him and had proven a good father during the time we were married. I didn’t send him to live in an opium den with a drug lord. I didn’t send him into slavery or put him in an orphanage. He lived with his father.

The world looks very different seen from the eyes of a woman…at least, I assume it does. I can’t be sure, since I have never seen it from any other eyes but those of a woman. But it’s likely to be the case, considering the things I hear from the men around me, the oblivious assumptions they make, the blithe way they approach things that a woman must finesse carefully. At work…at play…at home…even asleep when it is only our dreams.