Girls, do you really want to have balls?
Calling out Penis Envy
Last night, I sat in a very beautiful, tiny, Latin inspired restaurant, distilling the events of the past few days over a really nice glass of wine and some authentic Tapas.
But I could hardly hear myself think.
Directly opposite where I sat was a large party of guys, between twenty and thirty of them in number.
It quickly became apparent they were of a local golf club.
They were obviously very happy. And mostly very drunk.
Most were attired in what I would describe as “Old boys club” type clothes. They were mostly my age. There were even one or two with, dare I say it, darker than average skin, though pretty much all had hair of some degree of silver.
They all of them seemed to derive great pleasure from generating a very large amount of noise that sounded exactly like the noises we hear when we tune into something like BBC parliament.
Lots of gruff male laughter and jeers, repeated shouts of shouts of “Order, Order”, various figures in contrast edged blazers taking turns to stand and make some inane declaration, raising a glass, turning to apologise theatrically to the few others of us in the restaurant, all with ridiculously posh English accents. One or two even stood up, addressing us others in the restaurant at length with an elaborate apology for “disturbing us”, then sitting back down again, presumably having forgotten the reason they might have stood up was to say something profound to their group.
The others in the restaurant were a few couples, and the staff, all of whom appeared nice polite, sober folks, all minding their own business, and all native Spanish speakers.
Then there was me, realising I was probably classed as pretty much the same as all those privileged guys in the golfing group.
I wasn’t proud of that thought, even though I know it is not the truth. My accent at least was all wrong. And I’ve never played golf, at least not willingly.
And I don’t have silver hair, except maybe where (Or when) I can’t remove it.
It was easy for me to see, being relatively sober, not part of their group, these guys were behaving in exactly the way that is criticised of colonial patriarchy, rubbing everyone else’s face in their exclusively male domination of the restaurant.
With other events this past few days, topped by that restaurant experience, thoughts on gender dynamics came flooding back.
Girls, all of us guys have vulnerable balls, both physical and mental, that hang low, and you can kick, any time you like, and I can tell you it hurts like hell.
You might get some joy out of that, but what goes around, comes around.
The next time you kick some guys balls, with a view to strengthening your own position in what you might perceive is a male dominated world, just remember, with each little piece you gain, you also grow a pair of balls, at least the mental ones, that hang low, and can be kicked.
Don’t be surprised when someone kicks them in the future. Hard.
