Trading a Can of Whoop-Ass for Compassion

The other day I read a comment by a woman on a blog that touched a nerve. She essentially said that many men think with their “little heads” (yeah, those heads) and can’t distinguish between honest communication and a roll in the hay.
As Dad’s House readers may guess, it pissed me off.
Forget the polite use of “many” (I’m not sure who could make that quantification with any sanity or certainty), but a nerve was touched in me. I felt that once again, men were under attack. Just like when blogging single moms say “men suck”, “men are lazy”, “men are idiots”, “men are monsters”. It bugged me.
I responded to this new affront in typical Dad’s House style – I opened a can of whoop-ass in the form of an 800-word blog post defending men. I scheduled the post for 4am publication, then went to sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke, feeling differently.
Maybe it was Mama Dharma’s post about feeling compassion rather than anger toward her ex, and how forgiveness flipped rage into understanding. Whatever – I realized I didn’t want to put more dis-ease into the universe. I genuinely feel sad for any women who were so negatively touched by some man, sometime in their life – whether physically, mentally, or emotionally – that they now sometimes take subtle or direct verbal jabs at men. (I’m not saying this commentor did that, though it’s possible they might have.)
I removed my angry rant of a post, went back to sleep, and woke up to a blank screen this morning. And here I write.
As one of the few men who blogs in a female-dominated corner of the blogosphere (check how many single mom vs. single dad bloggers have chosen to be listed at the Facebook Single Parents Connection Group ) – let me just say, it can be positively exhausting. You have no idea how many little slips of the tongue women make and laugh off that can be perceived as demeaning toward men. Or how many times a blogging man offers advice, only to see it ignored until a woman says the same thing. (If you don’t want a man’s perspective, why on earth do you read this blog? Or maybe you just don’t “trust” a man’s perspective…)
I understand all this goes with the territory. There are single mothers who were treated poorly by the man in their life, either when they were together, or simply because he left. And some of these single moms might still be harboring anger, resentment, disappointment, lost hopes, distrust. Believe me, I know the feeling, at least a bit. My own divorce was amicable, but I still sometimes associate painful feelings with the separation.
Perhaps the exhausting part for me in the single parent blogosphere is that I do often take offense when some single moms go off on men. We men aren’t all lazy, stupid, clueless, sex-addicted idiots (at least not all the time). We’re feeling, thinking, desiring, hoping, dreaming, emoting humans, just like you. (Except that we probably don’t process emotions as quickly and smoothly as women. But I hate to generalize.) If you’re rolling your eyes because your ex showed none of these traits, then perhaps you’re simply feeding your pain-body in a steady-state, same as I was doing. We all can choose to react differently.
Peace. Joy. Gratitude.
Now then, wouldn’t a can of whoop-ass have been so much more fun to read?