I went to a dinner with people I didn't know and the universe gifted me with an anthropological experience. And when this happens, I write about it. Because it is polite to accept gifts from the universe.
One of the diners, a man only a little younger than me, sat down, winked at me and two seconds later defined himself as a feminist. Half a second later he clarified. Feminist, but not a radical feminist. Radical feminism did not seem right to him. Another diner, a lawyer specialising in human rights with extensive international experience, and I looked at each other. That's it, I said to myself. A little while later he let us know that we no longer needed to suffer. Men had understood everything, because they had deconstructed themselves and things were changing. How? I asked him, stupefied. And he declared that machismo was in a definitive decline. In front of them, men were making inappropriate comments and feminism (the good kind, not the radical kind, eh) had won the game. I couldn't help but remind him that four days ago it had been 25N and that the media was full of figures that contradicted his story. But he insisted on telling us no, and he continued to insist on explaining to us the real situation of feminism. Annoying as I am, I reminded him that, ehem, he had before him a woman who knew a thing or two. miiiiica more than him, not in vain was she a lawyer defending human rights and I, ehem, wrote things and chatted and did activism on the subject. He made a comment in a friendly and humorous tone pointing out that it was already clear that I was a woman who wanted to be contrary. Don't ask me why, but I didn't tell him the truth, that I have a weakness for contradicting the ignorant. I wanted to have dinner in peace, you see, and I don't know how we managed to divert the conversation to a thousand different topics.
Until, suddenly, she jumped up and said that my warrior spirit was due to hormones. Because hormones, she said, raise our level and make us braver to fight. How? I exclaimed again with a new attack of stupefaction. And I pointed out that the level of certain hormones drops. That this is what menopause is all about. Her face was a poem. She didn't believe it and insisted on the fact because she had a good source of information, a relative who had worked as a gynecologist. The situation was absolutely surreal. A man explaining to me not only what feminism was, but also menopause. I was tempted to show her the tests from just fifteen days before, but I was too lazy, and I reinforced it with a piece of advice: to consult Wikipedia.
Obviously, he didn't like the fact that I wanted to talk the same way as him either, and he made a joke (also in a friendly tone...) about my ability to monopolize the conversation. He had been giving us turns to speak and hadn't stopped chatting. Yes, he was a feminist man. But not very much, obviously.
