If I told you that I respect women, would you hold it against me?

While Honey was off sashaying around the north loop arm in arm with her Very Smart Mother, eating candy, and drinking booze, I was busy not doing any of that. In Texas. Also, let’s just go ahead and get the awkward stuff out of the way – yes, I have a crush on Honey’s mam, but what Honey failed to mention when she feigned almost having a feeling about it, is that she is facebook married to my sister. I’ve consulted the rulebook and if your robot lover is internet married to your real life sister, their mom is totally up for grabs, with the dad’s permission, naturally. And really, that is an uncomfortable conversation to have, so in the meantime I’ll just do nothing.

Well, maybe not nothing. As you are about to see I have been occupying my time with very important topics, just tryina get to the root of some junk. Now, I have only lived two places: Minnesota and Texas. MN is badass and awesome and gives you bragging rights forever and ever about just how cold you can get before you start dying. And, well, Texas has lots of guys with beards so I win. So Much.

People in Texas are really flipping nice, which is great cause they all have guns. Consequently, I am a lot nicer as well, which really just means I am afraid to ask them to their faces why they are doing the weird things they do. For example, dudes down here like to announce left and right that they respect women. (And I took a poll of The Management and he confirms it’s weird.) Your reaction to this might be “oh, how nice, that the men with beards and guns respect women so much!” Mine, however, is to frantically wonder why I never invested in a panic room. It’s creepy, right? One minute you’re chatting up some bloke, staring longingly into his beard, and the next you are picturing yourself attempting to escape from his basement. The guys who have said this to me are very nice humans and not at all creepy in other respects (that I know of). But this is something that, to me, if you have to say out loud, seems like you are trying too hard. It is, in my mind, akin to inserting a nice little “I’m not racist, but…” into a conversation, (which also happens a lot down here). I tend to hear that as “never take anything I say seriously ever again.” Do men in MN respect women? I don’t know. But they know enough not to say they do, which I am really starting to appreciate.

I am fully willing to admit that this issue might be all me and there is a chance I am being a bit nitpicky. The only guy in MN I knew who frequently indulged in this habit was a total creeper, subsequently causing my hackles to always be up. I do recognize, however, that there are past and present cultural factors that might make a man feel there is more of a need for him to assert his respect for women, while I, a woman, never even contemplate the need for gender specificity when I talk of respect. There are worse things, to be sure, and maybe I really am being nitpicky but it still sticks out to me as an oddity. So, stop it, Texans… Or don’t, whatever, since, no, that is not a gun in my pocket. winky face.

- Bea