May 16, 2022·edited May 17, 2022Liked by Benjamin A Boyce
"These essays are not intended to be a definitive text or totalizing treatise on either man or woman or their impossibly productive and destructive interactions—they are merely me exploring a topic I’ve been obsessed with and possessed by and burnt out on and rekindled anew with since whenever I realized that women are awesome and dangerous and confusing and adorable and the reason I was born and possibly might even be the death of me, someday, who knows."
I love this paragraph. It really does sum up the perpetually enigmatic entities known as "women" since time began, and our ability to bewitch, bother & bewilder men with our feminine wiles. This was something me & the better half were discussing recently; recalling how in our late teens we all had to begin - through trial and error - to learn the steps of that very precarious dance that goes on between the sexes. Awkwardly trying to embrace a burgeoning sexuality while fuelled by hormonal insanity; trying not to appear naïve...but not wanting to appear too easy; fumbling with both words and physical gestures; looking for the signs that our feelings were reciprocated; sometimes getting it wrong...but in saner times not having to worry about woke-scolds skewering (mostly the guys) us with sexual harassment litigation. (I'm so glad I grew up when I did.)
Women, or rather girls, realise very early on in our teens that we possess a sort of magical power over the opposite sex, and boy do we ever use that to our full advantage. At least, we did 20+ years ago. I'm not entirely sure how young women navigate the world around them these days, but I certainly don't envy them. The dance of courtship, of mating rituals, between men and women has been going on since the dawn of time. It used to be a real rite of passage to start to learn those steps, tentatively at first until we learned how to settle into the rhythm, then bolder as our confidence grew. Now? Well now nobody is supposed to learn how to dance, because some folk don't have legs and so no one is allowed onto the ballroom floor.
RIP 'The Dance'. Nice essay BTW; very much enjoyed it, thank you!
"These essays are not intended to be a definitive text or totalizing treatise on either man or woman or their impossibly productive and destructive interactions—they are merely me exploring a topic I’ve been obsessed with and possessed by and burnt out on and rekindled anew with since whenever I realized that women are awesome and dangerous and confusing and adorable and the reason I was born and possibly might even be the death of me, someday, who knows."
I love this paragraph. It really does sum up the perpetually enigmatic entities known as "women" since time began, and our ability to bewitch, bother & bewilder men with our feminine wiles. This was something me & the better half were discussing recently; recalling how in our late teens we all had to begin - through trial and error - to learn the steps of that very precarious dance that goes on between the sexes. Awkwardly trying to embrace a burgeoning sexuality while fuelled by hormonal insanity; trying not to appear naïve...but not wanting to appear too easy; fumbling with both words and physical gestures; looking for the signs that our feelings were reciprocated; sometimes getting it wrong...but in saner times not having to worry about woke-scolds skewering (mostly the guys) us with sexual harassment litigation. (I'm so glad I grew up when I did.)
Women, or rather girls, realise very early on in our teens that we possess a sort of magical power over the opposite sex, and boy do we ever use that to our full advantage. At least, we did 20+ years ago. I'm not entirely sure how young women navigate the world around them these days, but I certainly don't envy them. The dance of courtship, of mating rituals, between men and women has been going on since the dawn of time. It used to be a real rite of passage to start to learn those steps, tentatively at first until we learned how to settle into the rhythm, then bolder as our confidence grew. Now? Well now nobody is supposed to learn how to dance, because some folk don't have legs and so no one is allowed onto the ballroom floor.
RIP 'The Dance'. Nice essay BTW; very much enjoyed it, thank you!
Bex