Of course you can’t hear me, I have a vagina.

Seriously.  Just…seriously. 

I have begun to discover that NOT hearing me is specifically a gender issue.  Yes, I am being totally sexist but the past few weeks men, guys, boys, and dudes have made this abundantly clear.  Don’t get me wrong, I mean, it’s not all men that don’t listen to women -- Ya know, never mind.  That last little justification was totally me wanting men to think that I thought they thought that I thought some of them were actually  listening to me in case I was dating one of them and they decided to support my writing and read this and then they thought I meant them.  Yep.  Nope, I meant all of them.   From age five to seventy-five no man seems to listen to any woman I know of.

 It’s not really a hearing problem and I don’t think it is a listening problem.  At first I thought it was specific to culture and upbringing.  I thought specific misogynist cultures taught their young men to ignore the important things that come out of a woman (not just babies) and really she is just there to take care of you and she doesn’t identify with or recognize the ways of a man’s world.  Once I knew of a man who said that when he arrived home at his house every night, he put his logic away because he just couldn’t do logic with his wife.  I bit my lip so hard when I heard that one, my tooth went through my lip.  Seriously, there are some men out there who when you are speaking directly to them and you are the one who is guiding the conversation with your thoughts and opinions; they have trouble actually looking into your eyes while you speak.  They not only avoid eye contact, but they look away or over your head.  You know they are diligently trying NOT to hear a word you say.  When this is happening, I usually wonder one of three things:  He doesn’t want to talk directly into my cleavage; there is a booger in my nose; or if he acts like a sexist-pig who has no interest in what I am saying long enough, I will just stop talking and go away.  Yep, I am guessing it's the last one.  I am hoping it’s not the middle one. 

The thing is men from all cultures, races, nationalities and religions; they all do the same thing.  And yes, I know a myriad of them stare at my boobs when I speak; but that is the mixture of having large breasts that are right in front of them and the innate male-must-stare-at-a-woman’s-breasts-gene.  Ah, the inherent qualities of a man.  Ya know, like the farting-in-public-gene, the can’t-find-the-hamper-gene or the-ice-cube-trays-will-refill-themselves-gene.  In the male of the species’ DNA there is also the I-can’t-hear-you-because-you-are-a-woman-gene. 

I think it is a gene.  For most of them, I don’t think they are knowingly being sexist.  I mean not all of them.  Yes, some of them get off on being chauvinist pigs and who treat women as though they only have the cooking, cleaning and shopping gene.  And yes, I realize the irony of using the example of the “shopping gene” considering who is writing this blog in the first place and my propensity for cute shoes.   Oh, shut up, I love my shoes and it is not a woman-gene, it is a woman-who-has-good-taste-and-can-find-things-on-sale-gene.  (and I am sure I inherited it from my mother.)

 My adorable and lovable male children could be a foot away from my face and I repeat over and over information and instructions and food options.  They don’t even turn around.  They don't even flinch.  I even tried an experiment with Dash once where I told him, two feet away from his little face, that I was going to take him to buy ice cream before dinner and he could have a double scoop.  Nope, didn’t hear that one either. He kept playing with his Pokémon.  It was amazing.

 Maybe men not listening to women could just be a case of bad manners.  Most men don’t really have great manners unless they went to cotillion classes when they were younger.   Perhaps they have manners for the first few dates when they are on their most polite and best behavior and still hoping they have a shot of seeing you naked.    I was hanging out with a friend of mine this weekend and he was an anomaly.  He had the most chivalrous manners and he was raised by a fabulous feminist mother.  I love that.  Here was this awesome feminist mom and she taught her only son to treat women with respect and manners. That chivalry was actually a sign of respect.  I felt not like a lady but like a woman.   The man actually opened the car door for me.  When was the last time someone opened the car door for me?  Nowadays, a man thinks that hitting the electric unlock button while on his side of the car, makes it seem like he is opening the door for a woman.  But this guy, he actually walked to my door, opened it and even took my hand.  It was the weirdest and most lovely thing that has happened to me in a long while.  He probably didn't listen to me, but it balanced out with his chivalry.

It’s not just the not-listening thing but the interrupting thing as well.  I love when guys do that.  It makes me feel all pretty.  My students do that all the freakin time.  Mostly the male students.  I will be on the third word of a sentence and without even raising their hand they will just interrupt with the most inane of questions like “when is this class over?” or “did you see the Mayweather fight over the weekend?”  Yes, the pugilist princess, that’s me.

Anyway, it is just aggravating me lately.  That's funny, that makes it sound as if I tolerated it before or something.  That almost sounded like once upon a time I had patience for people who didn’t listen to me.  

Tonight I gave Dash a time-out for not listening to me.  Again.  At all.  I had just lost my patience with him and the entire male dominated society that doesn’t listen to me either.  I think I wanted to give a few other males a time-out but he was the only one at my house. 

He seemed so small at the kitchen table, all by himself in his pouty-time-out-ness.  I wondered what he was thinking about.  Perhaps he was reflecting upon his punishment.  Perhaps he was replaying episodes of Star Wars the Clone Wars in his head.  Conversely, after his five minutes of solitude were up, I sat him on my lap with his blanket named “geegee” and asked him if he knew why I had gotten so mad at him and had given him a time out in the first place.  He said it was because he was not listening again. 

Wow, he may have actually heard me.