2:33 a.m. - Saturday, Feb. 08, 2003
Ms Leslie's Name
I�m here to announce the winner in the war of the sexes.
I think I�m qualified. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, I�m the shuttle driver between the two worlds. I get to see life from both sides.
Through five thousand years of recorded history, the battle has raged. The men who have written that history have dominated it, and yet all of those men were raised by women; Mothers who have wisely and gradually trained their sons to protect and honor women. There�s a poetry and a balance to the system. It�s a system that leads unerringly, unstoppingly away from savagery and towards civility. Men have power; women have strength. Men have independence; Women have community. Men have endurance; Women have tears. And so it goes, in a dance that�s been described so much better by others for so many years that it just seems self-evident to us now.
Ah, but the tie-breaker is seemingly such a small thing. It�s a thing that women, sadly, don�t quite comprehend; something about which, if they discuss it at all, they speak with derision and condescension. It�s a joke to women. A sign of the intrinsic immaturity of men who are, after all, nothing more than boys with big shoulders to so many of us.
Men write their names in the snow.
They don�t use sticks, lumps of coal, or even brightly colored pebbles. They pee their names in broad cursive strokes. And like so many other male activities, they very much prefer to do it in the presence of other men. It becomes a contest with multiple categories: Strongest yellow, longest name, most flourishes, and of course, greatest distance away. Always, always, there MUST be a victor.
And this is the thing that makes men the victors over women in this oldest battle in the world.
I think it�s fitting. On the most fundamental level possible, it defines the sexes. Men control and manipulate the universe. They project themselves upon it. If it weren�t for this quality, our species would have long since gone the way of the dodo bird. Unable to cope, unable to adapt, and unable to modify our environment to suit our fragile bodies. To pee your name in the snow is nothing less than to project yourself onto that same universe, to mark it and to dominate it. Women, on the other hand, don�t have the same ability. They are resigned to passively release their urine and allow it to flow unfettered wherever it may go. And so it goes.. men control, women release, and the world spins on and on.
I learned this lesson a few days ago in the women�s restroom by the lab on the third floor of the Veteran�s Medical Center in New Orleans, LA. I had been asked to submit a urine sample into what seemed to be an ever-shrinking plastic sample cup. It was my first-ever urine sample given as a woman.
At the time, I wasn�t feeling especially introspective. I didn�t realize I was there to learn a lesson. I thought I was only there to give a little blood sample preparatory to my doctor�s appointment a few days hence. To be honest, I had an idea I might be asked for urine, so I had purposely not gone into the ladies room before I checked in at the lab desk. It wasn�t, after all, my first trip to the lab. I knew that occasionally, they took urine for their various examinations of kidney function and whatever. The only difference is that all the previous times, even those when I was living full time as a woman, I had been in possession of a penis� or a reasonable facsimile, anyway. In the privacy of the ladies room, I had retained the luxury of aiming, peeing to half-full, squeezing and finishing into the toilet.
I never completely understood this to be a luxury�. Until now. It occurred to me this day in the form of a hot, wet feeling, first on my sleeve, then my wrist and finally my thumb as I waved the unseen cup at the invisible urine stream that coursed uncontrollably from somewhere under me. As the steaming yellow liquid ran down the back of my hand, I felt the realization filling me like a hot liquid of its own, from my painted toes to the darkening roots in my scalp. I had paid yet one more price to take my place in the world as a woman. A small price? Maybe. If one only thinks as far as the memories of standing outside on a frigid day with an obnoxious friend, peeing one�s name with flourishes and loops, each trying to outdo the other. But snow-peeing is only a sign. It�s symbolic of the way men work. It�s tool using. It�s mark-making. It�s conquest and competition. It is, believe it or not, a survival skill.
Now that I�ve stepped as far into the women�s world as I can get, I�ll realize, every time I pee in a bottle� or should I say whenever I pee �towards� a bottle�. I�ll realize that I�ve given up my grip on some of the tools I had to learn to use to survive, and that I�m only now beginning to learn how to survive in a different way. It�s exciting. I would never want to go back, but it�s a loss too. It�s the reverse, I guess, of that clich� that says for every door that closes, another one opens. That may be true, but it�s also true that for every door that opens, another one closes.
I was fond of thinking of myself as the shuttle driver between Mars and Venus. But my urine sample was just one little way to make me see that I�ve left the shuttle behind. I�m on Venus now. Someone else will have to drive. Mars is, for me, becoming a dream; a place I once lived, perhaps, but a neighborhood I no longer visit. I would seem that at almost the same moment I recognized Mars as the winner, I joined the losing side. But here�s the good news�.
It never snows on Venus.
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