That's what I get for thinking

This should put me on some hate lists.

Apropos, I suspect. Image generated by me, using Nightcafe.

A couple of days ago I was in a conversation about a brief incident several years ago. Rita and I were visiting Utah, and had been invited to a dinner party, by someone who was to become a very dear friend.

When we got to the house, I took off my Stetson¹ and placed it on the pile of coats. We were having good drinks, and excellent conversation when I looked over — and the lady of the house was picking up my hat and trying it on.

Now, in West Texas, when a woman tries on a cowboy’s hat, it is generally understood that she Has Intentions Regarding Said Cowboy.

And — I’m here to tell you — if the cowboy already has a woman, things can get quite sporty, quite quickly.

Anyhoo, I froze, because Rita was sitting next to me, and I had a mental image of her slapping the whey out of our hostess, which would probably lead to me and the host Having Issues; and the night would rapidly devolve from there.

Fortunately, Rita understood that our hostess was from a culture that not only didn’t understand hat rules, but didn’t understand cowboy culture in general, and my hat was retrieved with no drama.

This got my mental squirrels to cogitating², and now I have a post which is probably going to get me Two Minutes of Hate from the Illiterati.

My brain squirrels came up with two items. Item the First: In every culture I have been exposd to, men learn, practise — and enforce — unspoken rules and mores. These rules come from your father, your male relatives, your cohort/peer group, and your mentors; and are frequently enforced with some form of physical³ aggression.

Item the Second: A lot of women — and all young ladies I know — have no bloody clue how much stronger men are than they. Moreover, men in the States unconsciously — or consciously: part of the rules we are taught — nerf themselves pretty hard even during socially-approved physical contests with the fair sex.

When I first started learning judo, about a year in, we were doing randori — we would start sitting back-to-back, on the signal we would grapple for three minutes, looking to tap our opponent. My first match was with a female black belt who immediately wrapped up one of my legs, and I spent three frustrated minutes trying to peel her loose. Couple of opponents later, I drew a male blue belt, and at the signal he pretty much did the same thing. This time I can-openered him loose, and while I didn’t get the submission, he had to work for three minutes.

After that bout, my sensei asked me why the two sessions were so different. My response was that she was a black belt, and he had a blue. He looked at me like I was stupid⁴, tapped me on the forehead and said, “No, it’s because she’s a girl. If you’re going to keep being a cop, you might want to figure that out.”⁵

Patience, I’m getting there.

Take a look at this brief video:

In this video, a kid grabs someone’s hat, puts it on, and eats a slap for it. Standard educational smack — it stings, and the kid learned not to do that crap again.

However, if it had been a woman catching the same smack, at the same power … a slap that would have chastised a man would probably have put her in the hospital.

Men in North Texas have a fairly large personal space when it comes to other unknown men. Some years back I was filling my pickup at a truck stop when some dude approached me, trying to run a con on me. Part of a conman’s tool-box is to get close to his mark, to build rapport. He kept breaching my personal space, and I kept telling him to back up; the last time he did he reached up to pat my shoulder and I cursed and shoved him hard enough that he went arse over teakettle across the parking lot.

He got some scrapes and a lesson out of it. If I had done the same thing to a woman, there’s a pretty good chance she’d have needed medical care.

Thing is — my personal space for unknown women is about half of my personal space for unknown men.

So — I’ve got to wonder:⁶ How much of the “Recent surge in violence against transgenders” is because a woman was LARPing as a man, broke a rule she didn’t know existed, and a man corrected her — the way he would correct another male — not knowing she was a she?

We — as males of the species — tolerate behaviour from women that would earn another dude a smack. All of us do.

A woman spends 18 to 20 years as a female of the species, learning the rules of the distaff side of the species⁷, and interacting with men while obviously being female.

Then she starts presenting as male — not knowing our rules and mores — and gets corrected as if she were male, which classifies as an “aggravated assault” rather than a “fight”.

I am by no means saying this is all “transgender violence”. I am saying that I’d like to know if it’s a factor.

Unfortunately, given the extreme politicisation of that issue, I doubt that we’ll ever know.

Anyhoo, that’s a look at my brain squirrels in action.

Ian.

postscript: Don’t bother leaving insults or snot-slinging rants at me in the comments, I’m just going to delete them and block you.

Ian.

1. My tutors and the military beat some rules into me regarding the wear of hats indoors.

2. Not always a Good Thing.

3. See my post about Educational Beatdowns.

4. I get that expression a lot.

5. Narrator: “He did not, in fact, figure that out.” Some of the worst injuries I took during my law enforcement career were during Uses of Force on females — because I couldn’t go full-power.

6. And here’s where I get into trouble.

7. I assume that the ladies have their own rules and codes, which they enforce in their own ways.