Poles Apart

by Terry Fallis

  “It was certainly much simpler back in the seventies. You were either a feminist or you weren’t. It was a binary decision. There were no hyphenated-feminists,” she said.

  She paused in thought for a moment before continuing.

  “You know, one of the benefits of a movement that has grown so much and gained at least some ground in the last forty years is that it’s now mature enough to support divergent views. We can sustain differing opinions within the feminist tribe without threatening the whole. So we now have hardcore feminists disagreeing on pornography, and affirmative action, equal pay laws, and any number of other related issues. Having so much internal debate and even dissent is fresh and invigorating and vital. But it can also be challenging.”

  “And a little confusing,” I added. “How do you now define the term ‘feminist’?”

  “The same as I always have. To me, a feminist is anyone who believes that women should have equal rights and equal opportunity in society. It’s as simple and clear as that.”

  “Exactly! I feel the same way,” I replied. “Then what’s with the recent backlash against the term? There’s even a #notafeminist Twitter hashtag going around, often promoted by young women. It’s crazy.”

  “I’ve read about that and it’s very dismaying. Perhaps they don’t realize they’re reaping today what we sowed on their behalf thirty and forty years ago. I think they’ll come around. Perspective often comes with time. But it is troubling.”

  “But on the bright side, we have made some progress. Look at all the laws that have changed,” I said.

  “Agreed. But changing laws is the easy part. The real goal must be to change minds and change attitudes. New legislation helps, but we need people, men and women, to think and act differently before we can truly claim victory.”

  “Amen to that.”

  We went on like this for quite a while, though I can’t tell you how long. I found it fascinating. I found her fascinating. It was amazing to talk with her. She was a time machine. She took me back to my student movement days, eighteen years behind me. She took me back to how it felt to be part of something larger than yourself. I liked being back.

  She folded the fringed cloth and lifted the lid of the trunk between us.

  “Having met so few men feminists as informed and dedicated as you, I don’t think I’ve ever shown this to another man,” she said.

  She pulled out a slim and very old book, bound in faded red cloth, and handed it to me. I cradled it in my hands as if I were holding a baby bird and looked at her.

  “It’s okay, you can open it, gently,” she said. “It’s survived nearly 150 years, and it’s meant to be read. In fact, the world would be a much better place if more people read this short volume.”

  I opened the pages gingerly and made my way to the age-stained title page where I read: The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill, 1869.

  “Is this a first edition?” I asked.

  “It surely is.”

  “I’ve never heard of this book. I’ve read Mill’s On Liberty, but I’ve never come across this.”

  “Who hasn’t read On Liberty? We’ve all read On Liberty. It overshadows the rest of his writing. It’s undoubtedly a great work. But so is this, in its own way,” she said, pointing to the faded red book in my hands. “Just read the very first paragraph.”

  I started reading it to myself.

  “Aloud, if you please,” she said. “I never tire of it.”

  I read aloud.

  The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes – the legal subordination of one sex to the other – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

  “Wow. That perfectly sums it up in one paragraph, doesn’t it? And from 1869!”

  “Indeed, back in a time when it would have been a Herculean task for any woman writer to have published such a book,” she replied.

  “Could I borrow this?” I asked, without thinking.

  She winced. So I winced.

  “Alas, that is a prized possession that I just don’t think I can lend, not just to you, but to anybody,” she started. “However, all is not lost. Do you have a computer or an iPad?”

  She reached in the trunk again and held up her iPad.

  “I do,” I replied. “Both.”

  “That Mill treatise is, by now of course, in the public domain and may be downloaded for free from multiple sources, including the diabolical behemoth, Amazon. When I read Mill, I do so now on my iPad. It’s lovely to be able to enlarge the font.”

  “I’ll download it as soon as I’m home tonight.”

  “Mill is not perfect in his message. He remains a creature of his time. But his central thesis captured in that very first paragraph of ornamented, Victorian prose is very nearly perfect.” Yolanda peeked into the room holding a translucent plastic cup bearing what appeared to be several pills.

  “If I could interrupt you two hippie activists, it’s time for Ms. Tanner’s dessert.” She shook the plastic cup so it sounded like maracas.

  “Olé” was all Beverley said and took the cup Yolanda offered.

  When I arrived back at my apartment, the noise from the renovations in the space below me was fearsome. As I sat in my new living room reading the New York Times on my iPad, I watched as my kitchen table shimmied across the floor, riding the vibrations from below. There was a symphony of sounds coming from downstairs. Hammering, a circular saw, a pneumatic drill, workers arguing, and a powerful percussive noise that made me think of blasting caps. What was going on down there?

  I tried to ignore the noise. I was reading an article that immediately made me think again of Beverley Tanner. It was a piece headlined “Mason Bennington: The Future of Men’s Entertainment?” It was about a chain of high-end gentlemen’s clubs that this guy, Bennington, was opening across the country.

  It was a new take on the neighbourhood strip joint where women had been exploited, and men entertained, for generations. Instead of rundown establishments located in seedy low-rent districts where vagrants, drunks, and drug addicts were the prevailing demographic, this new incarnation of the strip club was usually nestled in a ritzy part of town. High-end furnishings, mahogany bar, mood lighting, nicely dressed security staff, and good food gave it the feel of an upper-crust men’s club. The only difference was that stunningly beautiful women would dance on stage, eventually wearing nothing at all.

  Known simply as XY, presumably after the male chromosome, Mason Bennington’s clubs seemed to be raking in the members and raking in the dough. There was lots of security to enforce the strict “no-touching” rule. The dancers were highly paid and were therefore never tempted to offer customers any additional services beyond exotic dancing. If they ever did, they’d be fired. They were also offered health benefits and even had the opportunity to participate in a retirement plan funded in part by XY.

  Men had to join as members and observe strict rules of behaviour or their membership would be revoked with no refund. So far, XY clubs in New York, Washington, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were all flourishing. The article went on to note Bennington’s plans to expand to Seattle, Houston, New Orleans, and other undisclosed markets.

  I wondered what Beverley would think about XY. I fired up my laptop, and my good friend Google quickly provided lots of opinions on Mason Bennington. Many thought he was a hero for cleaning up the strip scene. He was lauded for paying the dancers a top-notch wage and for keeping them off the streets where they’d be more
vulnerable to violence and poverty. Others thought he was just another greedy misogynist exploiting women to make money, but with plusher seating and better lighting. There were also rumours of ties to organized crime. It was an easy call for me, and I suspect for Beverley Tanner. I finished the Times and turned off my iPad.

  I was just moving my kitchen table back to its normal position when the heavy vibrations started up again from below. It felt and sounded like something was coming right up through the floor, directly below the table. Just then, something came right up through the floor, directly below the table. As the whirling object ground to a stop, apparently stuck in my kitchen floor, even I could identify the business end of an electric drill. Well, I assume it was electric. Then again, given the noise, vibration, and the ease with which it entered my kitchen right through the floor, it could have been a nuclear drill for all I knew. A moment later, the drill receded, leaving me an obscured view of the room below, through a veil of sawdust.

  “Hello?” I shouted through the hole in my floor. “Maybe you shouldn’t have taken that left at Albuquerque because you just drilled right into my apartment!”

  “Oh shit!” a voice said from below. “You weren’t home when I checked a while ago. Hang on a sec.”

  A minute or two later, I could hear someone climbing the stairs, followed by a knock at my door. I opened it to find a big guy dressed either for construction or demolition, I wasn’t sure which.

  “Uh, hi. Peter Blackwell. Yeah, ah, sorry about this. We’ve been rushing to finish the place downstairs on time. Anyway, we had to install this, ah, fixture just below here, but you weren’t home earlier. So we put it off as long as we could, but you still weren’t home.”

  “Yeah, I was visiting my dad in the hospital.”

  “Oh geez, sorry about that. Anyway, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer and were just going to get the hole drilled and leave you a note on your door to let us in to finish the job tomorrow. But here you are, home. You must have just come in.”

  “About fifteen or twenty minutes ago,” I replied. “Did you really mean to drill right through my floor?”

  “Yep. The fixture is going to be under a lot of stress when the place opens up, so the engineer told us we had to bolt it right through the floor, rather than just screwing it into the ceiling below.”

  “Yeah, well, it would have been nice to hear about in advance so I could, you know, prepare for a drill coming up through my floor.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, we didn’t think you were home,” he said. “Just give me a minute to finish the job and then we’ll be out of your hair for good.”

  “Fine, but I’m more interested in when you’ll be out of my ears for good. The noise is a bit of a problem.”

  I stepped out of his way so he could move the kitchen table and crouch down.

  “I know. I’m sorry. It won’t be long now. The place is supposed to open in the next couple of weeks.”

  He bent down close to the hole and shouted.

  “Okay, Anthony, you know what to do. Let’s go!”

  A few seconds later, a fat threaded bolt came right up through the floor.

  “Okay, hold it there.”

  Peter reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic package. He ripped it open and took out a very large nut (at least I’m pretty sure it’s called a nut).

  “Shit, there’s no lock washer,” he said before moving closer to the hole again.

  “Anthony, there’s no lock washer. Where is it?” he shouted.

  A muffled response seeped into the room around the threaded bolt.

  “I told you yesterday, they’re fuckin’ backordered! You gotta go without for now.”

  “Shit. Sorry about the language. But this fixture really should have a lock washer. Anyway, I guess we gotta go with just the nut, for now.”

  Peter threaded the nut and then pulled a giant honking wrench from some secret pocket in his work pants. I wondered what other gargantuan tools of the trade he might have secreted in his clothes. Using the wrench, he tightened the nut, punctuated by two loud grunts and a very heavy exhalation. Then he took a rag from his back pocket and buffed up the nut so it looked better than nuts usually look when protruding from kitchen floors.

  “That must be one honking heavy chandelier you’re hanging,” I said.

  “Well, actually …” he stopped. “Okay, yeah, it’s a very heavy chandelier.”

  “So what’s the big secret going in downstairs, anyway?” I asked. “Restaurant? Bar? Bowling alley? CIA headquarters? The Riddler’s lair? What?”

  “You’re asking the wrong guy. I got nothing for you. The boss is a little, yeah, a little concerned about security and secrecy. We get fired if we say anything about the job we’re on. I lost a good guy last week who blabbed to the dude delivering drywall. So you’ll get nothing from me. Sorry.”

  “Even though you just drilled a big-ass hole in my kitchen floor?”

  “Yep. Sorry.”

  The din continued after Peter returned downstairs and didn’t stop for the day, er night, until just after 10 p.m. Man, it was quiet when the compressor and pneumatic drill were finally shut down. It was so still you could almost hear a spoon drop. In fact, when I dropped a spoon onto the kitchen floor, the noise was almost deafening. I was about to head to bed when my cellphone chirped. I looked at the call-display screen before answering.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Ev. Where are you?”

  “I’m standing in the kitchen of my new apartment here in Orlando, or should I call it our new apartment?”

  “Good, so that means you got the money I transferred.”

  “Well, if I hadn’t, there’s no way I’d be standing in the kitchen of our new apartment.”

  “Good, I’m glad. So bring me up to date. How’s your father?”

  “If you were only listening to him you’d think nothing happened. He’s just the same crusty, off-colour, sexist …”

  “I know what’s he like, Ev, I was married to him,” she interrupted.

  “Right. Well, mentally he’s just as socially stunted as he always was, but physically, he’s kind of in rough shape.”

  “How rough?”

  “Right now, his left leg is really just dead weight. He just drags it along behind him. I’m sure his right leg is getting nicely toned because it’s working harder than it should be to compensate. And his left hand is not what it used to be. He’ll never be able to cut the cards with that hand alone. His fine motor control is virtually nonexistent at this stage. So his dream of learning the violin and playing at Carnegie Hall is out the window.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Mom, he’s going to be okay by the end of all this. We’re working on his walking every day. And he spends the rest of his time in physio and squeezing these two little black balls in his left hand to regain his strength and control. It’s going to take some time, but he can and will recover from this. He can do it. We can do it.”

  “How much has he improved in the last week or so?”

  “Like I said, it’s going to take some time, but he’ll get there.”

  “So, there’s been no improvement? None at all?”

  “I’ve lost four pounds if that counts, and Dad is able to drag his left leg faster than he could before,” I said. “Mom, we’re going to get there.”

  “Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m moving down for a while, so I can help out, too,” she said.

  “Mom, you don’t need to do that. I’ve got it under control. You’ve got a company to run.”

  “Relax, Ev. It’s really company business that’s bringing me down. We’re finally breaking ground on a big new resort across from Disney. I’ve been working on the deal for the last two years, and it’s time to put shovels in the ground. So I’m coming down. I don’t trust our jackasses down there to get it right. So I’m doing it myself.”

  “I didn’t know your duties included putting shovels in the ground.”

  “I
’m supervising. I’ll be the one wearing the white hard hat. The white hats do a lot of standing around and issuing orders. It’s right up my alley.”

  “I see.”

  “And when I’m there, I’ll drop in on your father, now and then. And you and I can see more of one another, too.”

  “That would be great, Mom. But be prepared for a less than effusive reaction from Dad. You might be cramping his style at the hospital. He’s been on the prowl since he got there, if you can prowl with only one good leg. There seem to be more women patients than men.”

  “Just the way your father likes it. Don’t worry, I won’t be staying long.”

  “By the way, Mom, have you ever heard of a guy named Mason Bennington?”

  “I was hoping never to hear that name again,” she replied. “Yes, regrettably, I have come across him.”

  “How? Why?”

  “We had some discussions with him about locating one of his fancy clubs in one of our adult-oriented resorts. I found him to be ruthless, conceited, and of questionable moral fibre. But we turned him down in the end, so who cares.”

  “Good for you, Mom. You made the right call,” I said. “Thanks for saying no to an exercise in misogyny.”

  “I couldn’t care less about misogyny. We turned him down because the numbers weren’t there for us. We said no to an exercise in losing money.”

  “I’m so proud.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Regardless, you still made the right call.”

  I tried to sleep, but my mind was still whirring from my talk with Beverley. I downloaded The Subjection of Women and read a good chunk of it. Beautiful, if ornate, writing, but with a real mission. I set it aside to try again to sleep. I tossed and turned for a while. Then I switched it up and tried turning and then tossing for a while, to no avail. I tried to identify what I was feeling, why I couldn’t sleep. Eventually I decided I was excited. Yes, excited. Talking with Beverley had rekindled feelings that had been submerged since my days in student politics. I realized, in hindsight, that I had never felt more alive, never felt more needed, never felt more focused, than I had while working in the student movement, particularly on gender equality issues. I’d also never felt more angry than when I realized the extent to which society favoured men over women, and always had. I remember being utterly outraged when the full force of the history and ubiquity of women’s inequality sank in. Yes, I was a serious young man back then. I was lots of fun to be around in those days.