A Strange Day on Planet Earth

He said, “But you don’t think I can ever really understand, do you?  That I can understand what it’s like to be a woman?”

I was staring at him and trying not to laugh, trying not to cry.

Did a feminist ever want to turn a handsome man into a woman? Is the request to be a decent version of a man so confounding?

Finally I said, “Then you are asking if a person must be oppressed to understand oppression.”

I didn’t know the answer; he didn’t understand the question.

Image: modified from page 593 of Orient Line Guide, William John Loftie, 1894, via British Library on flicker