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| Event #135: "Broken Spirit..." or Impeachment Now?
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But twenty minutes later he was still gazing at her, and I looked over in amazement, searching her face for signs of irritation. Was it not his turn to say something now? It seemed not. And surely he was frustrated at the passive role he had been forced into? But when she vanished to the ladies' loo, he did not lose his calm, but started reading the sports news. Not desparately, mind you. He put the paper aside without a glance when she returned to resume her monologue.
This was not the romantic sharing of sweet tales of love. She could have been talking office politics. This was an attractive man winning a woman's heart with his silence. And her winning his.
That was last Thursday evening - my first ever spotting of the Doe-Eyed Man. On Saturday, there was one on the train and on Sunday another - up Primrose Hill this time.
The techniques used by those (em)pathetic men are ones I was shown ten years ago in a school seminar on social intercourse. "You want to know how to pick up a man in three easy steps?" the psychologist had asked, at the end of the session. Yes, yes, the teenage girls begged. "Tilt your heads to one side, open your lips while he talks and repeat the last three words of whatever he says - framing it as a question." I found the simplicity of the trick ridiculous and resolved never to use it as long as I lived.
That casual resolution was fuelled by an extremely academic all-girls school, where personal independence was considered key. At eighteen I left, controversial and inspired, only to horrify myself by nodding and smiling at men who talked.
Too often I caught myself adding supporting material, rather than introducing new themes. Even in the pub I sat on my boyfriend's knee and laughed as he joked with his mates.
As I saw it then, men turned their conversation onto areas where they had knowledge to impart - and then said obvious things so dramatically that you must either agree or wound their pride. My single-sex ivory tower had not prepared me for this. I had no stock of facts to swap, and was loathe to hurt their feelings and then change the subject.
For years, I watched conversations between men and women on telly and on the street. I imagined their genders reversed - how impossible! - gradually building up the certainty that relations between men and women were warped.
But I was still timid, and smiled at the men who talked at me - although inside I raged with frustration.Only when I knew for sure that the people who did not like assertive women were not people I wanted to be around, did I start to venture my opinions out loud.
Those were the years when I was embarrassed to walk past a guy shorter than me, in case he was embarrassed at walking past a tall girl like me.
Since then, I have built up some facts of my own to trade. And ten years' after that seminar, the men and women I love have to be smart enough, or crazy enough, to live outside the gender power-play. Or I want nothing to do with them. I may be an extreme case (perhaps the guy in the wine bar was mute), but tell me this: Why are at least three attractive, adult men in London basing their relationships on tactics last used by confused, teenage girls?
Is this new, doe-eyed breed a reaction to last week's Observer magazine? Its "Life" section said that men are evolving feminine features so they can be the gentle companions women now seek. Less testosterone means more empathy, said the piece, describing a Darwinist chain from Harrison Ford to Leonardo di Caprio.
Even I know that evolution takes more than 20 years, but maybe the story inspired some identity-deficient chaps to go silent and soulful.
Or perhaps it is a peculiarly London phenomenon - a side effect of our booming design and fashion industries. Have these men fallen into the trap of thinking that just because they have good looks, they don't need to develop a personality?
They had better bloody not have. Women have fought hard for men to look beyond their pretty faces. Don't say guys are now seeing it as the easy option.
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