We Hear You, Trust Me.

“From Maude to Murphy Brown, I Am Woman to All About that Bass, we’ve been lectured about women’s issues….I’ve listened. And I’ve treated women with respect and empathy my whole life. But I want the same. And I think, deep down, so do most men.”

“I know I need to listen to People of Color to learn their perspective, just like they need to listen to me to learn about the white male perspective.”

These are two comments I have heard or read recently in discussions about women’s issues and racism in my community.  Look, guys, I know this is a difficult time for you.  I mean, #metoo is really scary, almost as scary as being raped.  But here’s the thing: we listen to you ALL THE TIME.  You just don’t realize it because it’s the water we’re swimming in every day, 24-7.  When you say “women/POC need to listen to US” this is what happens in my brain:

Socrates, Aristotle, Homer, Odysseus, Achilles, Agamemnon, William Shakespeare, Falstaff, Henry V, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, James Fennimore Cooper, Hawkeye, Charles Dickens, Pip, Walt Whitman,  Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, William Faulkner, Thomas Sutpen, Ernest Hemingway, Frederic Henry and every other Hemingway protagonist, Arthur Miller, John Proctor, Willy Loman, Biff, J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield, Atticus Finch, Kurt Vonnegut, Vladimir Nabakov, Humbert Humbert, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rodion Raskalnikov,  Ray Bradbury, David Sedaris, Raymond Carver, John Updike, Harry Angstrom, William Golding, Jack, Ralph, Piggy, Simon, John Irving, Owen Meany, John Wheelwright, Jack Kerouac, Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx, Cormac McCarthy, and Tim O’Brien…

Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, Lawrence Kohlberg, Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Jean Piaget, Ivan Pavlov, William Wundt, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Harry Harlow, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt….

Friedrich Nietzche, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Marx, Thomas Hobbes, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson….

George Carlin, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Louis C.K., Jerry Seinfeld, Rodney Dangerfield, Woody Allen, Patton Oswalt, Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, John Candy, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Bob Hope, Dane Cook…..

Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyer, James Corden, Bill Maher, John Oliver, Trevor Noah….

Archie Bunker, Bob Newhart, Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Hunnicut, Frank Burns, Charles Emerson Winchester the third, Felix Ungar, Oscar Madison, Hogan’s Heroes, Marcus Welby, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Colombo, Richie Cunningham, The Fonz, Captain Kirk, Scotty, Spock, Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin,  Matt Stone, Trey Parker….

Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Quentin Tarentino…..

Tom Brokaw, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Jake Tapper, Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Brian Williams, Matt Lauer, Anderson Cooper…

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs…

Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Elton John, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton….

And then there’s George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John McCain, George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Orin Hatch, Dick Durbin, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh, and on and on and on….

We’ve heard you, trust me…..we’ve HEARD you.  You have told YOUR stories through our literature, our laws, our history, our art, our music for three hundred years.  We have needed to hear you in order to survive in this world.  You have not needed to hear us.  Yet.  So when you say “women/POC need to listen to US,” we may roll our eyes.  Please.  Pass the mic.  It’s time to listen to US.