Hey, Why The Long Face

I got into one of those dumb Facebook wars yesterday.  Katherine keeps telling me not to engage, but I am just too immature to resist.  The situation in a nutshell:  Katie Hoffman, one of my all time favorite people, posted that some strange man had told her to smile and it pissed her off.  I understand her reaction completely.  I hate to smile, always have.  I'm 70 years old and the years of smoking, drinking coffee and red wine, plus deteriorating 70 year old enamel, have made me ashamed of my smile.  Don't worry.  I'll cope.  Anyway, the strange man was being rather presumptuous to tell some stranger to smile.  Katie should have told  him to fuck off and gone about her business.

Katie's post gave me no problems, but the stream of reactions struck me as being all out of proportion to the actual event Katie described.  It was typical of a culture that systematically hurts women, a bunch of folks said.  It was just another indication that women have to make themselves look pretty for men.  It was a sexual assault.  The anger, outrage, and fury were evident throughout and I thought it was a little silly, so I made a typical, for me, smart ass comment.  I mentioned that strange women and men have asked me to smile from time to time during my seventy years and I never felt condescension; I just assumed they were coming on to me.  I also suggested that a possible solution to the problem would be to look happy while walking down the street.  Finally, I mentioned that Katherine and I used to give bonus F's to kids who didn't smile and look happy in class.

I was mostly trying to reduce the arguments on the stream to the absurdities they were, but all hell broke loose.  A few of the ladies on the stream were more than a little outraged that I gave F's to kids who didn't smile.  Let me explain.  Sophomore Language Arts offered speech and drama credit, so a big part of our curriculum was designed to meet speech objectives set by the county and the state.  It became a discussion class with an equal stress on  participation and active listening.  We would have one forced contribution discussion a week and the kids were given grades both as a group and as individuals.  If everyone in the group participated, added comments, encouraged others, and basically acted like adults having a discussion, everyone in the group got an A.  If even one person did not participate, did not encourage others, did not listen and have the kind of body language that proclaimed his/her eager cooperation, everyone in the group got an F.  We were labeled communists, terrorists, etc., but by the end of the first quarter a visitor could walk into any of our classrooms and see 25 kids sitting in a circle, maintaining eye contact, nodding, smiling, doing all those kinds of things.  Mostly, you could see 25 kids engaged and having fun.  Katherine and I were pragmatic teachers and we did whatever it took.  So sue me.

Of course, most of the outrage was directed at the fact that I was making fun of women for freaking out when someone asked them to smile.  I guess as a man, I'm not entitled to participate in a discussion centering on sexual predation.  I even had the temerity to suggest that some of the participants in the stream did not have a sense of humor.  I learned immediately that telling a woman she doesn't have a sense of  humor is the biggest sexual assault trope of all.

And then it was suggested that I did not have a sense of humor.  No sense of humor?  Moi?  Please!  So I ended my participation in the stream by offering my favorite joke as proof of my highly developed sense of humor.  You  will find it quite germane to the whole discussion:  A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey, why the long face?"  You can easily see why my classroom was such a hotbed of jocularity.

My final reaction to all this is a question and I really wish someone would answer it without resorting to calling me names or telling me how disappointed they are in me.  One person on the stream, a former student, even said she was sad to see how sexist I had become.  Don't be sad, Bucko.  The Dems took the House.

My question:  If a man asking a woman he doesn't know to smile is sexual assault, what isn't?  In Willa's first year of preschool, I went to her school to watch her participate in a fun run.  I was standing by the course with my daughter Franny and another mother of one of Willa's classmates.  The mother was furious because on the playground the previous day some of the boys were trying to put rocks in the girls' mouths.  I suppose they were trying to get them to eat dirt.  The mother was planning to complain to the principal that Ms. Barb did not properly discipline the boys.  "It's just another example of rape culture at work," said the mother.  I'm sorry, but I think that reaction is absurd.

Okay, putting rocks in four year old mouths is tantamount to rape.  What else?  I am actually quite polite and always hold the door open for people of both genders.  When I hold the door open for a woman, is that just a way to show male condescension?  If I tell some lady, even some lady I have never seen before, that I love her hair, am I traumatizing her.  People of both genders tell Kathie they love her hair all the time.  Should she be offended by that?  Kathie was having a hard time putting our Kitchen Aid mixer together two days ago and I stepped in and did it for her without even asking.  Is that a particularly egregious example of Mansplaining?  I went with C. Fite to see Kathleen Belew's book talk at the Tattered Cover.  We had drinks and snacks in the little bar next door and I think I might have picked up the tab.  Isn't that the height of male dominance on display?

I suppose there are right ways to tell some stranger to smile.

"It's a beautiful day out there isn't it?  Doesn't it make you want to smile?"

"Smile!  It's another glorious day in Colorado!"

"Hi there.  It's a great day to be alive isn't it?  You just can't keep from smiling."

And there are wrong ways.

"Smile, goddammit.  You're depressing the hell out of everyone on the street."

"Stop being such a grouch and smile why don't you?"

"Hello!  Do you think you could smile a little instead of being such a sourpuss?"

And there are appropriate ways to respond.

"Why it is a beautiful day isn't it?"

"Thank you and let a smile be your umbrella."  (gag)

"Hey, let me show you where you can put your smile."

"Fuck you, asshole."

I'm truly sorry if I offended or disappointed anyone in that Facebook stream yesterday, but I just don't see how it is possible to conflate asking someone to smile with sexual assault.  Maybe the strange man who pissed Katie off was feeling like Dick Van Dyke and was encouraging everyone he met to "Put On A Happy Face."