I do not understand misogyny.

I have never fantasized rape, never deliberately sought to dominate, oppress, best I know. I believe women and men differ in essential ways and to deny those differences is to deplete experience; yet to make those differences a justification for subjection never crossed my mind. Parturition seems exclusively a woman’s province, nurturing more dependent on female than male; but from my incorrigible vantage, these obligations seem more blessings than curses. Men may strive to be as necessary to their offspring as a loving mother, but we’ll never suckle.

Being bigger and stronger mattered more when size and strength determined outcomes. Men used their advantage to arrange society to their liking, with themselves as kahunas, women their subordinates. Human ingenuity, bless it, has erased this advantage. In athletics size and strength affect results, but athletics are a pleasant pastime. These days, even combat is push-button.

Shouldn’t changes in machinery and mores obviate the war between the sexes which has wearied humans since our emergence into consciousness? Hallelujah! Only, recently – and not just in America – males have conspired to ignite those old antagonisms, remanding women to inferior status and rights. Why would we? Will the consequent estrangement of our wives and female friends make us happier? Wouldn’t responsibility be less burdensome if shared?

Not nursing this urge to denigrate, I find it hard to diagnose. Never have I chortled to “grab them by the pussy.” I’m a big fan of love, the basis of which (unless I’m missing something) is mutual desire.

My guess is, if men seek to dominate women, it’s to feel better about themselves.

Modernity has played havoc with the human ego, shrinking us from bigshots in our communities to specks in the wide world. Population growth has reduced our proportionate importance. Advances in communications (if advance is the word) have shriveled the individual: a few shine, the rest shudder in their shadow. Giant cities make humans formicant (a new adjective for me – handy just now). Advances in science disassemble religious myths into fairytales. Now along comes AI, making even our preening intellects second-rate.

The old way to bolster a bruised ego is to beat up on somebody else. If I win, I’m not a loser, right? Inside the bluster of every misogynist cringes an intimidated self-hating boy, dreaming that by belittling they can make themselves big.

How, I wonder, did I escape misogyny (for I’m sure I did – ask Jane, ask daughter Becca)?

Arguably, my vanity is immured from self-doubt. My ego (some lowlives would assert) needs deflation, not the opposite.

I favor a more flattering analysis. I do not want to beat up women because a) liking them – a lot – I want them to like me and b) I’ve got work to do on earth which keeps me too busy to hate. Purpose is my all-purpose panacea. I’m intent on creating more keenly, loving more deeply – and don’t give a hoot whether anyone else honors these aspirations as raptly as I. Love, beauty, grace, truth, kindness – synonyms for the same impulse – are my religion, my God, and with such glory hatred is incompatible. Call me a slave to my aspirations – in that respect, a weakling, overpowered and overseen by a Greater Good. To denigrate a woman because she’s a woman, to force myself on her, to invade her privacy and deny her rights, is vile, evil, as bad as humanity gets (and we get pretty bad).

I wouldn’t elect a misogynist dog-catcher – if he were the only candidate and my place was being overrun by dogs (which it sort of is).