Being a woman is a lot like being a farang

As a man, it is never a mistake to understand something new about women. You will never regret it, and it will always make you a better person. You'll learn about the world, people, and yourself. I leave it to experts to determine just how much (i.e., little) I actually understand about women, but I know I want to. Beyond narrow interest, beyond my desire for them, women are the biggest Other on this planet. Since a young age, the way they experience the world has seemed to me like privileged, almost explosive, knowledge - knowledge that, oddly, is yours for the asking. I never understood the caricature that men force themselves into by inhabiting their world only with what is "male". Isn't that what prison is about?

(On that score, Paul Theroux once wrote a great essay.)

So -

Waiting for the train at Tel Aviv Central, depleted from a long day, still slightly ill, trying to shut out the world with a book. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Can't pretend I understand it all, but I want to. Grateful I scored a bench, grateful it's nowhere near cigarette smoke. It takes me a minute to notice a person standing comically close over my shoulder. A friend. We hug, we get on the train, we talk. About his newborn girl, about my recent lousy trip. Haven't seen him since I got back, but I'm so fatigued, I feel I'm shortchanging him on enthusiasm, on personality. Friends deserve more of me.

We talked about money scams in southeast Asia and India, and I mentioned one of my main letdowns in Thailand: the pervasive sense that to (most) locals I was nothing more than a walking ATM, a dollar sign, a mark, an opportunity for gain. It might be small, like a few extra dollars, or big, like a western husband-savior, but no matter its size, this potential gain defined me completely to them: I was it, not me. Beyond the fulfilment of a specific need, I simply did not matter.

This was especially evident in the way locals turned cold when realizing there was nothing to be had from me. The calculating Thai smile, the epitome of false advertising, would instantly fade to a sneer of open hate if it turned out that I offered nothing but (don't laugh) myself. This experience, which I encountered universally, was dehumanizing and demoralizing. It felt unimaginative and spiritually stingy on their part. In plain words, it hurt.

All this I mentioned in far lesser detail to my friend. His stop came, and I continued. But a day or two later, an unexpected connection snapped into place inside my brain, and suddenly I got it: This must be how women feel. Not just on vacation in some coconut-and-mosquito country, but all the time, constantly. No matter who they are, they must walk through life surviving endless (male) strangers for whom their worth is reduced to an obtusely depersonalized binary: Can I use you for this?

It doesn't matter if the answer is Yes or No, or that for the most part the question is hypothetical. What matters is that it's the first question, and that often there are no further questions. What matters is when you don't.

I know I only touched on things. I know there's more to everything.

Sending you all lots of love,

Raz