Maybe women did make up men, invented them the way earlier civilizations created gods, to fill a need. A group of revisionist historians—psychohistorians they call themselves—would like us all to believe that there was never any “second sex,” never any “other” kind of human being except ourselves. According to them, men were a cultural invention. After all, if they were truly other than us, necessary in the same way as are male animals, how is it that we women have managed to continue to reproduce ourselves, managed to conceive and bear children, without any of the equipment or the contortions depicted in illustrated texts on human sexuality, and in a certain class of film?
I’ve heard many clever and convincing arguments for the revisionist view of human history, and there are times when I feel that only a native stubbornness keeps me clinging to what I “know.” Yet the argument they think is the clincher for their point of view does not convince me.
Like all sane and sensible people, they still, thirty-four years after the fact, cannot come to terms with, can hardly believe, the way that men disappeared. Overnight; all at once; in the twinkling of an eye. They simply were no longer. Reality doesn’t work like that; dreams do. So it makes a certain comforting sense to conclude that the whole class or gender of
Things that exist do not suddenly cease to be. They change, possibly out of all recognition, but something doesn’t become nothing except through a process of transformation. This is true not only of objects, but also of needs. What happened to that need which made women invent the story of men in such convincing detail, and cling to it for so many thousands of years? Why should it be any easier to erase such a need than half the human race? How could it vanish in the blink of an eye, between one breath and the next?
I said something of this sort to Rufinella. She looked tired and sad. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You’re right. The need is still there, and we still don’t understand it. That’s why I think men are coming back.”
“The same way they left?” I loved my husband very much, and grieved for him and other male friends and family when they disappeared; I had mourned for years, wanting them back. And yet, now, the thought that they might all return, be found back in place tomorrow morning, was strangely horrible.
“Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think you’re going to roll over in bed one night and find you’re not alone. I think they’re coming back in a different way… more slowly, but more surely. We’ve had this time, all these years, to learn to understand ourselves and to change, and we haven’t done it. We’ve missed our chance. We’ve blown it, as your generation says. We still need them, and we don’t know why. So men are coming back. And I think it’s going to be worse for us this time; a lot worse.”
Rufinella is bright and observant and cautious, not given to making rash, unprovable statements.
“Why?”
“You don’t spend much time around children, do you?”
“Not much,” I said. “In fact, hardly any. I suppose your Leni’s birthday party was the last time.”
“I spend two afternoons a week in the community nursery,” Rufinella said. “And of course I live with Leni, and there’s her friends, and Alice has an eight-year-old… since I’ve noticed, I’ve been talking to more mothers and teachers and nursery workers and… it’s consistent. It’s not isolated incidents; there’s a pattern to it, and it’s—”
“What?”
“I didn’t mean to tell you yet—I didn’t mean to tell anyone, until I was certain. Until I had more evidence. I could be wrong, I could be overreacting, imagining things…. I thought it was just a fad, at first. Most people who’ve noticed it probably think that. Because you only see a part of it, you only see what the kids in your house or your school or your neighborhood are doing, and you don’t realize that they are all doing the same thing, all across the city, all across the country… all over the world, I suspect, although of course I don’t
I felt the way I always feel before a medical examination. I wanted to leap ahead of her, tell her before she could tell me. “And you recognize it—this culture—from the old movies.”
“Not the details. The details are different. I guess they’d have to be. But, yes, I do recognize it… at least, I recognize one thing about it… you would, too, I think.”
“Tell me.”
