1 NOTE, with a certain rush of nostalgia, if

4 - Sunday, November 10, 1985 - North Shore News

Bob Hunter

e strictly personal @

that’s the right word, that the Sunshine Girl no
longer stands (or bends or stretches or crouches
or squats or waves a badminton racquet or does
leg exercises) on the page beside me.

It'is a victory, I guess,
for somebody.

‘And | suppose--glumly,
1 have. to say this—the
’ world is a slightly more ra-
tional, egalitarian place
because the Sunshine Giri
has modestly skipped
backwards into the inner
pages, not quite so close to
the sacred Front Page
itself, where she might
pervert old minds and
young alike,

‘After all, we are united
in our opposition to sex-
ism, aren’t' we? I know J
am. Even if I’m not so sure
about my wife, daughters,
sons, in-laws, brother,
cousins, uncles and aunts,
Mom, friends, colleagues,
casual acquaintances, total
strangers and all that
bunch.

/ Being a liberated male
ain’t easy, in case y2u
think it is. There actually
aren’t that many of us. ~
I know this. Once, many

moons ago, in the midst of -

’ an otherwise routine iden-
tity crisis, I decided to take
up macrame. ~

You can imagine the
scene. Down I went to the
macrame class. I was, even
then, a liberated male, ch?

I treated women as total
equals. Not a drop of male
chauvinism could you find
on my pure idealistic brow.
What happened in
macrame class? It was sor-
did. All the rest of the stu-
dents were women, it turn-
ed out, amazingly enough.
They shunned me like a
leper. They never let me in
on their gossip. They gig-
gled at my expense. When
they did deign to talk to
me, it was in outrageously
maternalistic terms, as
though I was a retarded lit-
tle fost boy, probably
undernourished at that.
The idea that I might de
a viable male, if you know
what I mean, and STILL
want to take macrame, was
something they just
couldn’t seem to accept.
Me, all I wanted was ther-
apy.
Soon enough, scorned by
my fellow students, treated
like a. pariah, worse, a
male, I slunk away from
the macrame course and
wound my Icnely stereo-
typed man’s way along the
road of life, trough of
mindless machismo as it
may be....
’ Jt was a vest, that one

macrame project { com-
pleted. I remember now. A
kind of a hippie thing, to
tell you the honest-to-God
truth. It didn’t fit, anyway.
When I put it on it looked
so funny even my best
friends laughed.

So I gave up macrame
and went back to swearing
and drinking beer around a
table with a lot of guys
who smoked cigarettes. I
even took up the habit
age.n of making fun of the
b:oads when they weren’t
around.

Sure, I was bitter. It’s
bad enough being spurned
when you apply to hang
out with the guys, but it is
even more punishing for
the male ego, let me tell
you, to be spurned when
you try to hang out with
the girls.

1 know | shouldn't speak ©

in sweeping terms, but,
gee, I think there is one
respect in which men and
women are equal, always
have been and probably,
alas, always will be, and

that’s in the department of .

feeling superior to each
other.

Show me a woman who
doesn’t harbor at least a
sneaking suspicion that
women are ABOVE men,
and, indeed, vice versa,
and I'll show you either a
saint or a vegetable. Both?

Still, there are bright

“T want
your plans”
New Homes!

patches in the gloom.

A local chap I know had
a son by a Japanese
woman who, when they
broke up, took the kid
back to Japan with her.
This guy discovered a while
ago that the boy was living
in a militant feminist
commune with his mother,
Such was the general an-
ti-male mood of the place
that the boy had taken to
wearing women’s clothes.
maybe one of the reasons
being that there wasn’t any
other kind of clothing
around.

Whatever the excuses,
the lad’s Japanese grand-
mother found out about
this. She was so indignant
she went down to her
daughter’s commune and
gave her grandson a pres-
ent.

It was a toy Samurai
sword.

In no time at all, the
boy had turned into the
terror of the commune.
Grandma-San had
Straightened him out with a
single blow, as it were,

This story, if you think
about it, goes beyond mere
commentary on the war of
the sexes. It strikes at the
heart of the human condi-
tion. Which leads me to
what I wanted to say:

Bye, bye Sunshine Girl.
Sniff. ' fi miss you, babe.

Your old runners
are worth
towards pur chase
of anew pair.

‘l=

Your old i

sneakers are
worth
five bucks!

The worst

palr of runners
traded in will
recelve a free
Pair of
runners,

TIME OUT SPORTS

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requisition/ CTC-RTC deci-
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Regulations of North Van-
couver Athletic Commis-
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luminating Waterfront
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