I am fifty-seven years old, just about to turn fifty-eight in a week, and I play softball.

It is my opinion that men and women should be allowed to compete equally on sports teams as long as the rules are the same for both people of both sexes.  In other words, there should be no “special allowances” made for the average man because he is not as flexible as the average woman, and there should be no “special allowances” made for the average woman because she is not as strong as the average man.

Sound fair enough? I mean, “equal” = “equal,” right? There are no special considerations in anything that is truly equal.

When I went to yoga classes with my wife because my back was killing me, the instructor was a woman, and 99% of the students were women.  And they could all twist themselves into pretzels and think nothing of it.  I couldn’t.  I have more muscle mass that hinders me from bending as fluidly as the average woman. However, even though I have penis, the instructor gave me no special considerations, nor did I expect them.  I just did the best that I could, and I knew that I would never be as good as most of the others in the class, no matter how long I practiced.

If you play the violin, and you want to get into a symphony orchestra, you show up for auditions. You know what the parameters are before you go there, and you know that the orchestra’s conductor is going to pick the violinist that is the most talented so that the orchestra will sound as good as it can possibly sound for an audience.  There are no special considerations made for the auditioners’ handicaps, height, weight, or sex.

Now, the league in which I play softball states that ANYBODY can play in the league, as long as they are over 55 years old. Boys and girls together, as long as they follow all of the rules, and the rules, at first, were the same for everybody.

Okay, well, things change, right?

Now, there is a shorter distance from home plate to first base for women. Just like “ladies’ tees” in golf.  Home plate is the same for everybody, but the women have to run ten feet less than the men to get to first. It doesn’t matter if there is a fifty-five year old Jane Armstrong, All American Girl and an eighty-seven year old Walter Milquetoast-Geezelbreathe.  Jane gets to run like a gazelle to the “girl’s base” and old, decrepit Walter has to wheeze his way down to the real first base, ten feet beyond, where there is neither a respirator nor a defibrillator waiting for him.

Now, how in the hell is that equal?

But, if you open your mouth to protest against it, and you happen to have an “outie” between your legs instead of an “innie”, then you are labeled as a sexist.

Okay, now, the other day, there was a woman pitching for one team.  A woman in her mid-fifties.  A seventy-year-old man was at the plate.  He got the swung his bat at the pitch, and drilled a smoking line drive right into the pitcher’s calf, producing a black-and-blue on the spot that was the size and color of a large, ripe eggplant.

The fellow, who is a fantastic athlete and in excellent shape, quit the team right then and there. He couldn’t live with the fact that he had done that to a woman!

DONE WHAT? It’s not like he charged the pitcher’s mound and hauled off and whacked her in the leg with his Louisville Slugger! She got hit in the leg with a line drive!

It happens!

Later on, he said that if he had hit a male pitcher with the same line drive, he would have felt sorry for the guy, but it wouldn’t have been so traumatic to him, and he would have continued playing the sport.

(The woman who got hit, by the way, was fine with it, and she tried to convince the guy to come back to the game, but he never did, and he hasn’t been on the playing field since.)

I don’t get it! I really don’t. 

After listening to all of this and letting it digest, it suddenly hit me that this “equality between the sexes” thing is much more difficult than what meets the eyes.  BOTH  sexes have got to start thinking in different  paradigms.

We have to understand that, yes, there are physical and psychological differences between the sexes. (Sorry, but there ARE!) However, the things that are important, the things that make us human, are not different between us one damned bit.

If we want “equality”, we’ve got to work at it. And it’s freaking complicated!!!!

I love opening doors for my wife and showing her how much I care for her with things like that. Is that being sexist?

I have a very close friend of mine who just loves the fact that boyfriend wants to “take care of her” forever!

She likes that secure feeling of being loved, but at the same time she is actively chasing after her dream and working hard at forwarding her acting career. 

There was a time where the loving “being taken care of” and the striving to become a professional, independent woman were seen as contradictory goals.

In reality, that is just pure bull shit.  They are not contradictory at all. i

We just need to begin re-thinking what is important in life.

We need to work hard to change our thoughts.

And, unfortunately, it is not as simple as changing the labels that we hang on people.

I truly believe that if we are to be “equal”,  we need to access who and what we are, not so much in The Grand Scheme of the Universe, but in a much smaller place. We need to find that place deep inside of each and every one of us, where we are all perfectly the same.

The answer truly does lie within, and has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with if you are an actor or an actress.