One of my kids had an athletic event out of town this weekend, and due to it’s location, we stayed at Middle’s house the night before.

It should come as no surprise that this stage of my life is all about Driving Kids To Things. Ten+ hours in little more than 24 hours, drawn so tightly because we were bumpered on both sides by other obligations in which I had to drive that kid to something. I fell asleep two nights in a row with the vibration of a car’s wheel still strong in my palms.

Still beats the Changing Diapers stage.

This interesting thing happened at Middle’s, and I’m curious as to your opinion, if you have one: Middle’s spouse pulled out his phone to read an excerpt from a published novel, the link to which he’d been forwarded.

The novel had been written by a male coworker, under his real name, and described a hero quite painfully and obviously self-referential. And OK, I get it. It’s super common to write a story in which you are the hero.

What elevated this tidbit of gossip was that the love interest in the story was quite clearly the coworker’s female boss. Not only was the physical description (with gems like, “He approved how she dressed conservatively and not to tantalize, as his gaze drifted to her substantial bosom.*”) completely accurate to the boss, but the character shared the same last name.

!!!

Further points of interest were that the boss had been rewritten as a peer, and her character’s only purpose in the passage read seemed be breathing compliments in the hero’s ear, accidentally/on purpose pressing her substantial bosom against him, and saying extremely stupid stuff so the hero could show off his superior knowledge.

Anyway, the question around our campfire was, what kind of response does this merit? On one hand, this is a subordinate writing about his boss, so it doesn’t seem to fit the traditional framework of work harassment. On the other hand, it’s super gross!

Related, I had a moment of bucking my family system that I was super proud of!

The next day, my mom attended the athletic event, and so she and I had hours to sit side by side and shoot the shit. On the multiple occasions I’ve told her that Trump’s election has helped transform me, she has seemed equal parts interested and wary.

My mother said she also feels that with the changing times, she’s started to see how her past behavior and thoughts were influenced, and how interesting it is that social mores are changing.

Because of our generational differences, it feels like I am cannon balling into change, and although she’s headed in a similar direction, she’s going so gingerly, as if stepping onto a frozen lake, unsure if she’ll fall through.

We eventually got back to talking about the coworker’s novel, and I said, “In one way, the least offensive part is that the author’s talking about someone he knows. The fact that the woman is basically just a blow-up doll with no characterization – and that so many people must’ve read that book on it’s way to publication and it never occurred to any of them a woman was something more? Fuuuuuuck offfff.”

We had talked previously about how the whole excerpt seemed as if it should have started, “Dear Penthouse forum, you’ll never believe….” And to my comment, my mom shrugged and said, “Well, lots of men do have fantasies like that. And a fantasy can be pretty hardwired.”

Which is totally the kind of hook that used to get me — the idea I had to sort through whether or not I was right to have an opinion because I hadn’t considered someone else’s needs. But this time, I just turned to her and said, “So they think I’m subhuman AND I’m supposed to do the emotional work of untangling the sexual ethics of whether it’s OK? Fuck allllll the way off.”

It felt pretty good!

That wary look surfaced on my mother’s face, and she said, “What you don’t realize is that there will be a backlash to all this.” And I know she meant to warn me, but also like the old guard, to put me back into my place. It was strange to see so clearly her inability to see past her own generational blinders, how afraid she was.

But all I could think was, “I am the backlash.”

*This is not a direct quote, just giving you the flavor.