Their time of the month

I'm simmering. Steaming. Really annoyed. Guess I'm just being female, huh?

When did men convince women that to display emotion somehow made what you were saying wrong? That tears were a sign of an unbalanced mind and heart? That to feel "empathy" was an illegimate characteristic for, say, a judge?

I'd like to flay a few of the commenters on my recent GR post for displaying their so-male arrogance when it comes to figuring out whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be an appropriate person to serve on the Supreme Court. But I can't, for personal and professional reasons.

Here are the personal ones. You can figure out the professional reasons.

I come from a family where a parent sometimes used words to inflict emotional distress. I recall a few sad times when I did it to my own children -- and then stood back in dismay, horrified by that critical, clever, macerating voice. Eighty percent of the time, I'll bite my tongue. It takes a lot to push my buttons, and then I brood about it for weeks, wondering what I could have done differently. On the other hand, I also suffer from an excess of empathy -- it took about an hour into a wounded ex-wife's story tonight before it emerged that she has been dating a guy for three years. In the meantime, I'd experienced every twist and turn of her abandonment as though it was my own story -- which it certainly was not.

I know these guys on GR aren't really worth getting all fussed and bothered by. After all, they are just venting their emotions. Only they either don't know that they are doing so, or they don't have the balls to admit it. I'm not sure which one is more silly.