so the setting is 4 days ago. i'm seeing the vagina doctor, well, in actuality she's seeing me. and while she's inside doing her business, she asks me what classes i'm taking at the local liberal arts college. it just happens we both moved to WA for evergreen pastures and of course, Evergreen. . i let her know that i'm taking US history: 60s to the present. funny, she says, she took a similar class on sex and gender (go figure that she ended up as a gynecologist) when she went. She had an absolutely wonderful professor, Stephanie Coontz.
as i lay there, legs splayed out, nothing to look up at (at least dentists' care if one gets bored or not. thank you sincerely Dentists of America ,if not the World, for giving me something else to look at then that weird-70s-style-brownish-polka-dot-cardboard-thing you got going.), i'm thinking that name sounds very familiar... there is a very loud bell going off in my head.
and then it hits me, as she stretches her fingers and searches about, that the book i happen to be reading for class is written by this woman! A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. (a strange stirring?! i mean, jesus christ, i get it. funny joke universe...)i feel like i know Coontz, her opinions, questions, and the way she talks. and i've been seeing what she's pointing out about in the book in my personal life, the staggering price we pay for having gender roles in place and then getting confused or defeated by them.
i guess that would be enough of an awkward story if it were to end there. but... alas the next day i meant the woman. and blurted out the whole weird mess of what happened with my gyno to my professor.
awesome...
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