Here’s a puzzle that perhaps you’ve heard before: A man and his son are out on a drive when they get into a pretty bad accident. They are both rushed to the hospital to be operated on but when the son enters the Emergency Room, the doctor says, “I can’t operate on this boy. He is my son.” How is this possible? Here’s another: Two fathers and two sons go fishing and each catches a fish but they come home with only three fish. How is this possible? If you like these puzzles, you might want to stop reading now because I’m about to reveal the answers.
The answer to the second puzzle is that the two fathers and two sons were only three people—there was a father, a son, and a grandfather, which meant the father was a son as well. Hence “two fathers and two sons”. A little tricky, I admit. The puzzling thing about the first puzzle, however, is the fact that it is puzzling at all. Because there is no similar trick in the first puzzle. There is no trick at all. Yet it is not usually answered immediately by most people, nor is the answer considered to be obvious when it is revealed. So there must be some sort of trick but what is it? Here is the answer: The doctor was his mother. And here is the answer to why it’s not immediately obvious that this is a possibility: Doctors are typically men.
You just believed me. Why is that? It is either because it is true that doctors are typically men or it is because it is true that we tend to think of doctors as men. It’s probably both. But now we should want to know why most doctors are men and why, whether they are or not, we tend to think that most doctors are men. I think perhaps these questions have the same answer, an answer inextricably linked to that dirty f-word, feminism. An apt title for this piece of writing would have been ‘Feminism’. But if I called it that, who would have read it? No one. Especially not guys. Not even girls can be feminists without taking some flack.
Let’s look at the evidence: There are women on the covers of men’s magazines and but no men on the covers of women’s magazines. Women who sleep around a lot are sluts but men who sleep around a lot are studs. We have Victoria’s Secret but Victor’s Secret is that he subscribes too. Where is the men’s lingerie? Why is it only women who change their names when they get married? Why don’t we flip a coin? If I say, “The doctor bought flowers for his wife,” no one blinks but if I say, “The doctor bought flowers for her husband,” people have to start rearranging their thoughts. It is inappropriate to call a 25-year-old male a ‘boy’ but 25-year-old females are often called ‘girls’. The opposite of ‘man’ is ‘woman’ and the opposite of ‘boy’ is ‘girl’ but the opposite of ‘guy’ is, in practice, ‘girl’. ‘Gal’ just hasn’t caught on. English doesn’t have an official plural version of ‘you’ so some people use ‘yous’ or ‘you all’ but I’d say most people use ‘you guys’. But maybe you aren’t a guy and your friend isn’t either. It doesn’t matter—it is colloquially acceptable to address two girls or gals or women as ‘you guys’.
But it does matter. Would two guys let two gals address them as ‘you gals’? I doubt it. Or would two guys let another guy say to them, “Where are you gals going out tonight? No. So why the inconsistency? Why the (dare I say it?) inequality? Maybe not as many women want to be doctors or maybe men are just naturally better at it. I don’t know. But I do know that gals aren’t guys. That’s why we need girl power. But what is girl power? Is it on lunchboxes? Is it in workplaces? Is it stronger than flower power? Is it like manpower? Is it womanpower? Tell me more. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I am a feminist. Without apology. And if you’re wondering whether I shave my legs or armpits, let me save you the suspense—I don’t. It’s not because I’m lazy or trying overly hard to make a point, it’s just that, well, guys don’t have to and—I’m a guy. A feminist guy. Proudly. My doctor’s a feminist too. And so is her husband.