An even playing field for men & women? Really?

It's 2 a.m. and I'm watching Jeanine Pirro on Fox News. Heaven forbid that I would seek Fox News watching, but I sample some just to see what they're up to. I notice immediately that "Judge Jeanine" has a generous amount of lipstick smeared on her lips. Here's a direct question: "Why do women do this?"
I notice Meghan McCain on "The View" with a similar amount of surplus lipstick on her lips. My forehead becomes wrinkled as I wonder.
The old movie "Marie Antoinette" revealed the custom vividly. It is revealed at the end of the movie where we see Norma Shearer without lipstick or makeup. She didn't look like the same person. But what was wrong with how she looked? The occasion for making her eschew makeup was surely grim: she was about to be guillotined.
In addition to cosmetic habits, this movie made me wonder if in our current digital age where "flash mobs" are enabled, could something like the French Revolution happen again?
But let's get back to the topic of makeup. I hear no general discussion about it. But we are seeing headlines regularly about male misbehavior. Two guys in the White House had to pull the rip cord and bail out. The Weinstein thing started a flood of discussion. Then we had Steve Wynn. Democrats are pressured to return money from the likes of these people, but Republicans are not. My friend Brent Waddell remarked recently: "Democrats are going to have to learn how to play dirty."
Well, I think circumstances in our society are going to prop up the Democrats again. I guess politics exists to reflect the will of the people.
The recent scandals of misbehaving men have promoted again the message of how women must be totally equal. Men should not exercise any special leverage. In theory it's all easy to grasp. In practice there are issues. In a subtle way we encourage predatory habits in boys. We still have the notion that it's boys who ask girls out on dates and not the other way around, right? Can you explain the basis for this custom? Is it something instilled in our nature from prehistoric times, when the male cave man would drag around the woman by her hair (an amusing stereotype, yes)? Is this how it was when man roamed the savanna?
Men were assumed to have superior strength when I was growing up. That assumption seems suspect now. I got dragged through stages of enlightenment myself. When the three-point shooting rule was instituted for basketball, I was skeptical if females could ever make much use of it. There were people in the early '70s who felt girls basketball would remain little more than a novelty. We'd watch those poor girls get called for traveling all the time, right? A lot of us sure had our eyes opened.
If men are not dominant physically, then on what grounds do they receive special privileges at all, including the privilege of being the ones who propose dates? We have the odd custom of Sadie Hawkins which is an isolated opportunity for women to be assertive. Why so isolated and rare? We raise boys thinking they have the privilege of "going after" girls, yet we act surprised when we find out some men are abusive.
There ought to be a movement among women, who I will not refer to as "the fairer sex," to abolish makeup. Can they give me any explanation why it's necessary? By the same token, why do women have this fear of showing up at a party wearing the same outfit as another woman there? As a guy I could not care less about this. If we are to wipe out temptations among men to be abusive in any way, maybe we ought to wipe out all these behavior expectations that are tied to gender, n'est-ce pas?
Think of all the celebrity men who have some unacceptable behavior in their background. They go to bed every night knowing it could all come out publicly the next day, and they'll have to wear a scarlet letter the rest of their lives. Neanderthals like Donald Trump make apologies for them, eagerly buying superficial denials from the men (who have been forced to resign anyway). Trump campaigned for Roy Moore.
Men are raised thinking they can be assertive with women as if it's a cultural right. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that some of us men go off the rails (though in the case of Moore, such behavior cannot be forgiven on any terms). As for me, I have never even dated a woman, never even shared a cup of coffee. God created me in such a way that any woman would laugh at the notion of doing something social with me. I get laughed at. It's my lot in life. A person could definitely have worse problems.
God created me with an effeminate appearance that drew a tremendous amount of teasing when I was a kid, and even some acknowledgment as an adult. I don't know what I am supposed to do about this. Sometimes I pass judgment on people because they seem so eager to pass judgment on me.
It's 3 a.m. now and I still have Fox News on, where the women seem to be required to wear dresses and makeup. How fundamentally odd, these differences in notions in how men and women present themselves, even in our new age of "zero tolerance" re. men who behave badly. What was it that Roger Ailes expected Gretchen Carlson to do for him?
I continue to maintain that the mysteries of sex are due to our origins as a hybrid species between space aliens and Earth primates.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com