The Fear of Woman: In Which an Experiment is Conducted

Seminary boys are afraid of women.

They just is.

Which is weird because most of them are married and since their wife is most likely a woman it doesn’t make sense that they would be afraid of women.

But maybe they aren’t afraid of women. Maybe they are more afraid of women being afraid of them. Or worse, that their powers of attraction are so overwhelming that a woman might not be able to resist their charms.

I get it.

Seriously. I mean, if you look at us we might get a crush on you.

If you talk to us there’s a very good chance we might fall in love with you.

So avoiding us is by far the safest course of action. Especially in a seminary setting where high and holy men are the majority and lowly women get lost in the minority shuffle.

Boys talking to us might just be too much handle.

In light of this situation, I conducted an unofficial experiment.

It was a sunny day and I was in a really good mood. The fact that most men on campus seemed to think I was invisible whenever I passed them struck me as hilarious, so I decided to see what it would take to make them really uncomfortable.

Kind of like when you find out that someone’s afraid of dirty socks and you find the idea so funny you can’t help putting dirty socks in their path just because you can (based on a true story).

So this day that was sunny and I was in a good mood, finding the skittishness of my fellow students hysterical to the point of belly laughing, I decided that I was going to make every man I passed make eye contact with me—whether he wanted to or not.

Thus began a day of exaggerated staring.

They tried so hard to resist, but eventually every one of them caved and had to look up because my stare was so intense.

In most cases, when they looked at me, I smiled and they gave me a weak smile back and looked away as quickly as possible.

It was so much fun. I promise.

But in a few cases, I made eye contact with a few men who smiled back and almost looked relieved that I’d taken the first step.

In these cases, I think maybe they’d experienced the same thing I’d experienced—just from women. They were relieved to find I wasn’t afraid of them and in a few of the cases we got into a nice conversation.

So in all cases I either got a really good reaction that kept me giggling and grinning during every one of my classes. Or I made a new friend.

The experiment concluded with positive results.

However, I still don’t know why boys are scared of girls.