The girlness of being a boy (who calls antelope she and wild dogs he)

One of the perks of being 50 is that I’m expected to be an ignorant fuddy-duddy with 1970s sensibilities. That provides me with the perfect excuse to admit things I wouldn’t have, just five years ago.

For instance, my 17-year-old asked me what I thought of the Ariana Grande moment while we were sharing our respective experiences of the movie Don’t Look Up. Without missing a beat, I responded, ‘Remind me, who is what’s-it-now, Arena?’ Two days before my 50th I might have been tempted to pretend to know her and wing it.

This is why I can now freely admit that the speed at which gender politics is developing has totally left me behind. If this was the Comrades up run, I’d still be huffing and puffing in Westville while the smart people are already tackling Polly Shortts.

I’m still that idiot who unthinkingly assigns gender to inanimate objects. A cursory scan through my past columns will reveal that ships, planes and even planets are referred to as “her” and “she”.

I hope that I don’t land Jada Pinkett in more hot water by remembering a scene from The Matrix Revolutions. While her character, Captain Niobe, is navigating the subterranean hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar, she’s stunned by its sluggishness and exclaims, “Damn, she’s got a fat arse!” In 2022, she’d be crucified for this.

A few weeks ago, I kept referring to every antelope milling around our holiday home in Marloth Park as “she” and “her”.

Finally, the 14-year-old gives me a quizzical look and goes, “Are you literally inspecting all of them in between their legs to check if they’re male or female?” The penny dropped. For whatever warped reason, in my brain, every type of buck is female until proven otherwise. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, when I saw one impala mounting another, I didn’t raise an eyebrow. The brain damage is clearly more severe than I thought.

Conversely, when I see a pack of wild dogs or wolves, my brain immediately goes into “he” and

“she” mode. It reminded me of a little boy (well, we called “it” a boy back in the 1990s) Eddie, a neighbour’s child. He must’ve been about four when we had a debate in which he kept insisting that “dogs are boys and cats are girls”.

The missus’s daily mode of transport is a rather bulky SUV. My peasant wagon is a mid-sized sedan. A couple of months ago, we arrive at a friend’s birthday celebration in Moruleng, North West, with my wife at the wheel of her beast and someone remarks, “Do you often let her drive that car?”

Considering that I’m a moron

Forgive this 50-year-old for being slow to catch on when burly, tattooed phenotypically male people own Kia Picantos and tiny French poodles

who assumes that hyenas are “boys”, I was still floored by the assumption. Not that she’s immune to this herself. The other day while we were on the road, she made a remark about someone’s shoddy driving, “What is she doing?” So, I quietly ask, “How do you know it’s a she?” and we both start chuckling because the car was a Kia Picanto.

As it turns out, the driver was a bearded, burly man who can’t possibly be less than 1.85m tall. Please excuse the 1982 slip there.

The driver was a person with phenotypically male characteristics.

A similar thing happened to a friend while she was picking up her dog from the vet. A tall, big, bald phenotypically male person with demonic tattoos was there to pick up a dog. My friend, a committed feminist, says she couldn’t stop herself from packing out laughing when she realised he was a picking up the tiniest, cutest little French poodle.

When we’re dining out, there’ sa scene that repeats itself very often. The missus is a carnivore and I’m more of a pescatarian. Waitrons are forever placing her order of medium rare sirloin steak in front of me and my seafood stir-fry in front of her. And when she’s in the mood for alcohol, she’s likely to order a double bourbon on the rocks and me, an apple cider. Always mixed up, including the bill that’s invariably plonked in front of me at the end.

I look forward to the day when I attend a wedding and the priest looks at the person in a white dress, points to the person in a tux and asks, “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”