I was never that way.
I used to be a gentleman, I was.
I respected women. I was gentle, polite, I held the door for the old neighbour and I made sure consent was always explicit. If I ever grew fed up, annoyed, angry, I kept it hidden.
How could I resent how women behaved, when they claimed to have won it? Somehow, it seemed to allow promiscuity, putting down men and favoring behaviours that hurt society as a whole.
If I ever had such thoughts, I buried them deep, deep inside the heart I still had. Then.
My own wife agreed with some of those things I might or might not have thought… She was sometimes upset at my lack of reaction. Stop tip toeing. Stop internalizing. Just be a man. Yet I wouldn't. I couldn't treat her that way, even when she deserved it. So it remained a concept, I won't say a fantasy, until something terrible happened to her and I got to take out this darkness on someone barely human.
It was easy.
A Commander, I was named, when Gilead was created. What was a Commander to do if not command? By then I had come to terms with the fact that, really, some humans were barely so. I had my wife's support, until I didn't anymore, but a woman -even clever - 's approval didn't mean much and I only remembered times I craved it with embarrassment. I was there to lead. I would protect her, even if it meant hurting her in the process. I did.
I was a Commander. I protected a whole society. Law on my side, and even when it wasn't, it didn't matter if I unwinded on some lower ranking individual. It was worth the risk, experiencing that rush, that heady powerful feeling. Gilead needed men who would dare. I didn't even remember why I found it challenging in the beginning. Why I almost faltered the first time I raised a hand against my wife. Why I almost faltered the first time a handmaid wasn't fully convinced of her duty. I couldn't shirk my duties just because some found it difficult to do theirs. It was easy. There was pleasure to doing the right thing.
Maybe I always was that way.