Maybe it was another miracle?

I just started reading Rosalind Miles’ Who Cooked the Last Supper? I thought it must be new, but no, she published it in 1988.

1988.

That was before I had even heard of women’s studies. Before I had heard of The Patriarchy. Before it struck me that the textbook in my art history class – which was taught by a woman – had not included a single female artist and that professional women didn’t wear dresses, much less pants, to work.

Before I thought to question a male boss who arrived at work at 6 a.m. and left at 7 p.m. and came in on weekends yet always had clean clothes, a clean house, and a meal when he got home.

Before I started to wonder why only men seemed to get promotions, even though I had documented results that were as good as or better than my male co-workers.

Before I was laid off from a good job after a corporate edict that every manager had to cut staff by 10% and realized that I was the only childless woman on the team – the rest of the team was married men with stay at home wives.

Before I thought to vote for women.

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Just a few years ago, Nautilus ran entire story – Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too – Many famous scientists have something in common—they didn’t work long hours – about how male scientists and writers found success by focusing on their work and spending the rest of the day in leisure. About how we all need to have a lot of leisure time to process our brain work and make contributions to art and science.

How on earth did they accomplish that, one wonders. How on earth did these men spend a lot of time in leisure?

(The author does include a woman: “Irish novelist Edna O’Brien would work in the morning, ‘stop around one or two and spend the rest of the afternoon attending to mundane things.'” One does wonder what those “mundane things” might have been. Laundry, perhaps? Cooking? Grocery shopping? Making sure the kids got a spot in summer camp?)

(And this: “Microsoft founder Bill Gates to the Beatles put in their 10,000 hours before anyone heard of them.” The author seems to have forgotten that Gates had family connections to IBM.)

After his morning walk and breakfast, Darwin was in his study by 8 and worked a steady hour and a half. At 9:30 he would read the morning mail and write letters. At 10:30, Darwin returned to more serious work, sometimes moving to his aviary, greenhouse, or one of several other buildings where he conducted his experiments.

By noon, he would declare, “I’ve done a good day’s work,” and set out on a long walk on the Sandwalk, a path he had laid out not long after buying Down House. (Part of the Sandwalk ran through land leased to Darwin by the Lubbock family.)

When he returned after an hour or more, Darwin had lunch and answered more letters. At 3 he would retire for a nap; an hour later he would arise, take another walk around the Sandwalk, then return to his study until 5:30, when he would join his wife, Emma, and their family for dinner.

On this schedule he wrote 19 books, including technical volumes on climbing plants, barnacles, and other subjects; the controversial Descent of Man; and The Origin of Species, probably the single most famous book in the history of science, and a book that still affects the way we think about nature and ourselves.

Nautilus

Oh the author, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, is male. But you knew that.

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It took another woman, Katrine Marcal, to point out the obvious in Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?

The reason, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, that your male scientists and artists had so much time to relax and ponder and take walks after a lunch they had not prepared in clothes they had not washed and put away in a house they had not cleaned was because someone else was doing all the damn work.

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Miles’ book came out decades ago.

Back when I still stupid voted.

Back when I didn’t even question the world around me because it was the world around me and that’s just how it was.

(In 1988, when a friend suggested we could wear pants to work, I was horrified. That was simply not done. I didn’t wear pants to work until the early 2000s.)

(I was an idiot.)

I am trying to make up for it now.

Fish don’t see water

At my old job, I needed to talk to a male VP – a middle-aged white guy. Let’s call him Mike.

I had spoken to Mike many times on the phone, but we had never met, as he worked out of another office. He was in our office for a meeting and I caught him at a break. I knew what he looked like, so approached him and started talking to him.

He interrupted me. “Are you Texan?” he asked.

Oh right. I had not introduced myself! Rude!

“Yes,” I answered. “But how did you know?”

“I recognized the sound of your voice,” he replied.

“How bizarre!” I said. “You must be really good at voices, considering there are so many women at this company!”

The only other woman in the room, Cynthia, started laughing so hard that she almost fell out of her chair.

Mike looked puzzled.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

Cynthia was laughing so hard she couldn’t speak.

I just rolled my eyes.

Nobody has it harder than white men. Nobody.

There are many reasons I do not take Uber or other rideshares, not the least because even now, I still have it drummed into my head never to get into a car with a stranger and the news is full of stories about how Uber is failing to address the rape problem it has with its drivers.

(The other reason is that rideshare companies exploit the drivers, taking so much of the revenue that drivers are basically just monetizing their cars. I did the math with a driver once – I had to take one for work because we were not allowed to rent a car if Uber was available – and the only way he made any money was because he could do his own repairs.)

(Also, this driver was a jerk. He’d had a factory job with insurance, but his divorce decree said he had to provide insurance for his children if it was available to him through his job, so he quit the factory job to drive instead – as an independent contractor with no benefits – so he wouldn’t be spending that money on the extra premiums.)

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I made the stupid mistake of reading the comments on a New York Times story about Uber and rape and sure enough, the “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEEEEEENNNNN” guys appeared pretty darn quick.

You know – the ones who – any time women talk about rape and how most rapes are not reported and the ones that are are rarely prosecuted and when they are prosecuted, the defense focuses on the victim’s clothing and sexual history etc etc etc.

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Speaking of a victim’s sexual history:

Mr T’s nephew – the one who has gone full MAGA – was accused of sexual assault a few years ago. We know this only because the nephew asked Mr T to send $5,000 from the nephew’s trust to a lawyer for “pre-trial investigation.”

We never got all the details, but the best we can figure is that the “pre-trial investigation” was really “finding any possible evidence that the victim had had sex before and had communicated with the rapist and maybe met him for a date therefore it is not rape.”

The DA did not prosecute the nephew’s case.

Nephew’s father told Mr T that nephew had been exonerated.

Nephew is dead to both Mr T and me.

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Back to the Uber story about rape and how Uber keeps drivers accused of assault on the road (and about Uber’s mild, pathetic attempts to offer a women-only service that men cried about because again, allowing women to select only women drivers is so unfair to men).

John is very concerned about the men who are falsely accused. That is the biggest issue society faces today. Not the rape of women. But the false accusations of men.

Many “claims” we’re never proven or outright falsely alleged. I know this is a sore subject for women but it’s even sorer subject for men being falsely accused. Now if these claims were proven with corroborating evidence than the drivers should be terminated

John

Uber thinks the solution is more training.

Hopefully this article will be a wake-up call for the ride share industry. If a driver requires seeing a video to understand they shouldn’t sexually assault someone…then why are they hiring them in the first place.

Kath in Houston

I think the solution is enough men yes men because they are the ones making these decisions with the balls to do the right thing.

I know. It won’t happen.

Until then, my friends, do not get into a car with a man you do not know.

Can you do the emotional labor for your partner’s – oh heck let’s say it your husband’s – job?

I thought the days of women who existed solely to support their husband’s careers were over.

Not far from over, but over.

And yet, my friend’s Silicon Valley Google/Facebook/tech bro ex-husband told her that the reason he needed to divorce her was because she was not – and I quote – “CEO wife material.”

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When their kids were little, my friend Layla’s husband was told to spend a week at an off-site meeting. And to bring his wife.

Layla and Malik had just moved to Fargo. They had no family there. They had made no friends. Layla had her own job as a nurse. How on earth was she supposed to drop everything and go out of town for a week with Malik? Who would watch their children? How would she get time off from work?

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I have another friend who to this day always dresses nicely when she leaves the house, even to walk the dogs. I think she might do this no matter her life situation – she is not a slob like me, but one of the reasons she does it is because her husband is a big shot and she doesn’t want to be seen doing anything not appropriate for the wife of big shot.

(Also they are in Dallas, which matters for this story. If they lived in Minneapolis or Milwaukee, my guess is it wouldn’t matter so much – the Midwest is so much more practical about these things.)

(Or even if they were in Fort Worth. But Dallas – whew, Dallas is its own thing for sure.)

She is not expected to produce supper at the last minute when Darrin brings Larry home without warning, but her husband could never have reached his position without her hard work. He acknowledges this and he, too, has worked extremely hard. They deserve everything they have earned. But the truth remains that he could not have put in 60-hour work weeks unless he had had her support.

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All that emotional labor? I guess it’s Women’s Work, according to a Bad Guy on Elsbeth.

“All that schmoozing and glad-handing,” says the judge who is actually a murderer and presided over the trial of the innocent person he framed for the murder. “It’s so undignified. Leave the pleasantries to the wives.”

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But when men actually do have CEO wives, they don’t want to acknowledge it. Remember when Lorna Wendt and her GE Capital Services CEO husband divorced? She said she deserved half of everything because without her, he never would have reached his position.

Her high-school sweetheart husband of decades said she had nothing to do with his achievements.

“Gary Wendt denied his wife contributed to his success, saying in court that she had no interest in business and she wasn’t interested in his problems, leaving him very lonely in the marriage.”

The facts (including, I think I read once, that she would stand next to him at work parties and cue him about the other attendees: “That’s Bob and Betty. Their oldest kid just got into Yale. Remember we had them over for dinner last summer?”) would seem otherwise.

Also, Gary, were you interested in her problems? Were you interested in your children’s problems? Did you know the names of your children’s friends and teachers and doctors? Did you take them to get their vaccinations and physicals? Did you organize their overnights and summer camp? Do you think she might have been busy taking care of every single detail at home so you could focus on work?

In the case, Mrs. Wendt presented herself as someone who had helped put her husband through Harvard Business School, gave up her career as a music teacher to rear two daughters, created an elegant home, gave dinner parties for his clients and co-workers, accompanied him on business trips and provided daily support — all of which contributed to his success.

New York Times

(Don’t you love how the Times says that Lorna “presented herself” as opposed to stating things as fact? It would be pretty easy to verify that someone did indeed work while her husband attended grad school, then quit her job to raise the children rather than hire a full-time nanny, then threw dinner parties and accompanied him on trips. These are all facts. Not speculation.)

The courts were all, “But is it really work for a spouse to take care of everything at home?”

But the case — which also sparked countless office water-cooler arguments and much concern in C-suites — also hinged on two tricky legal questions.

One was whether a stay-at-home wife should be considered an equal partner for the sake of dividing marital assets that had been largely, or completely, acquired as a result of the corporate husband’s job.

Connecticut law requires an “equitable distribution” of marital assets — not an automatic 50-50 split. And “equitable” in the courts often translated into “not nearly as much as 50 percent” for many stay-at-home corporate wives.

CNBC

Lorna did the work that men do not value and do not want to do themselves. She did the emotional labor. (Emphasis mine.)

She later told Fortune, “I complemented him by keeping the home fires burning and by raising a family and by being CEO of the Wendt corporation and by running the household and grounds and social and emotional ties so he could get out and work very hard at what he was good at.”

CNBC

She earned every cent.

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I would have made a lousy CEO wife. I hate dressing up and washing my hair and putting on makeup even for formal occasions, much less for running to the store or the library or anything where exercise clothes and a ponytail will do. I hate being nice to people just because they are “important.” I hate work suppers and making small talk with people I can’t be honest with.

I don’t even know the other rules for being a CEO wife. They are as opaque to me as the rules for being CEO itself. (Although I know one main CEO rule – be in possession of a white penis.)

I am not CEO wife material. I am not CEO material.

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My friend’s ex?

Still not a CEO.

Apparently ditching the inappropriate wife and picking up a younger model and having the oh so essential white penis is not enough.

But thanks to California’s community property laws, he has lost half his wealth in the process with no debate about if his wife had anything to do with his success.

Oh well.

Also, why is it always girls and women who pay the price?

In search of a happy, feel-good show, I started season 5 of Call the Midwife yesterday

Do not do this. Do not watch season 5 if you want warm happiness.

If, however, you need a reminder about how horribly the world has treated women in our lifetimes and how this treatment has put female lives at risk – and even killed them at times, I am sure (CTM is not going to let all of the characters in trouble die, but they are going to get darn close), then watch.

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Leaving aside the thalidomide issue, which has presented itself in several of the episodes (AKA incomplete medical research without consideration of how women would be affected), there’s a girl who is hiding her pregnancy while her mother is pretending to be pregnant. The story will be that the mother had the baby. (The girl’s father is away at sea, so there’s no other grownup who could notice that mom is not really pregnant.)

The mom is doing this to protect her teenage daughter from the shame of an out of wedlock pregnancy.

(“Do you know how many of our neighbors have done the same thing?” the mom asks when the daughter protests.)

(Eric Clapton thought his biological mother was his sister.)

Which means the girl gets no pre-natal care and which means when it’s time for the girl to deliver, there is no medical help. True, mom has had four kids and knows how this goes, but when the placenta takes too long to come out, mom is very worried. She gets the advice to pull on the cord to remove the placenta, but while I am watching her do so, I am screaming at the TV, “DO NOT DO THIS! DO NOT DO THIS!”

I thought she would rip the placenta from the uterus and cause hemorrhaging, but that’s not what happens.

Instead, she pulls her daughter’s uterus out (which is something I didn’t even know could happen but seems almost as bad as hemorrhaging).

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Please notice nobody is going out of their way, at the risk of his health and life, to protect the father of the baby from shame.

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The other episode that struck me (but I am not done with the season yet, so who knows what other horrors await) is the one with the pregnant unwed teacher.

She is pregnant by another teacher – a married man.

But she’s the one who loses her job.

She’s the one whose landlady kicks her out.

She’s the one who sticks a clothes hanger into her uterus and lacerates it, meaning that she collapses in the street, bleeding, and is sent to a hospital where they have to do a hysterectomy, meaning she will now never have children.

She’s the one who faces criminal charges for performing an abortion.

Yes, even if she did it to herself, she could be charged.

The married man/other teacher/father?

His life goes on just fine.

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Their lives go on just fine.

Who’s cleaning up after your party?

Forty years later, I still regret helping with the dishes after my boss had a bunch of us to his house for supper.

Wait. Not “regret.” “Am furious with myself” is a better way to phrase it.

When supper was over, my only female co-worker, Cindy, and I got up to help the boss’s wife clear the table while my male co-workers sat there.

My only defense is that I was in my early 20s and unknowingly steeped in deep, deep patriarchy and that I sensed (I did feel great unease as I got up to help – why were the men still sitting?) I would have somehow been punished if I had not helped. Not consciously punished, but it would have affected how my boss – who once invited us all to attend his church (Assemblies of God, I think? Some denomination even more far-right than the Catholic Church, not that inviting us to a Catholic Church would have been appropriate, either) – saw me.

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I think about that event a lot when I think about expectations. I think about other events.

When Mr T’s parents stayed with us for over a week for our wedding (WHY THE HELL DID I EVER AGREE TO THAT?), I made supper every night. Every. Night. Even though Mr T and I do not have a formal, sit-down supper every night. I did so because I knew that if I did not, his parents would talk trash about me.

(Why did I even care if they talked trash about me? They had already told him not to marry me and had threatened to boycott our wedding.)

Do we ever escape our conditioning?

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I make a conscious effort to not jump into sexist, gendered roles anymore. I am not always successful – I am very likely to help a female friend clean up even if the men aren’t helping just because I don’t want the burden to be on my friend.

But also, most of my friends have partners who are not assholes, so it’s not like it’s even much of an issue for me these days.

I guess I assumed it was not really an issue for other women so much, either, but then I read this.

Dear Carolyn: I usually go to my partner’s sibling’s home for the holidays. I have noticed at the end of the meal, the men sit around and only the women are cleaning. My partner says it’s because when they offer to help, she is too particular or gets annoyed when they do something wrong. But somehow, it always ends up that I am taking people’s plates away and the two of us are in the kitchen cleaning!
I don’t want to leave her in the lurch, but the dynamic really grinds my gears. Since it’s not my household, should I even try to help fix this? If so, how?

Carolyn Hax

You might – or you might not – be surprised to know that there are a lot of women in the comments saying the letter writer should just shut up and help the partner’s sister and leave it at that.

There are a lot of women defending the partner for not helping.

There are a lot of women saying this is not sexism but a sibling issue and the LW should just leave it alone.

But their “leave it alone” does not include supporting the LW in not helping.

The LW is supposed to help clean while the men watch TV and is not supposed to question her role and certainly is not supposed to suggest to her partner that he get off his lazy ass and help.

The LW is supposed to help maintain the patriarchy.

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Here’s a good New Year’s resolution:

If the men aren’t cleaning, we aren’t cleaning.

Amen.

And other reasons why abuse is always her fault

I am assuming men wrote these two comments on a letter to the New York Times advice columnist. The letter is from a woman – Ambivalent – who has been dating a man for a year but she has reservations. They had a big fight, Ambivalent told her mom and her best friend about it, mom and best friend are now concerned on Ambivalent’s behalf.

Commenters think Ambivalent is doing it wrong, which she is, but their advice is also wrong.

Here’s my advice to Ambivalent: Start by asking, “What is my part in this?” Then, role reverse: “How is my boyfriend likely to be interpreting my behavior, the way I acted?” After that, ask “What might be motivating his actions?” If they are harmful to you, you might ask “Is fear, anger, ignorance likely to motivating his actions?” Lastly, ask, “Have I ever acted from these motivations myself? Have I ever acted in a similar way?” If so, ask, “what would have been a helpful response from the person I acted that way towards?”

— Definitely written by a man

In reply to Guy #1, I asked, “So she should ask herself why it’s her fault?”

To which Guy #2 mansplained how to handle potential domestic abuse.

No. By questioning yourself, you see how you acted and therefore you empower yourself to take a different stance instead of being stuck in a bad situation that’s just going round and round. No progress can be made if you don’t see how you played your part.

It’s not about blame, but when you observe your own reactions you can then change them to create a path forward. It’s like finding your way out of a maze instead of wandering endlessly inside of it.

Say if he threatens to beat her and she just cowers so in the end he gets his way, maybe she should stand up and tell him she is leaving the room and when he has calmed down and stopped threatening her they can then proceed to have a more productive conversation. She changed her behavior, not because she was wrong but to create a different outcome to this problem. Empower yourself instead of waiting for others to change.

— Also definitely written by a man

Would any woman anywhere tell a woman who has just been threatened with violence to try to have a “productive” conversation? (Not to mention would you really advise her to tell him she is leaving until he has calmed down?)

No no no no.

The advice is, Do what you need to do to not be assaulted. Say what you need to say.

And then the second he has left the house, call your best friend/brother/whoever lives nearby to come help you pack and get the hell out.

Because a man who tells you he is going to beat you is, I am guessing, going to beat you at some point. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

I am very lucky that I have never been in this situation. As far as I know, neither have any of my friends.

But if a friend called me at midnight and asked me to come get her, I would do it in a second.

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And if a friend told me that she had been dating someone for a year and she wasn’t sure about him and then she told me about a bad fight, I would tell her to break up with him.

I would not, as the advice columnist did, tell her to go to couples therapy.

In fairness, the columnist also suggested regular therapy, which I am a fan of.

But first, break up with the guy. If you’re already this ambivalent, then you have your answer.

(But does he even know how cute baby pigs are?)

You all know that the president of the United States of America, a country whose Constitution includes an amendment about freedom of the press, called a female reporter, who was doing her job, “Piggy.”

“Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” he said as he pointed his finger at her.

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He’s the pig.

He’s the bad kind of pig. The kind of greedy pig who doesn’t think of anyone else. He is not the sweet cute baby pig or Babe or Wilbur. He’s the pig we talk about when we talk about crude idiots.

But – he said what all of us have heard one way or another over the years. He just reduced it to the bones.

How many times have we been told to be quiet? To stop taking up space? To make ourselves small?

How many times have we been told that we are not welcome? That we Ruined The Workplace? (I can’t even bring myself to read the piece – the premise is so stupid.) That it’s our fault that men now have to walk on eggshells?

Years ago, a man complained to me that ever since women had started working at his company, he and the other guys couldn’t cuss the way they used to.

Men have sighed as they say they can’t even put their arm around the shoulders of a female colleague these days.

Trumpers are defending child molesters, saying that it’s not like the girls that Epstein arranged to be raped were little. They were 15, for crying out loud! THAT IS NOT CHILD RAPE according to them.

I’m so tired. I’m so, so tired of this.

We don’t always get what we deserve but we do deserve to enjoy life

Almost 40 years ago, my friend T asked me to tell her when she shouldn’t be wearing a bikini anymore.

A few years after she made that request, I moved away. This was before the internet and cellphones, so we lost track of each other for a while.

Last week, I saw T for the first time in almost 30 years.

She is as beautiful to me as she was on the day I met her.

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I saw another long-time friend last weekend. I hugged her and said, “You are gorgeous! You have not aged!”

She laughed and said that oh yes she has indeed aged.

And I realized that I had internalized the whole “Beauty=youth” narrative.

My friend was beautiful 40 years ago and she’s beautiful now. Age is not incompatible with beauty.

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I used to look critically at older women who let their flabby upper arms show by wearing sleeveless shirts. That was when I had the gift of youth and thought that an imperfect, no longer firm body was a sign of – what? Of not caring enough? Of not exercising enough? Of some kind of moral failure?

Yeah I was dumb but aren’t we all kind of dumb when we’re 20 and everything is still tight and smooth?

Cover those arms! I thought.

Oh Lord I was an idiot.

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I am seeing people get the faces they deserve now. My friends are beautiful beautiful beautiful.

My enemies – people who have done mean things to me and to others – not so much. At a reunion, I saw a man – former boyfriend? former gaslighter? – not sure what the right word is for the man who treated you so badly that you ended up going to therapy. (Which to be fair I did need anyway, so I guess thank you horrible man.)

Gaslighting Guy looks awful. Like he looks so bad that other people who didn’t even know how awful he was to me were asking what the heck. He’s super skinny, which could be because of illness, so that’s not the issue. I am not commenting on his body.

I am commenting on his choices – his hair goes halfway down his back, but it’s long and straggly and unwashed. His pants were a few sizes too big and were cinched around his waist. (He does have steady very good employment so I’m not sure what’s going on with the clothes.)

I do feel a little bit mean talking about him like this but not enough that I won’t mention him, not just because I am petty but also because I want to share the poem my super-talented friend Karen, a retired professor of engineering who has started writing poetry and writing it very very well, wrote about him.

Reunion

How appropriate

You aged like you treated me

Rather terribly

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At the same reunion where I saw Gaslighting Guy, I saw a guy – Good Guy – I had not treated well in college. I have since apologized to him – I was very unfair to him and it weighed on me for decades. (I was nowhere as mean to him as Gaslighting Guy was to me! I promise!)

I was very grateful that when I saw him 15 years ago, he not only talked to me but he accepted my apology.

Good Guy looks great! He has gotten better looking over the years. And he deserves it. He seems to be genuinely kind and is definitely a warm, gracious person.

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Wear the bikini, T. I am never ever ever going to tell you not to wear the bikini. Wear the bikini.