We exist so men can feel better about themselves

Y’all, I hate to be All Men Are Jerks, but that’s kind of where I am these days. Mr T asked what I thought about the Cornell Rapists – their names are Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar just in case you need to look for more information – and I just sighed and said Yeah this shit happens all the time.

So when I read a this wedding story, I was just not in the mood.

Everything the groom says about the bride – about why he loves her – seems to be about how she is all about him. I don’t see anything about her that is not about him.

(Disclaimer! I am sure there is more to their story and it’s just not covered here. Maybe it’s the reporting? I am intentionally not including a link to the story and am not using their names because clearly, these two love each other and I don’t want to be mean, but I am noticing this pattern. It’s a kind of a Bechdel test, isn’t it? Can a man talk about a woman in a way that doesn’t make it about him?)

And what is the groom’s favorite thing about his new bride? “She’s easy to love. She’s just someone you feel like you can open up to and release your soul into and she won’t judge. Rather, she’ll relate and understand and offer warmth. I noticed this from our first date on and it didn’t take long to watch it evolve into love and knowing I wanted her by my side.”

When she talks about the things she loves about him, she notes characteristics that exist independently of her relationship to him. She likes how he is with other people. She likes his goals. She likes his personality.

She was drawn to his interest in human emotions. “I thought it was so sweet that he wanted to share the stories of how people fall in love and what they love about each other,” she said. “It’s a fun, positive, joyful thing he’s contributing to the world.”

When asked, “What’s your favorite thing about your partner,” she said, “He loves connecting with others. He always wants to know about other people and is so curious, talking to anyone. He’s driven and fearless and has the confidence to try anything and not be afraid to fail.”

She likes him.

He likes how he feels when she is there to absorb him. I guess that’s legitimate, but that’s also what you can get from a prostitute.

And although he doesn’t use these words so I don’t want to put them in his mouth, I am going to suggest that he might define someone having a “sense of humor” as that person thinking he is funny as opposed to that person being funny. That is, she has a sense of humor because she laughs at his jokes, not because she can make him laugh.

“It all just felt comfortable, and it made me feel like the best version of myself right off the bat,” he added. “She also laughed a lot at my jokes and when I had opinions on things I remember her deeply acknowledging them, thinking through them and appreciating stances I had on small life subjects.”

(At least when I changed doctors because Previous Doctor would not laugh at my jokes, I had the sense to wonder if maybe I just wasn’t funny.

Well, my dear friend asked me if maybe I just wasn’t funny. Then I wondered about it.)

I’m crabby and this story did not help.

Childcare as infrastructure is actually a thing

Did you know that the United States federal government has subsidized child care before? Not just with covid. But in World War 2?

Wait what?

Why?

Sometimes We’re Ivy, and Sometimes We’re Oak

Is it true that the English government is calling on women to do work abandoned by men?

Yes, it is true.

Is not woman’s place the home?

No, not when men need her services outside the home.

Will she never be told again that her place is the home?

Oh, yes, indeed.

When?

As soon as men want their jobs back again.

From “Are Women People?” by Alice Duer Miller

Because they realized that women could not work in the factories if there was nobody to watch their children.

Oh sure women were finding their own child care solutions: They locked their children in cars or chained them to trailers while they were at work.

These were not new solutions. The women who founded Hull House in Chicago thought they would be teaching art to the immigrant families in the neighborhood, but it turned out that what people really needed was child care so they wouldn’t have to tie their children to the beds to keep them from getting into the fire while the parents were at work.

(You couldn’t let the fire go out because it was too hard to get it started again.)

Anyhow, the feds realized that if they wanted people to staff the munitions factories, they needed to find a way to take care of those people’s children.

So they used the Lanham Act and this funding came to be:

Initially, grants issued by the FWA were intended to cover 50 percent of costs, with the local community picking up the rest of the tab. In practice, however, federal subsidies ended up covering closer to two-thirds of the costs. Local funds largely consisted of fees raised from participating parents. The FWA capped such fees at 50 cents per child per day (equivalent to about $9 today), raising the cap to 75 cents in 1945 (about $13 in today’s dollars)

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

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Can you imagine paying only $13 a day for childcare?

Almost every single one of my friends with grandchildren spends time babysitting the kids. One friend drives 100 miles north to her daughter’s house once a week to babysit. My cousin is setting up her workplace – she owns the business – so her son and daughter in law have a place for the baby they are expecting.

Child care was a major issue in the primary race we just had in my district. Both candidates talked about fixing child care. Even the candidate who makes $224k a year said it is an issue, although I don’t know if he said that just because he thought he should say it or if it truly is an issue for him and his wife. I guess there can be two parts to childcare challenges: how much it costs and then if it’s even available when price is no object.

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One of my maga cousins used to be on his town’s school board. He rolled his eyes when he told me how many parents wanted all-day kindergarten.

“They just want free child care,” he said.

Which – yes? And?

When you live in a small town and both parents have to work jobs that don’t pay very much, you don’t want to spend $300 a week on childcare.

When I suggested to another relative that we treat childcare as legitimate infrastructure, she scoffed and said she didn’t want to pay for day care for other people’s kids.

I pointed out that she pays for highways and the fire department and the police department, even though she doesn’t necessarily use them.

She was unswayed.

But when I told her the all-day kindergarten story, she asked indignantly how parents are supposed to get their children at 11:35 a.m., noting how difficult it had been when her kids were that age.

She is so, so close.

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By the way, when I was a kid, there were day-care centers on base. The military provided day care because they knew it was essential to the mission. They still provide day care – subsidized – because it is essential to the mission.

Women

(With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling.)

I went to ask my government if they would set me free,

They gave a pardoned crook a vote, but hadn’t one for me;

The men about me laughed and frowned and said: “Go home, because

We really can’t be bothered when we’re busy making laws.”

Oh, it’s women this, and women that and women have no sense,

But it’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense,

It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense,

It’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense.

I went into a factory to earn my daily bread:

Men said: “The home is woman’s sphere.” “I have no home,” I said.

But when the men all marched to war, they cried to wife and maid,

“Oh, never mind about the home, but save the export trade.”

For it’s women this and women that, and home’s the place for you,

But it’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do,

There’s outside work to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,

It’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do.

We are not really senseless, and we are not angels, too,

But very human beings, human just as much as you.

It’s hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime

When you’re treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time.

But it’s women this and women that, and woman’s like a hen,

But it’s do the country’s work alone, when war takes off the men,

And it’s women this and women that and everything you please,

But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees

From “Are Women People?” by Alice Duer Miller

If only women would do something noteworthy

I was shocked yesterday when I read something about a public school being renamed for a woman (a woman I had never heard of and now I cannot find the original story).

I wasn’t shocked that the school was being renamed.

I was not shocked when I realized that none of the schools in my town are named after women. Or that none of the schools where I went to high school were named after women.

I was shocked that I had never even noticed.

When I talk about this is the water we swim in, this is what I mean.

This sort of systemic sexism is so pervasive and so ordinary that we – that I, at least – don’t even notice.

I didn’t even notice.

---

I would not be shocked if I ever brought up the issue to anyone else to get the response, “Our elementary schools are named for presidents and there has never been a woman president so what are we supposed to do?”

(If only there were something we could do.)

The junior high schools are named after poets.

Male poets.

There have been female poets. I am sure of it.

(The high schools are named after the city, so that’s not an issue.)

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I was also shocked that I was shocked about the alleged proposal to rename an airport in Tennessee after Dolly Parton. Apparently, this would be the first instance in the United States of an airport being named after a woman.

I had never even noticed that there are no airports named after a woman.

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In San Antonio, where I went to high school, there is now a Sotomayor High School. That’s progress.

And I guess it’s also progress that Robert E. Lee High School has been renamed to Lee High School, although that is not very much progress.

(I did see that the school board had noted that using “Lee” as an acronym would reduce some of the costs of the name change, which, to their credit, was initiated by students in 2018.)

The previous team name was The Rebels, with the associated image below. Now it’s The Volunteers and the image is of a service dog.

Some people – in the alumni facebook group – are still angry that the name was changed. (Some of them are also remembering, apparently fondly, the teacher who used to beat them with a paddle.)(I have a pretty good idea of how these people vote.)

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I need to stop being shocked that I am shocked and start looking at everything. Everything.

Stop asking for permission

My sweet 17-year-old friend Paloma and another girl stopped by my front yard and asked about my flowers. As I went on and on and on about the value of native plants and of pollinators and the dangers of invasive species, the other girl, Paloma’s friend Trinity, lifted her right hand.

I stopped talking, looked at her, and raised my eyebrows.

She said nothing.

I returned to the fascinating topic of native plants and prairie restoration.

Her hand remained lifted.

I finally asked, “Are you – raising your hand?”

She looked at her hand in surprise. “Yes,” she answered. “I have this habit.”

“Go ahead,” I told her.

She pointed to the “No Kings, No ICE” sign in my front window.

“Are you – are you against trump?” she asked.

Paloma burst into laughter.

I laughed.

“My entire mission in life right now is to make sure no Republican, including trump, is ever elected again,” I said.

She exhaled. “Good. We can be friends.”

---

I was delighted to meet such a discerning girl.

And I was even more delighted to learn that she and Paloma have learned a lot of about politics and current events at school.

(I was not taught about current events, even though when I took high school history, I was living in the Panama Canal Zone – the United States was in the process of handing control of the Zone back to the Panamanians and we had bomb threats and strikes all the time. Also when I was taking my high school history class, the archbishop was assassinated in Costa Rica, the Maryknoll nuns were murdered in El Salvador, and Jim Jones murdered his followers in Guyana.

We did not talk about any of that in school. Not in my history class, not in my Spanish class, not anywhere.)

I was not delighted that girls are still asking for permission to speak – that girls are still asking for space.

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Ten years ago, I had a wonderful co-worker, Sage. In her mid-30s, she taught me so much. She didn’t wear makeup. To work! She didn’t even wear makeup to work! Her husband was the stay at home parent, but the school never called him first, even though he was listed as the primary contact. She would seethe when they called her first and I realized she was correct.

And she refused to raise her hand in meetings.

The women’s group from my office – there were only a handful of us – were in a meeting with a (it almost goes unsaid but a male) VP from the home office.

I raised my hand to ask a question.

I didn’t even think about it.

That’s how you ask permission, right? Permission to speak? When you’re in a group? When a man is running things?

But when Sage wanted to say something, she just said it.

After the meeting, I asked her about it.

“I don’t raise my hand,” she said flatly. “We’re not children.”

He had more money. She had more determination.

I knocked on almost 1,800 doors.

I wore holes in my shoes.

She won by 291 votes out of about 10,000.

It was worth it.

The Internalized Misogyny of Some Women

Remember Susan and Chad? The people who are running in a primary against each other?

I have talked to a lot of voters about them.

Some of the people voting for Chad give me their reasons. A few reasons I can understand, even though I don’t agree with them. Reasons like “I want someone from this neighborhood” or “I’m a lawyer and I like that he’s a lawyer.”

Reasons the other volunteers and I have heard that are just batshit insane?

“He has more leadership ability,” from an 80 year old woman.

No. He doesn’t. He has literally done nothing for the community that involves working with a group and convincing people in that group to do whatever. He has done nothing professionally that involves working with a group and convincing people to do something. Although his educational background is impressive, his work background is sparse and appears to have been solo work. His volunteer background, as far as I can tell, is picking up trash for a photo op and summer volunteer things in high school that his parents would have paid for because no 15 year old has the money to fly to the Dominican Republic or wherever.

He does not have more leadership ability.

He has a penis, which many people confuse with leadership ability.

---

He has more community involvement, another woman said.

No. He has picked up trash for a photo op.

Susan was the president of her college alumni board. She is a member of one of her town’s commissions. (I have served on two town commissions and it’s a pain in the neck but it’s important.) She volunteers with her church’s and her professional organization’s leadership groups. She talked to a friend of mine yesterday – a friend who works for a nonprofit helping victims of human trafficking – and it turns out Susan served on a board with the founder of my friend’s nonprofit.

Mr T was canvassing for our current representative, who has had the office for four terms. He met a college student who remembers when Current Rep was her second-grade soccer coach.

That, my friends, is deep community involvement.

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An older woman got annoyed when a volunteer leaned into the “We want more women in office” aspect.

“What rights don’t women have that men have?” she asked.

Oh honey.

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A neighbor said, “He has chutzpah.”

I agreed – until I realized she meant it as a compliment.

Nobody would say a woman has chutzpah as a compliment.

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Another neighbor likes his ambition. To be fair, she would also probably like it if a female candidate were ambitious, but this neighbor is probably not typical in being an equal-opportunity ambition admirer. Women are not usually praised for their ambition.

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He went to Harvard!

Some people just swoon about that part. He went to Harvard!

And? I don’t even know where my legislators went to college and I don’t care. What I care about is what they have accomplished since then.

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An 86 year old woman asked my friend what my friend thought about a woman maybe becoming governor of Wisconsin. My friend loves the idea.

The 86 year old woman snorted and said, “A woman for governor? That’s crazy.”

My friend snapped, “Get with it, Mabel. Women are always smarter than men.”

They don’t even want us to be ourselves in art

I was excited to see Debra Fabian’s gorgeous statue of Betsy Thunder of the Ho-Chunk Nation. Betsy was born near Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in the 1850s and was widely known throughout the region as a skilled and knowledgeable medicine woman, providing care to both Ho-Chunk and white patients.

(I didn’t even know about Betsy Thunder – I was excited when I saw the photo, even before I read about the subject.)

Why was I so excited?

Do you remember this?

I don’t remember it. It was from 1989 and I was not paying attention. But when I saw it a few years ago, I thought WHEW AT LEAST THAT CRAP IS OVER WITH.

I was wrong.

That crap is not over with.

Even today in the Year of Our Lord 2026, statues of real women – as opposed to statues of figures of women representing something else, like the Statue of Liberty, are rare.

There are around 300 statues honoring real women in the U.S. compared to around 5,000 statues honoring real men in the U.S. Only 6% of American monuments feature real women as their subjects.

UW – LaCrosse

And statues of women who are not nude are also rare.

A statue of Mary Wollstonecraft was installed in London a few years ago.

A statue of a nude Mary Wollstonecraft.

The artist, a woman, explained her thinking. (And appalled all of us, I suspect.)

Hambling, for her part, tells the Evening Standard’s Robert Dex that the nude figure is not meant to depict Wollstonecraft, but women of all eras.

“She’s [an] everywoman and clothes would have restricted her,” the artist says. “Statues in historic costume look like they belong to history because of their clothes.”

Regarding the slim, muscular body of the woman depicted in the statue, Hambling says, “As far as I know, she’s more or less the shape we’d all like to be.”

Smithsonian magazine

Right. That’s why statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and every other man in the world are nude and aspirational.

Because the only thing we women can aspire to is the shape the Beauty Industrial Complex things we should have.

We can’t aspire to accomplish amazing things, like define feminism or heal people or help women get the right to vote. We can aspire to thinness.

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But again that was a few years ago and surely things have changed oh wait here’s what Debra Fabian had to say about her piece:

There was pressure on me to make Betsy a sexualized version of herself with cleavage, tight clothing and a smile. I pushed against this and am glad I did.

The struggle is real for white men who inherit

Want to know how to make the sexist racist maga men so sputtering angry that they won’t have time to go to their jobs at ICE or wherever they trample over people’s rights?

Suggest that a white man has power simply because he inherited or married money.

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Bill Archer died. He was a Congressman from Texas who seemed to think that the purpose of government was not for us to pool our money to provide the services that enhance our community (that the private sector cannot or will not provide) but to make rich people richer.

Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who in three decades in the House of Representatives became a savvy veteran of budget fights and one of the most passionate and powerful anti-tax crusaders in Washington

New York Times

He wasn’t rich, he said.

He was frugal.

Mr. Archer told The New York Times in 1995 that he did not consider himself rich. “No, not really, I don’t,” he said. “I think of myself as someone who has been frugal and saved and tried to provide for his own security and someone who bore the responsibility of putting five kids through college.”

Ibid

My friends. My father never made more than $30K a year. My parents gave me about $500 a semester for college – all that they could afford – and I used that money for books. I buy my jeans at Goodwill and we have two cars – one is 26 years old and the other is a new ten years old. Mr T does most of the repairs.

We are frugal.

Archer may have been frugal, but he was also born to money.

Did he mention that? Did he mention that he worked at the family business? And not just worked there, but started out as the president of the company?

His father prospered in the livestock feed business….Mr. Archer was the president of Uncle Johnny Mills, the family feed business in Houston, from 1953 to 1961.

Ibid

I can’t find a lot of information about Uncle Johnny Mills, but I did stumble across this gem about Archer’s father:

“The Right to Achieve,” according to google, was “the keynote speech delivered by William R. Archer (President of Uncle Johnny Mills) at the Houston Community Conference held on November 22, 1948. The conference focused on regional economic growth and the preservation of free enterprise.”

I think we can all safely assume that Bill Archer was a nepo baby born to a man who was convinced – in 1940s, post-war Texas, that “free enterprise,” AKA “Black people, Hispanics, and women have no power” was the key to everything and that his own hard work and determination were why he succeeded.

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When I posted about Archer in my college alumni group, writing that Archer had a connection to our college and BTW, that he had followed the traditional path to wealth and power for men, which is to inherit money or to sleep their way to the top, you would have thought I was stomping kittens to death.

The reliable maga idiots howled with outrage that how dare I speak ill of the dead and that working hard is another path to wealth and power.

Of course their underlying, unspoken assumption is that all of their success as white men in this world is strictly due to their own efforts and if other people aren’t as successful as they are, it’s their own fault.

I got tired of the drama very quickly and deleted my post. I then wrote that I had deleted my post, not because I thought the man in question deserved respect – that he did not deserve it because his policies were harmful and destructive, but because I didn’t want the admins to have to deal with incivil responses.

They piled onto that post. I didn’t read the comments – I ignored them, but a friend in the group told me that the magas were still pissed off and commenting.

Lord Have Mercy. Little snowflakes really don’t like hearing that maybe they are not so fabulous after all.

(Not really – this phrase so often misunderstood)

I am volunteering – knocking on doors, mostly – for a local candidate, Susan. She announced a year ago, when my current state representative, Alice, announced that she would be running for the state senate, leaving a vacancy in the state house of representatives.

Alice has done an amazing job, proposing and getting passed, despite being in the Democratic minority, legislation that directly benefits women. Legislation of the type that men have had decades to propose and pass but did not.

Susan has not held office before, but has been and is currently a community volunteer, accomplishing things that again, benefit women and children. She has helped other local candidates in their races, knocking on doors and doing the tedious, boring, hard things that are necessary to get people elected to city council and school board.

In February, this new guy – Chad – entered the race.

Chad has not been involved in local politics.

He has not served as a community volunteer.

He has not helped other people on their campaigns.

He just decided that he needed to run for office. I’m not sure what problems are making him angry enough that he feels compelled to solve them. Alice ran initially because she was furious about the human trafficking she would see when she was photographing wedding receptions at hotels. Susan owns a small business and is a mom and is frustrated at the lack of government support for working parents.

Chad, in an interview when he was in high school or college – a few years ago – said that he wanted a career in politics.

Alice and Susan already have careers. Politics was never their goal.

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There was a forum for Susan and Chad.

Chad said people should vote for him because lawyers are under-represented in state government.

I’m gonna let you sit with that for a moment.

Lawyers. Are. Underrepresented.

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE IS UNDERREPRESENTED, CHAD?

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE?

FFS.

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I hate knocking on doors and I especially hate having to do so in the summer when I have so many other things I want to do, but I will not let Chad win.

MEN tell me things

It seems that every time I am out working in the garden in my front yard, someone wants to talk to me. It’s nice that my neighbors know me and want to chat, but a few of them are real Talkers if you know what I mean (I mean older men who live alone) and sometimes, I would like to pull weeds or whatever after we have greeted each other. That is, I am not necessarily interested in a 15-minute conversation.

It also seems that when I am canvassing for my candidates, I find the lonely men who are desperate for a listening ear. That is a tricky situation, as I need to keep the focus on my candidate without alienating the voter. How do I steer a conversation

• FROM the Packers or quitting smoking and drinking or a misspent youth that all changed when his son was born
• TO my candidate?

I have not figured out how to do so easily or quickly, so I end up listening to long stories and thinking about how I need to pee and how I still have 20 doors to knock before I finish and go home.

On the one hand, I do feel bad for these lonely men. They are stuck in this system, too, where they do not feel like they can talk about intimate issues – having to move because of health issues, trying to stop drinking to be a better father – with their male friends.

On the other hand, I am not a therapist. I am not even a close friend. In many of these cases, I would say that I am a cordial stranger.

And on the other other hand, these are rarely conversations.

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(Sometimes they are conversations. The college freshman who lives up the street stopped yesterday when I was out and he was delightful. We talked about books and native plants and it was an exchange where both of us talked and both of us listened.)

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Usually, they are monologues.

Usually, they are sustained monologues.

They are monologues coming from places of pain and fear and isolation and loneliness, but – they are monologues.

And there is only so much I can hear.

So last night,

• after an afternoon of neighbors talking to me while I worked in the yard (or rather, while I stopped what I was doing because I could not listen and pull weeds at the same time because I have to look things up to make sure they are weeds),

• after listening to voters go way off topic – I am delighted to talk about politics while I am doing political stuff – while I was canvassing,

• I was done. I had listened all I could listen in one day.

So when I was in line for an author event at the library, when the older man in line behind me started talking to – I don’t know who – when he just started asking questions to the air, I shut my ears.

I was on my phone, reading the paper.

I was not making eye contact with anyone.

I was not seeking conversation.

And yet.

I heard the man speak. “Why is this taking so long?”

I ignored him. I knew he wasn’t talking to me, because I wasn’t even looking at him and we had not acknowledged each other’s presence in any way. All he could see was the back of my head.

He asked again.

I finally said, without looking up from my phone, without turning around to look at him, “I don’t know.”

(I actually did know – they check attendee names against the reservation list and ask for your zip code and even though there are two people doing the work, it still takes some time, but I didn’t feel like I needed to explain anything to a stranger.)

The woman in front of me said something, too, and he answered her immediately.

“I used to come here every Saturday morning when I was a kid,” he said.

She said something back which I didn’t catch because I was reading the news.

He said something to her.

I looked up and asked, “Are you two together? I don’t want to be blocking your conversation, so I am happy to move back.”

“No!” he said. “Why would you think that?”

“OK,” I said, and returned to my phone.

He started talking again.

She answered his questions, even though I got the sense that she, also, was not that interested. But she was maybe 15 years older than I am, so perhaps a little more steeped in deferring to men? I don’t know.

They continued to talk.

I could tell he was lonely. I thought, “He’s doing the things you’re supposed to do when you are lonely – to try to engage with people.”

But – and this is just occurring to me right now – he wasn’t quite getting it right.

He was talking about himself and expecting someone to listen.

What he could have said was something like, “Wow I wonder why this is taking so long? But it will be worth it. I love (major author). What’s your favorite book of hers?”

But even then – don’t you wait until you have made eye contact with someone to start a conversation? Aren’t there rules for starting conversations in line? Who just talks to the back of the head of the person in front of him?

I am conflicted because I still feel guilty for ignoring him, but then I am annoyed that all I wanted to do was read the story about how they are burying the Minab report and I should have been allowed to exist in quiet peace in line.

What do you think? Should I have engaged with him? What are the rules on this?