The pandemic has demonstrated how little has actually changed for women. 

We spent the past year getting used to being at home. Many lost their jobs, or quit to take care of the kids. Many more soldiered on, playing Mom, Wife and Worker on a single, ramshackle set. Meanwhile, Joe Biden executive-ordered us out of legal existence.

Adding insult to injury, #NotAllMen refuses to go away.

The response #TooManyWomen was pretty satisfying, but it exposed some confusion in the feminist conversation.

How Many Men?

“No one is saying that it’s all men,“ wrote one commenter, “so we don’t need to say ‘not all men.’“

The film begins with a man in a kitchen. It’s the scene of a revolution, he says, where men and women are renegotiating the human power balance.

When you don’t get much time to sit and read, a good documentary can be the greatest thing.

I found one that really pulls it all together. And it’s over 25 years old!

Dr. Gwynne Dyer is another new name to me. He’s getting up there these days but still maintains an active publishing and speaking career. He even has a Twitter.

He’s a journalist and historian who’s taken his education and experience and synthesized a unique perspective. He uses it to spell out the origins of Patriarchy.

Cold snaps hit the South extra hard, because we are not expecting them. Our bodies react like a corrected teenager.

Our bedroom is behind the kitchen, across from the back door. So when my husband started to come in, then decided to let the dog in from the yard, he opened a wind tunnel directly onto our bed.

Instead of indulging the flash of anger I felt, or squelching it and adding it to the pile, I chose a middle ground of saying something I thought was non-confrontational.

I got zero response.

I tried again, but I could see the steel door behind his eyes had closed.

Hubs was up through the wee hours writing a paper. He finally went to bed a while before noon, saying as he passed, “Read it if you want to. And if you want to change the ending, by all means. I was rushed.”

I understood him to mean that he wanted me to look at it, perhaps edit it, despite his phrasing making it sound voluntary. I do this so much it’s usually automatic. This mode of speech is common and I figure it’s a politeness thing. Nobody wants to look like they’re demanding things of people.

I do it myself. I might say to the 12-year-old, “Why don’t you go ahead and pick up your room?”