His and Hers

I believe in gender inequality - to a certain degree at least. Now while such a statement is liable to get me stoned by staunch feminists I fear I must stand by it. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that women should be either suppressed or oppressed or any of that stuff. Each and every person should be treated fairly despite their sex. Equal pay and all that for sure. The vote, of course.  I just believe that men and women are different and that there's no point trying to prove them both mentally and physically equal. I'm walking on very thin ice here, so let me elaborate. When I say that men and women aren't equal I don't mean that one sex is better than the other; I mean that each sex is different and that we should celebrate those differences than try to meld one into the other and create some super non-being. In short, when women state that "we can do whatever a man can I do" I will quietly disagree. Because we can't. We're not physically or emotionally built for it. And neither can a man do anything a woman can for the exact same reasons. We each have a role to play and we can play it whilst giving the other sex the respect they deserve and without the need to prove that one is stronger than the other.

I can survive without a man around. I can drive my kid to school, pay the bills, handle the basic DIY jobs around the house, and whatever else is required all the while maintaining a full time job. But this is out of necessity. When my car breaks down; I hate having to source mechanics, run to the garage in-between tackling all the other chores, and then end up having the mechanic treat me like an imbecile. I'm sure that over the years I have agreed to replace parts that don't need replacing and allowed them to fix things that weren't broken. Hell, I went in to get the car serviced a couple of months ago and ended up with a bill for 25k because they insisted on replacing half the thums and bobs that go into the doo-hickey. So would I rather have a man around to take over things like that things I'm totally inept at? hells yes. That's just an example, and also, that's just me. But what I was trying to explain there is that while you'll have to battle me to the death to wrestle a screwdriver away from me, there are things that I'm hopeless at, that I know a man would better at, and I'm willing to admit it.

As always, I have gracelessly deviated from the subject matter. So let me meander some more. For me, it all comes down to dividing tasks depending on who would be better at it. If you were to go for a role reversal, women can certainly hunt while the men gathered. but who would be better at it? The men would soon get bored, eat whatever they had managed to gather so far and then skip off to the nearest watering hole for some fermented coconut water. Meanwhile the women would have laboured more but hunted less and come home tired and hungry to find Bantha snoring in front of a fast dying fire, no dinner, and the kids wrapped up in banana leaves.

Play to your strengths. You can be female and still have the balls to tackle anything but you don't have to go so far as to develop a need to scratch them in public. .