Binkies and Briefcases

A blanket of freshly fallen snow covered the ground outside of our Pennsylvania home and, while it was beautiful, put a bit of a damper on our weekday morning. School was still on time and I was rushing to get the big kids ready for school and get everyone breakfast, and worrying about my husband heading out on those icy roads in an hour or so.

As he bundled himself to go shovel the driveway, Eddie mumbled to no one in particular, “Man, sometimes it sucks to be the guy.”

Later I asked him what he meant.

“Nothing. It’s just a lot of responsibility sometimes. I want to help you with all of your stuff because I don’t want to be a total douche, but, and this is not your fault at all because you are busy taking care of the kids and- am I allowed to say this?- some of the stuff I take care of around here you just aren’t physically strong enough to do. So you have me as a teammate and I just kind of fly solo on some stuff. It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything. I actually like taking care of you guys.”

Everything he said was true. My feelings weren’t hurt, not that he had said anything hurtful. I had just never considered it that way. It must be a difficult balance for the men of our generation. There is definitely a double standard there that I just never noticed until he brought it up. I’ve seen it in practice. We call ourselves feminists. We speak about our ideals of equality and empowerment, yet we constantly expect our men to save us, and if they don’t the word my husband chose is exactly the word we use for them.

One of my blogging friends recently told a story on her Facebook page that illustrates this perfectly:

Admittedly, I had the exact same thought as the woman who left the comment. Then I asked myself: If her husband would have been the one stranded with two flat tires, would she have been expected to come help him change them? All I am saying is that I am starting to think that we have a double standard for our men. I almost didn’t post this because I didn’t want it to come off like I was defending men too much. However, I never would have been afraid to defend women too much, so therein lies my first point: this double standard? It does exist. My second point, which I’ll get to later, is that I’m not entirely sure that it is a bad thing.  

There is not a single task in our house that is considered “woman’s work.” My husband helps with the dishes and the laundry and the diaper changes, as we both believe he should. As children of the 80’s, we lead the way for Generation Y. We are Millennials, whether we want to be lumped in with them or not. If we hear about a man who refuses to change his own child’s diapers, it is off-putting to us. Although our marriage is traditional in the sense that he works outside the home and I am a full-time mom, that decision was made out of the financial reality that he has the ability to make twice as money as an engineer than I did as a teacher. We don’t necessarily have a lot of the traditional gender roles that our parents’ generation tends to follow. I know how to use the power tools in our garage. I can and do use the lawn mower. I’ve built furniture from scratch by myself in addition to birthing babies. I’d call myself pretty well-empowered.

I can’t think of any traditionally “female” task that I can say that my husband has never done. I can’t say that he has never cleaned the toilet or changed a diaper. He’s expected to do those things, and he’s okay with that. And I’m okay with expecting that of him, because he is a full-grown adult who should be able to function like one. But I honestly can’t say that I have ever changed our air filter, hung our Christmas lights, or shoveled our driveway by myself. And Lord knows I have never, ever been the one to dispose of the dead mice or birds that pop up on occasion (we live next to a farm). I am physically capable of doing all of those things, but no one has ever expected me to, so I just haven’t. What’s up with that? I honestly don’t know. 

Men are expected to do things, while women are offered the choice. Do I want to be empowered in this situation, or do I want to be the damsel in distress? I get to choose. As long as he is there to lean on, I usually have the option of “I’d rather not.” He almost never gets that option. Because, while I’m sure he’d also rather not deal with the dead animals, one of us has to, and he genuinely wants to step up and “be the man.”

 If I’m being completely honest, I have to say, sometimes playing the role of the damsel is okay with me. After all, when a snake got into the house, I was the one who locked myself into the bedroom and cried until Eddie took care of it. It might not have been my finest moment. Maybe theoretically I should have been able to handle it myself, but the reality is that I am just pretty darn terrified of snakes– which I didn’t even know until there was one crawling across our living room. I cried. He killed it. To be perfectly honest, I was happy when he did.

When the house alarm went off at 2 am and the police were at the door, I was subconsciously relieved that no one expected me to be the one to answer it. (Don’t worry, there were just some teenagers taking CDs and loose change from unlocked cars in our neighborhood.)

When there is three feet of snow on the ground and one of us is going to have to shovel our 300-foot driveway, no one expects it to be me because he is almost a foot taller than I am with 50 pounds more muscle, and one of us has to stay in to watch the kids anyway. Sure I could do it, but it would take me twice as long as it takes him. Of course I have helped, but it has never been expected of me to help with those kinds of  physically demanding tasks in the same way that it is expected (not only be me, but by society in general) that he helps with chores inside the house.

I realize that the only reason I have the choice is because I have my partner here with me. If anything ever happened to Eddie and I became a single mom, I wouldn’t have the choice any more. There are single parents doing all of the everything every day. I know that. You guys amaze me. I know that circumstances like death, and divorce, and deployment leave people without their helpmates and that it is hard.

I know that if he was not here I would have had to figure out a way to deal with the snake myself, so I would have done it because I would not have had a choice. And that is what I am saying.

When I really reflect on it, I find it odd that I surrender my feminist card so willingly in exchange for rescue from reptiles or if furniture needs to be moved from one place to another. But the brutal truth is that he is physically stronger than I am (in both his biceps and his stomach) and, while he may not enjoy the tasks themselves, he likes being able to care for me in that way– and I like being taken care of. I get that because it is the same way in which I am emotionally stronger and can help walk him through tricky situations with the kids or a friend.

It’s hard to find a balance while we try to reconcile wanting to erase gender roles because society seems to constantly be telling us we are supposed to, with actually enjoying being taken care of and finding satisfaction in taking care of someone.

I sent this post to my friend Allison to get her thoughts and she jokingly replied, “#HaveOvariesWillBeSelectivelyFeminist.” Touche. 

I believe that a woman can be anything she wants to be, whether that is a doctor, a lawyer, a homemaker, a plumber, a mom, an artist, or an accountant. That is what makes me a card-carrying feminist. But I also believe that there is nothing wrong with keeping the femininity in our gender or the chivalry the other.

If that makes my feminism watered down, I’m not sure that I really care.

Yesterday I was trapped in the house, trying to nurture a daughter who was down for the count with a nasty stomach bug. Between getting ice chips and emptying the puke bowl, I was spending a lot of time on the internet. I was following the story of The Interview pretty closely because a) I’m still kind of in love with the entire cast of Freaks and Geeks and b) um…what? Are you telling me a comedy movie might start a war? 

In case you have been living under the same rock as my mother (I just had to explain this to her on the phone), The Interview is a movie. It’s a comedy in which characters played by Seth Rogen and James Franco are recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jun Un, the dictator currently ruling North Korea. It was scheduled to be released on Christmas Day, but hackers gained access to Sony, which meant gaining personal information about their employees, and made terrorist threats via email to theaters that were planning to play the film. Apparently North Korea has called it “an act of war” in real life. Sony decided to pull the film and is not releasing it after all. Many Americans, including several of our own government officials, are not happy with this decision because we have always had a pretty strict policy that we do not negotiate with terrorists.  

I just kept having so many conflicting thoughts about the whole thing. I also have a few bones to pick with the people making these decisions. Such as…

Seriously, Sony? 

1. I don’t understand how this movie got to this point in the first place. I understand that it is comedy and it’s just a joke. I understand that we have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press in America. However, just because we live in a country that grants us the ability to make movies that have plot lines in which sitting world leaders get assassinated, does not mean that we should. That is insanely irresponsible. The freedom to act does not grant you a reprieve from the consequences of your actions. There is a reason that movies usually use fictional characters or depict historical leaders who are no longer in power. This is that reason. Wars have been started over less. 

This CNN article mentions that Dan Sterling, the screenwriter of The Interview, “is quoted as saying that the filmmakers thought invoking Kim [instead of a fictional or off-screen version] would make it ‘so much more exciting, provocative and funny.'”

I have so many questions about this: What exactly did you think you were provoking with your “provocative” film if it wasn’t this? How did you think North Korea would respond? Did you honestly not think about this beforehand? Or did you consider it, decide it was worth the risk, and then just chicken out at the last minute when you realized that actual lives were being threatened? How many people had to give the “go ahead” to get this film to release and really no one stepped up and said, “C’mon, you guys, this is a bad idea?” 

2. What’s done is done. Was it distasteful? Really, do you think? But you knew that, Sony, and you made the movie anyway. It’s too late to pull out now. The damage is done, the message is out there. Everyone has already seen the trailer and North Korea got your memo. Thanks for that, by the way. 

You don’t get to just say, “You know what? Nevermind.” My understanding is that you’re scared that the terrorists got your personal information off the internet, and you also don’t want to be held responsible for any potential attacks on theaters (who could blame you?), so you are hoping if you don’t release your movie they will leave us alone now? Is this based on the fact that terrorists have such a strong history of leaving people alone once those people realize they made a mistake and say they are sorry? Because, as everyone knows, terrorists are very rational like that. 

3. Holy cow, this is a dangerous precedent to set. Look, Sony, no one wants people to die because they went to see your movie (which, honestly, doesn’t even look very good). But Homeland Security has already said that there was no evidence of any planned attacks at the time that you made your decision to pul the movie. For all we knew, these threats could be coming from some 11-year-old kid who happens to be a computer wiz. There is no way that terrorists are going to be able to strike every single theater in America on your opening day.  

So is it worth the risk of even one attack? Quite frankly, maybe. The perceived risk of a threat is very different than an actual imminent attack. We can’t just go around canceling our plans every time someone makes a threat over the internet, especially if we have no evidence to back up the legitimacy of the threat. We’ll all be holed up in our houses for the rest of our lives. You already knowingly put us at risk when you decided to make the movie. It wasn’t like you didn’t know that North Korea was going to see it. Now you are also taking away our option to go see it if we choose to do so? Do you even remember what country this is anymore? 

Not only is it cowardly to pull the movie, it’s insulting to the people who gave their lives defending your right to make it in the first place. 

If any good has come of this, at least I can say that I’m no longer (as) embarrassed that I voted for this guy: 

Because that’s actually not a bad idea. Fair warning, Sony, if you do decide to go with an internet or straight to DVD release, you should probably think twice before you charge people. Something tells me that America isn’t going to take very kindly to the idea that you decided to capitulate to terrorist demands and then decided to charge us money and still make yourselves a decent profit for a movie you refused to give us the option to see in public. If there was such a thing as compounded treason, that’s probably about what it would look like.  

You have an opportunity to use this as an example on a global scale. Everyone is looking at you to gauge America’s reaction in the face of potential danger. At the moment you are painting us to be cowards we have never been before and never intended to be. I have not seen your movie (now in large part because you won’t let me), but I would be willing to bet that there is a strong case for irony here and that at some point your film your heroes had to have courage in the face of danger.  

That’s really all America is asking of you right now. If you are going to be irresponsible enough to make a film like this, then do not spit on our ideals as you run away from that decision with your tail between your legs. 

Thanks. 

Sincerely, 

A Disappointed American Mom