The Myth of Maternal Gatekeeping: No, it's Not Your Fault Your Husband's Not Involved

The Internet is littered with articles that instruct heterosexual married women on strategies for getting men to do more household labor. Research shows that even in dual earner families, women do significantly more household and childrearing labor, get less sleep, and enjoy less leisure time than their male partners. Rather than targeting men with messages about the need to be less lazy, stop abusing their partners, and participate equally in the lives of the children they helped to make, advice-givers have decided that women created this problem. Some even claim that women are actively preventing men from participating in domestic work by engaging in maternal gatekeeping. 

The line goes like this: 

Women have unreasonable standards for household cleanliness and caring for children. So when men try to "help" (it's always framed as help when a man does it, not a basic obligation of being a functional adult), women correct them. The men lose interest and stop helping

It's the woman's fault, you see. 

This concept treats household labor as something people do for funsies, as if there are no actual standards, and women are being mean by expecting their male partners to conform to a basic standard of care. 

There is a right way to parent and a right way to clean. 

If you leave crumbs on the counter, bugs appear. 

If you leave stains on the floor, it gets stained. 

If you don't vacuum the house, there's dust and pet hair everywhere. 

If you don't clean the toilet, it eventually becomes covered in feces. 

If you don't send children to school with healthy lunches, they can't have healthy bodies. 

If you don't put the right formula in a baby's bottle, the baby can get sick. 

If you don't put a newborn down to sleep in a safe position, they can die. 

If you don't make a child wear a helmet, or buckle them correctly into the carseat, or keep allergens out of their food, or monitor while they eat, or cut up grapes for young babies, or a million other things, the child might not survive dad's parenting. 

Women who correct their partner's parenting aren't gatekeeping; they're protecting their families and their children from men who have not bothered to learn to do things right--or who, more likely, are deliberately doing things wrong so that their wives will stop asking for help. 

There's actual research documenting the fact that men who are worse parents are more likely to be subject to "gatekeeping." A 2018 study found that men whose wives engaged in gatekeeping were worse parents when researchers assessed parenting quality at 9 months. This isn't because gatekeeping made them worse parents, either. The researchers found no association between not being a gatekeeper and parenting quality. In other words, men didn't get any better at parenting when their wives avoided correcting them. But men were more likely to have gatekeeper wives when they sucked at parenting. 

Other studies have also found that maternal gatekeeping correlates with less competent fathers. These studies similarly fail to provide any evidence that maternal gatekeeping causes the bad behavior. And it just doesn't make sense to conclude there is a causal connection. A man who is a competent parent has no reason to become less competent when his wife comments on his parenting. And if he does, if he decides to quit trying, perhaps he's not really a good father. Women routinely continue competently parenting their kids even when their parents don't praise them or support them, and even when their partners actively undermine them. 

Why is it that we think men need praise and support to be good parents, while women should be able to pull it off no matter what? 

Perhaps instead of maternal gatekeeping, we should talk about manbabies who are so incompetent that their wives have to stand over them to tell them how to correctly parent. Of course, that doesn't make for very good soundbytes or cute listicles. 

The myth of maternal gatekeeping is just one more way we blame women for men's bad behavior. Don't buy it. Fathers who live in the same house as the mother who want to care for their children can. There are plenty of opportunities to get up in the middle of the night, pick up the toys, review the homework, make the school lunch, read stories, and do everything else that mothers do. Men do not have to be reminded or prompted. After all, women do all of this and more without such reminders. They don't need gratitude or credit; women certainly don't get those things when they care for children. To make male participation in household labor dependent on these prerequisites is to demand even more labor from mothers. 

Don't buy it. 

He can do the work. 

He just chooses not to. 

New Blog Address

 Welcome! This blog has served me well for 4 years, but it's time to integrate it with my website. You can find all future content at https://www.zawn.net/blog

Household Chore Inequity is Abuse: A Manifesto

The notion that men can't, or shouldn't, or won't do their fair share of household labor is everywhere. 

I see it from women talking about how they spent Mother's Day watching the kids while dad went golfing. 

It's on websites that offer advice to women about how to get their husbands to "pitch in." Because, of course, it's not the bare minimum for a man to prevent his house from caving in and his children from showing up to school naked. It's "helping." And getting men to do it is women's responsibility. Popular magazines never draft articles entitled, "How to Stop Being a Lazy Asshole Who Buys His Free Time With His Partner's Exhaustion." 

I see it on advice columns, where women are presented with the impossible paradox: ask him to pull his own weight, clean the damn kitchen, and raise the kids he helped make and be considered a nag. Or they can choose not to speak up, and be told that they should have asked. Men, you see, are incapable of comprehending that houses need cleaning and children need food and education without being told so by a woman. 

I see it in endless message board posts from mothers of infants. They're so exhausted they can't function, but their precious husbands can't possibly be troubled to get up with the baby so mom can sleep. I see it on postpartum support boards, where women whose vaginas or stomachs have just been ripped open are still making meals for overgrown man-babies and trying to keep the house clean while their darling husbands whine about their own exhaustion. 

I see it every time I get involved in any sort of social justice activism involving children. There are women everywhere, advocating for their kids' IEPs, demanding accountability from school boards, strategizing about how to construct more equitable public schools. The men are nowhere to be found. 

I've seen it in multiple books about household labor inequity written by feminist writers. The writers detail the shocking ways their husbands buy free time with female exhaustion. They tell tales of men who went camping following the birth of a new baby, who insist on 12 hours of free time every Saturday, even though both parents work and mom is left home with the kids. They correctly identify this behavior as problematic. But then they just keep accepting it. Those silly men. You know how they are. They can't really be expected to change. 

And most discouraging of all, I see it from women who say that they just can't demand that their husband do his fair share of labor because they would end up divorced. 

Maybe they should be divorced. 

We already have a word for someone who derives pleasure from someone else's suffering, exhaustion, and illness: abuser. 

Household chore inequity is a form of domestic abuse. It forces women to work themselves into exhaustion and illness. Married women live shorter, less healthy and happy lives. Married men live longer. It's not funny. There's no cheerful battle of the sexes spin to be put on men who are slowly killing their partners with their own laziness, year after year. 

It is not natural or normal for women to do all or most of the household labor and childrearing, especially in a society where both parents now work outside of the home. Even if you're a stay-at-home mom, though, doing all of the household labor means you're working 168 hours to his 40. 

There is no vacuuming gene. 

There is no hormone that causes women to know that children need advocacy at school, clean clothes at home, and food every day. 

This is basic human knowledge. Men know that children need care, that houses cave in if you don't keep them up, and that leaving food on the counter causes bugs and rodents to appear. They know you have to eat to live. They are neither innately incompetent nor incapable of learning. Yet that's what those who would have us believe this is natural want us to think. 

Every time I write about this topic, it goes viral. Women reach out with tales of incompetent and lazy men. Then there's backlash from incels who believe that, why yes actually, men are inferior to women and just cannot be reasonably expected to do the same amount of work. And then nothing happens. Because deep down, we all already know that it's unfair that women have to work outside of the home, then come home to endlessly work there, too. On some level, most of us understand that this is bad for families and society. We know women suffer when they can't get any time to themselves. We know treating male leisure as more important than female health is sexist. 

We also, as a culture, believe that men should never have to give anything up for women. Our entire society has embraced male entitlement as an ultimate value. Sure, she might be recovering from birth. Yes, having to get up 6 times a night and then cook and clean all day might mean she gets postpartum depression. But we can't ask him to give up his golf game! Heaven forfend. 

A person whose sole contribution to the family is a paycheck is replaceable. This should not be even close to enough to earn endless labor from exhausted women. 

It's not a weird quirk of marriage. It's not inevitable, or funny, or just the way men are, or any of the other things we say as we laugh it off. 

Does he get leisure time when she doesn't? 

Does she spend her "free" time cleaning and doing things for the family while he spends it golfing? 

Is his time more valuable than hers? 

Then it's an abusive relationship. And just as nothing can justify hitting a woman or calling her derogatory names, nothing can justify taking away endless hours of her life because a man is just too lazy to do his fair share. 

Like other forms of abuse, it will not get better on its own. It's not an accident. 

Read that again: It's not an accident. 

Time is the most valuable resource we have. Once it is gone, we can never get it back. If your partner leverages your fatigue into personal free time, they are stealing precious weeks and months. They are stealing your life. 

Leave. 

Hello! You've Reached the Not All Men Hotline!

 

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

Welcome to the Not All Men Hotline! We care about you and your #notallmen emergency, and are here to help. No one is available to take your call at this time, because we have been inundated with #notallmen emergencies. Please enjoy one of our helpful pre-recorded messages. 

You've been directed to this hotline because you have derailed a post about women's pain with a reminder that some men aren't sexist. We understand that anything that paints men as less than heroic and perfect can feel like an emergency and a threat in a patriarchal society. We sympathize with your concerns, and so we're here to address them and explain why your #notallmen proclamations are harmful, derailing, and make you look like a misogynist. 

Emotional Labor: The Cognitive Load of Grief

Ember, my daughter, is in an urn on my desk. 

I spent the hours following her death pleading for appropriate medical care in an emergency department, as I nearly bled to death from a postpartum hemorrhage. 

Many people in my life will not say her name, or even acknowledge that she existed. She died when I was 6 months pregnant. I used to think that the ambiguous nature of this loss--the death of a child whom no one got to meet or hold--explained this. I now know that this likely would have been the reaction no matter how old she had been. 

Our culture is not comfortable with grief. Instead, we expect grieving people to bear the full burden of their grief alone, without reminding anyone else that grief exists, colors everything, and is the fate that eventually awaits us all. This collective ignoring builds an unbearable mental load for those of us trapped under an avalanche of grief. 

On Futility, Loving Someone With Dementia, and Why Not Everything Has to Have Meaning

My mom, second from right. Research on dementia suggests it was already attacking her brain when this photo was taken, decades before her symptoms appeared. 

One of the last videos I have of my mother speaking features her lamenting the lies of online dating. She's 62 in the video, but still looks like a runway model: tall, with high cheekbones and perfect blonde ringlets. She's a retired marriage and family therapist, a musician, and smarter than everyone she meets. Unlike most women of her generation, she does not attempt to hide that fact.

"I don't know if they think they're going to grow before they arrive to our date," she sighs. "Maybe they just think they're going to grow on me? Like I'm supposed to get excited about a male tumor?" She points to our waiter, draws him over to us, and proceeds to interrogate him about why heterosexual men are so disappointing. "I'm not drunk," she reassures him. "This is natural. Disappointment with men is my natural state."

Four years later, at 66, she could no longer speak.

I watch this video on repeat, searching for signs of what was to come. There's now evidence that dementia lurks in our bodies, waiting in our cells, for 20 years or longer before it stages its attack. 

I see no signs, aside from her obvious humanity. That's warning enough. Time eventually robs all of us humans of everything we have. Sometimes it's in one catastrophic incident. More frequently it's in the slow erosion of aging, lost loved ones, and illness. We cannot predict when or how we'll lose our lives, our health, or our memories. It's terrifying. We have constructed elaborate rituals and cultural lies to avoid this reality.

Dementia forces us to face the futility of existence, and the fact that it will eventually end--probably in suffering and tragedy. There are no fairytales or lessons or triumphs of the human spirit in the cold story of dementia. There is beauty at looking at things the way they are. There's meaning there, even if we can't wrap things up into neat little packages.

Free Online Classes, Storytime, Museum Tours, Field Trips, and More to Support Parents and Kids During Coronavirus Quarantine

Free photo 82954199 © creativecommonsstockphotos - Dreamstime.com
[image description: a row of shelves with books, behind several bright light bulbs]

COVID-19 has introduced parents across the globe--already experienced chaos survivors--to a whole new level of disorder. We're all supposed to become teachers, while somehow maintaining our sanity, working from home, and preventing the house from caving in. There's never been a more compelling case for paying more to teachers (and school bus drivers, and cafeteria workers, and daycare providers, and nannies, and everyone else who serves our children and our families).

No one can do it alone. Sometimes you have to outsource the teaching to someone else--if only so you can get a quick break to go scream into a paper bag. Here's a list of the best resources I've found. Almost all are free. A few are low cost. None require any special equipment. If you've found something that keeps your kids under control for a few minutes, please add it to the list. 

Stop Praising People for Weight Loss

It's a predictable refrain every time I go to a public gathering with my mom: "Wow, your mom looks so amazing and healthy! She's so thin!"

My mom has dementia.

She is thin because her brain is slowly killing her body.

She is wasting away.

She is not healthy, but in a society that conflates thin with health and health with virtue, a woman who is dying can expect compliments on the very thing that is killing her.

Please stop complimenting people on weight loss. Please stop assuming everyone you see wants to lose weight.

Stop Whining, Ladies. Motherhood is Easy

Breastfeeding is one of the many easy things about motherhood.

A few times a day, I take a break from my relaxing, perfect, new-mother life to peruse the Internet. I inevitably find a bunch of whiners. Women posting to message boards wondering why their husbands won't do their fair share. Moms complaining about the challenges of breastfeeding, the agony of postpartum recovery, the fact that no one takes their pelvic floor issues seriously, the boss who won't pay them for maternity leave, the other boss who fired them for getting pregnant, and the family members who keep showing up, demanding to be entertained, and criticizing their parenting.

Please Don't Call My Daughter Pretty.

My baby is pretty.

It's not something she earned. It's not a skill. It's an accident of genetics that may or may not stick around. 

Yet everywhere I go, people stop to tell me how pretty she is. I am always gracious, but I've had enough. I want people to stop calling my daughter pretty. 

I can already hear the whining and gnashing of teeth. "What kind of monster doesn't want her daughter to hear she's pretty? Doesn't she want her kid to have good self-esteem?"

Not if that self-esteem is built on something she didn't earn and didn't work for. Not if it's built on something there is no reason to value. As a recovering pretty person myself, I know that pretty often ends up being a prison. I don't want to lock my daughter in the cage of pretty before she has the chance to explore the other, more valuable, things she can be. 

These Are All the Racist Things You Must Believe to Think Racism is No Longer a Serious Problem

When they think no one's watching, white people like to indulge in what I've begun calling white bonding. White bonding is when white people remove their veneer of civility, quit pretending to be "colorblind" and anti-racist, and say what they really think.

It's when your racist uncle makes fun of your cousin for dating a black guy, or your racist boss implies that a client's blackness reveals something about them. It's the moment when your co-worker tells a racist joke, or your great-aunt starts referring to people of color as "they" and "them." Every white person has seen this. Which means that, deep down, every white person knows that racism is still very real.

Maybe that's why white people get so defensive about racism. We see it all the time. We know it happens. Some of us are complicit in it. Yet white people continue to deny that racism is a real problem. We accuse our black friends of "playing the race card." We act as if differences of opinion about the full humanity of people of color are trivial.

5 Excuses White Parents Give for Cultural Appropriation in Halloween Costumes--And Why They're Wrong

It happens every year. Parents' online groups erupt in controversy over Halloween costumes. On one side are people of color and their allies, pleading with white parents to please not dress their kids in black face, please not turn someone else's race or culture into a farce, and please listen to those of us trying to teach our kids to respect other cultures. On the other side are parents who insist that telling their kid not to dress like Moana, an Indian, or a black person will ruin their childhood.

Halloween is supposed to be fun. I understand why white parents want to avoid thinking about thorny cultural issues. In a sexist society, most mothers already shoulder a massive burden of parenting labor. So the burden of assessing whether a costume is appropriate can feel like one more unreasonable demand. If you've already selected the costume, hearing that it's offensive and wrong can be a demoralizing addition to an already crushing to-do list.

Parenting is hard. It demands that we reach beyond the easy choice to make decisions that help our kids become excellent people. It's easy to let a child wear a culturally appropriative costume--just as it's easy to feed them a diet of candy, park them in front of the television all day, and give in every time they throw a tantrum.

But it's not right.

We need to dispense, once and for all, with these weak excuses for letting our kids dress in ways that hurt others.

5 Reasons Princess Culture is Toxic to Girls

It began before I had even evicted her from my body. Loved ones sent us shirts emblazoned with the term "princess." Family members referred to her as such. Books featuring Snow White and Cinderella and scepters began trickling in. By the time our daughter was born, the trickle turned into something akin to a volcanic eruption.

Now that our daughter is a year old, I joke that I spend half of my parenting time beating back princess culture.

Like most parents who opt to avoid the cult of princesses, we've found the people in our lives remarkably resistant. They think it's harmless, or cute, or that we are depriving her of something "natural." After all, as everyone knows, in tribal societies across the globe and across time, princess gowns magically appear on a girl's first birthday.

Except they don't.

Participation in princess culture is a choice. Parents have the right to determine what comes into their home, and we have elected not to allow the cult of Disney princesses to become a part of our lives. We might eventually find this impossible. Parenting is, after all, a long journey of humility during which one is repeatedly reminded how very very very wrong they are. For now, though, we are electing to protect our daughter from something toxic.

Why?

10 Questions Liberals Need to Answer About Gun Control if They're Really Serious About Saving Lives

We've returned yet again to the post-mass shooting ritual. People grieved for about three seconds. Then they patted themselves on the back for their righteous beliefs, shared memes about those beliefs, fought with people on social media about gun control, mocked their friends and family, and did absolutely nothing to stem the tide of violence in this nation. Conservatives insisted that the problem isn't guns; it's violence, culture, or something else. Liberals demanded to know what it will take before conservatives will accept some minimal gun control.

They're right to ask. Make no mistake: the NRA and its ilk are selling human lives for profit. Republican lawmakers are letting people die so they can get more donations. It's despicable, and our side is right to condemn extremists for the monsters they are.

The NRA has spent more than $300,000 on my senator, and more than $1.5 million to prevent his opponents from being elected. More than 400 people have been killed in mass shootings since Sandy Hook. These 400 lives are worth less to Senator David Perdue (contact him here) than money.

Sociopaths like David Perdue who do no more than offer "thoughts and prayers" sicken me. But here's where I diverge from most of my liberal friends: I am equally disgusted by liberals who reflexively call for gun control, but who are unprepared to answer conservatives' tough questions. 

I hate guns. Guns have killed people I love. I've written about the correlation between gun ownership rates and murders of women, the link between high gun ownership and police officer deaths, about research-supported policies to reduce gun violence, and the correlation between gun ownership and mass shootings.

The problem is that what we are doing isn't working. Memes about how stupid and evil Republicans are make us feel good. They don't change minds. They may turn moderates into zealots. They make everyone more entrenched. 

If we really want to see things change in this country, if we really want to end gun violence, then we have to address the other side's concerns about gun control. Sure, a small fraction of gun collectors are unreachable. They'll oppose gun control no matter what. A much larger percentage are reasonable. They have valid concerns about how to draft gun legislation in a way that's not racist, needlessly restrictive, or intrusive. 

You don't have to like guns. You don't have to agree with the other side, or relish the fact that they make some good points. But if you are serious about preventing gun violence, you do have to engage. Otherwise "we need gun control now" is no better than "thoughts and prayers." It's empty. Its only purpose is to make liberals feel good about themselves. 

Liberal friends, we have two choices: we can retire to our liberal enclaves, smug and satisfied that we are right, and unwilling to meaningfully engage with the other side. If we do that, we get to feel superior. We also get to watch people continue to die. Or we can consider the very legitimate questions that Second Amendment defenders raise, find solutions together, and solve this problem once and for all. 

If you're not willing to consider the other side, then you're willing to sacrifice human lives at the altar of your own smug sense of superiority. That makes you no better than the NRA you condemn. Before you make your next Twitter or Facebook post calling for gun control, consider addressing one of these issues instead: 

Welcome to Parenthood: Advice for New Parents That Might Actually Help

People love giving parenting advice. Those of us who are parents know how profoundly difficult nurturing, raising, and caring for a human being is. We want to help, even when our advice is condescending or misses the mark. Non-parents want to help, too, but tend to greatly underestimate how difficult parenting is.

The result is an onslaught of useless parenting advice that, at best, wastes our time. At worst, this parenting advice makes us feel shamed, incompetent, and alone.

We've now made it through a year of parenthood. Most of what I've learned has been through trial and error. Much of it is highly specific. What works for us won't work for someone else. That's true for all parents.

A few things remain constant. Here's what I've learned about parenting that, I think, is applicable to most parents.

Childbirth is Not Easy. The Natural Birth Movement Needs to Stop Insisting That it Is.

Few women have been pleasantly surprised by how easy and pain-free childbirth is. Yet a zealous natural childbirth movement continues to tell them that birth can be--should be, perhaps--easy. This article, which insists that painful birth is a "myth," is the newest example of this ridiculous claim.

I'm a huge supporter of natural birth. That's why I had one. I believe that, for the right woman, an unmedicated birth can be deeply empowering. Natural birth can help women see their hidden strengths, and regain control over their own bodies. 

When we start telling women that birth is easy, though, we remove all the strength they stand to gain from the challenges of birth. It's time for the natural childbirth movement to stop lying to women. Birth is rarely easy. And when it is, it's a fluke--not something the woman earned with enough meditation and natural childbirth classes. 

Here's How You Can Really Help Women in the Postpartum Period

In the two weeks following the birth of our baby, I spent every shower crying. My parent friends tell me that this is normal. For many of them, the stress and pain of the immediate postpartum period extended well into the first year of parenthood.

The phrases my friends use to describe their postpartum experiences--"Worst year of my life," "wanted to die every day," "still struggling to overcome my rage and trauma,"--don't neatly fit into the blissful postpartum narrative of easy motherhood most women are fed. In fact, I don't know a single woman who describes the weeks following childbirth as enjoyable or easy. Instead, they talk about childbirth recovery like a hellish crucible. 

I got through the immediate postpartum period, and I never developed postpartum depression. I was lucky. Many people I love have not been so lucky. Weirdly, none of them mention hormones--even though the popular press continues to blame vague "hormonal shifts" for years of postpartum suffering. Instead, their suffering correlates with very clear, very fixable needs: more paid time off, better pain management, more help around the house, greater understanding from loved ones, a chance to talk about their births. 

Every couple of years, another study comes out with the exact same finding: postpartum mood issues are common, many women don't discuss their symptoms with their doctors, and treatment is inadequate. We collectively shake our heads about this, as if it's some sort of mystery why women are struggling. We often do this while ignoring the clear and obvious needs of women recovering from childbirth. Mental illness happens for many reasons, and not all cases of postpartum depression are preventable. Yet all women--yes, all women--who have given birth need support. Very few get enough of it. 

So if you really want to help someone recover from birth, if you really want to increase a woman's odds of avoiding postpartum depression, here's what you can do. 

Things White People Need to Stop Saying: 10 Simple Rules for White Liberals Discussing Racism

Until recently, almost no one openly endorsed neo-Nazi sentiments. The election of white supremacist Donald Trump changed that. Now we have to be sensitive to white supremacist feelings by calling these monsters members of the "alt-right." That's scary enough. Here's what's even scarier: it's given white liberals a free pass.

Now that racism is so visibly associated with the vocal belief that people of color are inferior and a willingness to kill them, many white liberals can pat themselves on the back. "We're not racist!" they gleefully proclaim. "Look at those neanderthal Trump supporters and their torches. I've never burned a torch or run over a black person. I even have a black friend! I can't possibly be racist."

I've spent much of my life trying to engage with people who think this way, so they can understand how their more palatable and muted form of racism enables more aggressive forms of white supremacy. In the wake of the Trump presidency, these smug white liberals have become a lot more certain they're not racist. Meanwhile, their brethren of color grow ever more desperate. I've watched dozens of social justice groups disintegrate as people of color clamor to be heard, white people silence them, and racism becomes more and more pervasive.

Then the white liberal racists insist that the divisiveness is the fault of people of color. If they would just be quiet, we could defeat real racism.

White people: the only way we can defeat real racism is for smug white liberals to admit to their own racism, fix it, and then unite with people of color to end this plague once and for all. For that to happen, we need to change the way we talk and think about race.

Here are 10 simple rules that can move the conversation forward. They won't protect you from call-outs or uncomfortable conversations. They shouldn't. Those conversations need to happen. These rules can, however, prevent you from saying something profoundly damaging to a person of color.

The Politicization of Sleeping: Just One More Way to Blame Moms for Everything

When I was pregnant, I swore I would never share a bed with my baby. We planned to have her in our room for at least a year, as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, and to then make a final decision about her sleeping location.

We're science people. We knew that sleeping in the same bed as our baby increased her risk for SIDS. So we were bound and determined to find another way.

That is, until we went weeks without sleep, realized the science isn't as straightforward as it seems, and gained a healthy appreciation of how politicized all parenting decisions are.

I Made a Person. I Also Do Everything Else Men Can Do. Tell Me How That Makes Women Inferior.

*Note: I originally published this piece on Daily Kos at the urging of a client. 

I had a baby 11 months ago. There’s nothing terribly impressive about that. After all, women have babies every day. And we live in a society in which, if women do something men can’t, we treat it as unremarkable. Birth is unimpressive, but scoring two points higher on a spatial reasoning test? Now that is amazing! 

It’s this sort of ridiculous reasoning that enables us to accept, with a straight face, that men are in some way superior to, stronger than, or smarter than women. I’m tired of it. So I have a question for the men who continue to argue that women aren’t destined for careers or are too emotional or whatever the sexist argument is this week: I made a person. I did it while doing everything men do. How does that make me inferior?