I consider myself an intelligent woman. My new roommate, Tara, is also brilliant and independent. In this modern age, we have managed to carve out an existence, attend school, work, and take care of out basic, Maslow-ian needs without actually needing the help of a man. Gloria Steinem would be proud. Yet despite our seeming self-reliance, yesterday evening we found ourselves helplessly lost when it came to figuring out how to use the cordless drill. Surely it can’t be that complicated. Why is it that I, a liberated, lip-stick feminist who has tried and tried to shatter gender roles and stereotypes since my adolescence, was unable to figure out where to put the bits or comprehend the function of the little, round, hollow, silvery pieces. Do my twenty-something male counterparts call their daddies and little brothers when they need to hang curtains or when something goes wrong with their cars? I seriously doubt it. So then, why do women end up having to rely on men in their adulthood?
Maybe the problem lies in childhood. Looking back, I do not remember being taught how to use an electric drill. My father, probably one of the least sexist men I know, did, however, involve me in “manly” projects around the house. I helped drain the brake fluid once, rotate tires, and build the screened-in porch. But these were special occasions and ones in which I did not play a major role. Maybe I just didn’t receive the same kind of experiences as a child that boys do. Maybe the toys I played with as a child, unlike my brother’s, failed to develop in me a love for electronics and power tools. Or maybe just the fact that my father was the only person in our family who tended to matters involving drills and tools and automotives led me to develop a mental set of duties for female that did not include such items. Perhaps many women are simply disadvantaged by well-intentioned family members who do not understand the psychological impact of their actions.
However, it has occurred to me that this explanation, while likely true to some extent, is an over-played copout. I have also considered the possibility that we women do this to ourselves because we are lazy. Case in point: instead of actually mowing the lawn, I would rather pay the neighbor boy 20 bucks to do it. Is it that I am incapable? No. As a teacher, I never did any heavy lifting and instead would ask some helpful, male student to do it for me. Was I too weak to do it myself? No. Why learn to mount my own curtain rods when I can just bat my eyelashes, play the helpless maiden and get some man to do it for me? We all know the dirty little trick men play – when asked to do something they deem unpleasant they intentionally fuck it up so as to never be asked again. This way, we deem them too incompetent to take care of menial tasks such as cooking, grocery shopping, packing the kids’ lunches, and folding laundry. But perhaps we, ladies, do the same detestable thing when we play too frail or too silly to work the drill, use a hammer, or lift a box, and too ditzy to learn how to change our own oil or to understand an automobile manual. Sure, it’s easier to let someone do it for us. But in the end, we are the ones who lose out. We throw away what could be true independence and equality because we are too lazy to fend for ourselves.
What am I going to do about this? I don’t know. The first thing I am going to do is sit back and enjoy the curtain rods I mounted, despite their many imperfections, reveling in the facts that I did it myself and that next time I won’t have to call my dad to figure out how to get the drywall anchor actually into the hole I just drilled in the wall. Then, I’m going to check out a book from the library on cars so that the next time I hear a funny noise, I can have a basic idea of what might be wrong instead of being at the total mercy of my mechanic. In the end, making the effort itself is half the battle.
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