I was at the zoo, walking about in the summer heat, the reasons for my being there I may share at a later date.
Unlike the beach, I noticed something odd, or perhaps not odd at all after considering it.
I was the odd man out as it were.
And the emphasis is on the man part.
Oh, there were male employees running around, but walking among the exhibits were women and children.
It was a week day, so where were all the men with their children and wives? Certainly, there have to be some out there still. How can this be when women supposedly are more employed than men in our country?
It was crowded too. I watched these people wandering along, the children zipping back and forth, many of them eating ice cream and realized I was gazing upon the most privilege group in our society: women.
I daresay they are the most privilege women in all of history, the most privileged group.
I hear how much women work in our society and I call bullshit on that.
They live the lives of the lady of the manor of a bygone era.
A century ago, laundry day was an actual day long affair for the vast majority of women, and by day, I mean all day, not an 8 hour day.
Now the ladies of the manor don’t have a servant doing it, but they have the mechanical equivalent. Don’t tell me loading a machine, going back to your soaps that you have Tivo’d, and then moving clothes to the next machine, then folding is anything like using a washer board or carrying baskets of clothes to a river and pounding them on rocks.
For that matter, clean running water is a huge change in itself, no pumping a well, or going to the river and carrying water (in the summer heat, or the bitter cold of winter), no the water comes out of a tap.
Dishes – a machine.
Travel – a car (carriage). Not walking.
Cooking? A microwave and prepared foods for a cook.
Nannies are now daycare and televisions.
No carrying wood to the fire either, or having to tend it to keep the house warm.
They don’t churn butter, or make soap or any of the other countless labors that women engaged in.
Compared to a hundred years ago most women have the equivalent of a cook, a carriage and a servant compared to a previous era.
Some of my fair readers may rightly point out that I am being sexist, and indeed I am, for a hundred years ago this would have been most women’s lot in life, they would have had back-breaking labor every day, and all day spent cleaning, and cooking, and mending, and doing laundry because someone had to do it.
Now I see women make up the majority of the shoppers, the majority of the people at places of leisure, the majority of the people engaged in social activities with a girl’s night.
Don’t tell me that its hard work to be a caretaker for children. I call bullshit on that one too. If its days at the park, sitting around watching them, or driving them places, or eating ice cream looking at the caged monkeys (not necessarily at the zoo) it ain’t work and it sure as hell ain’t the labor intensive job it was a hundred years ago when women had none of the modern conveniences to serve them.
All the product of men. All invented by men and built by them.
The idea that technology will somehow solve all our problems seems laughable, it makes them worse.
All this privilege was built by men and women have never been less satisfied.
