Village Squire, 1978-01, Page 34P. S.
Why shouldn't women get to whack their thumbs with a hammer?
BY KEITH ROULSTON
They laughed when I sat down to
hammer. Or at least my wife did.
Every time I talk about building
somethifig my wife gets a funny look on her
face, if she doesn't outright burst into
laughter (or tears, depending on what I'm
talking about building). She thinks I may
be able to construct sentences, para-
graphs, even whole essays and short
stories but couldn't build a dog house
without it falling in the first time the wind
got up.
I don't know where she gets that
impression. I mean I've put up her clothes
line six times now. It's not my fault if the
thing keeps blowing down and I have to do
it all over again.
I put on a new roof over the office out
back this fall. It only leaked a little and if I
hadn't gone to work to try to fix it, it would
still leak only a little. Now, unfortunately,
it leaks a lot, but is that my fault?
Oh I admit I'm not the world's best
carpenter. I have to admit I was once fired
from a carpentry job (I was going to quit
anyway, my thumbs couldn't take
anymore). 1 wouldn't want to take on
something major, like build a bird house,
but I do my best. The problem is that
husbands are just supposed to be good at
these things. We're supposed to be the
Mr. Fixits of the house. If the tap is
dripping, we're supposed to know how to
fix it. If the lawn mower won't work, we're
supposed to make it purr again. If the car
goes clunk, we're supposed to know
exactly what's wrong. The trouble is that a
lot of us just don't know what's wrong and
we're not supposed to admit to it under the
rules of the game. Women are supposed to
be helpless, but we're supposed to be up to
it.
1 can't figure out how the women have
managed to make women's lib work so that
they get only the good things without the
bad. I mean the wife is supposed to be able
to go out and get an interesting job (not
just any job but a "meaningful" one, or
she's being exploited by the husband who
just wants to get more money coming in)
and the hubby's supposed to pick up at
least half of the household chores like
doing the dishes, changing dirty diapers,
vacuuming. But he's also supposed to do
all the "men's" jobs around the place like
fixing things and painting the house and
'cleaning out the sink drain when it's filled
with stinky guck. Women's lib seems so far
to have unloaded many of the women's
traditional menial jobs so she can find
exciting new ones while leaving the
husband with all his old menial jobs, plus
half of hers, and a guilty conscious if he
ever thinks maybe he's hard used.
32, VILLAGL SQUIRE/JANUARY 1978.
Now I know there's a lot of unfairness in
the world directed against women. Even
though there have been great advances in
the rights of women there are still many
injustices. I'd be the last to want to start an
reactionary movement before women
achieved the goals they really need, but ...
I sometimes think that women have been
getting the edge in some areas because
they're only changing the rules in areas
that will help them, not changing the whole
rule book. They've got men feeling so
guilty about the injustices of the past that
men are afraid to complain about a few
injustices of their own. While the woman is
supposed to be free to make her choice to
either stay at home and be a homemaker or
go out and get a job, the husband is still
supposed to be a breadwinner. Her job
should just be to put a little gravy on the
meat and potatoes that he's bought. If the
husband decides that he stay home to say
paint or write while the wife brought in the
main income, he's regarded as being a bit
of a slacker. If, heaven forbid, he went
even further and decided that he's just be a
homemaker while she worked. people
would wonder if he also beat her.
Things have gotten a little one sided. For
instance the traditional men's club has
been the source of a good deal of wrath
from the women's movements. There have
been sit ins and court cases and the clubs
are pretty well extinct. Yet at the same
time in the city they've been setting up
women's clubs.
Similarly designations by sex have been
taken off nearly everything that women
have demanded but things they like the
distinctions on tend to remain the same
because they don't push for changes there.
The bias is shown in television and
movies where such crimes against women
as rape and wife -beating are big items
these days, but you seldom see crimes that
are committed by women.
I know that the pendulum has to swing to
the limit one way before it starts to come
back to the centre so I'm patiently waiting
for the day when it does. I'm waiting
especially for the day when women can fix
the car and the clogged sink and do other
"manly" chores so guys like me don't have
to feel so guilty about being Mr. Klutz
instead of Mr. Fixit.
CAMPUS SHOP
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Starts
MONDAY, JAN. 9
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OPEN MON. TO SAT.
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Phone 271-3720