Please don't ever say you're 100% heterosexual! That reminds me of Ted Haggard! ;-)

Seriously, I have many beefs with feminism. One is that some feminists want others to change. Of course, this selfish wish isn't due to feminism or being female, but rather due to being human. We all want someone else to change so that change is achieved by others. Change is the death of the familiar. It's more than hard. It hurts and it's scary and it often goes awry. So, when people like MMM note that men do dirty, dangerous work and that women benefit, he's right. However, as I've observed in the past, since I date men who do dirty, dangerous work, those men don't see themselves as brothers to men with soft hands in offices. Their brothers are other men who do dirty, dangerous work. If a man with soft hands tried to claim their labor face-to-face, that man with soft hands might put himself in peril. Now, I'm not just drawn to men who labor. I'm drawn to labor. A few weeks back, I was digging our silver maple roots, with a shovel and a sawzall. It is dirty, dirty work. And then I had to run some metal over to a welder. When I filthily entered the filthy welding shop, right awary, those dirty, dangerous Harley guys liked me. I was their sister. Yesterday, I was using a dry chop saw to cut pavers. And when I dustily returned it, those guys liked me. My point is that in rejecting the female role, in changing on my own, I made change in one of the hardest crowds: men with hard hands. Now, if a woman asserts that she's a feminist, but remains locked in the classic female role, what's she telling me is that she wants someone else to do the work. And sure, sure, sure, feminism is allegedly about freeing everyone to be whatever they want to be, but if you're a female and a feminist and you run to men whenever the sink breaks, you're backing the wrong ideology. You should be backing the status quo. So, I'm a feminist with hard hands and the women I admire are women who can build cabinets, fly airplanes, and design bridges. I also admire men who do those very same things.

@ asehpe: Yep, MMM is hurting. And yep, MMM is smart. I feel he's wasting his potential by swirling and swirling around feminism.

Sweet Buddha, miriald. As Asehpe noted, Anonymous_Too and I posted just before you. Were looking for girly monikers? I wish that were so, but I suspect that you were looking for middle-class/upper middle class, standard feminist concerns. Two women wrote about the honor and glory of labor (...and Anonymous_Too wrote about labor with steely eloquence...) and we're suddenly invisible to you.

I'm not arguing that a woman shouldn't ask a man to do any work for her, however, when a woman asks a man to do traditionally male work for her, a concern for equity urges one to do traditionally female work: you did that and now I'll do this. One cements the status quo way back in the mere request. Now, specialization of labor makes a lot of sense if one is a stonecutter and the other is a surgeon, for both require significant muscle memory and whereas the former has to read stone, which can be coy, the latter has to read tissue, which can be equally disingenuous. However, replacing an alternator can be done proficiently on the first attempt. A woman doesn't need an apprenticeship to replace the wax ring on a toilet. She doesn't need a residency to plant a tree. She just needs pluck and maybe, as Anonymous_Too observes, a little more time.

Generally, it's fine for men to have soft hands. My gripe is with soft-handed men claiming the labor of hard-handed men. As some have read at Broadsheet, I have a similar gripe with women who've lived protected lives claiming the rapes of women in war zones.

And yes, I'm talking about class and others have argued that feminism has long served middle class and upper middle class concerns.

I would like to call you "sister," but you're better, braver, and bigger than me and "sister" suggests equity.

Dylan Thomas wrote:

"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night."

You forked lightning.

Your mottled and distant cousin,

Bigguns

You also posted something profound. Look at the end of your fork. That's lightning writhing there. This has become my all-time favorite thread at Salon, other than being invisible to miriald. I'd write more about this thread and what others have written, but I've already become a thread hog.

is to still spend money. Always spend. Forever and ever. To spend is to live. Even after death, when the corpse must be gussied, and the tombstone and and the coffin polished.

Please don't feel the need to "feel sorry for the miserable man" who wrote this article. I'm guessing he had a good time playing with words while observing how Americans are often trying to spread delicious and creamy frosting on roadkill. In this case, the roadkill is the road trip and the European vacation, done in by a shrinking dollar and growing gas prices. There is real loss here for many people and whereas I'm glad you're feeling ducky in your home, not everyone feels that way. Some miss the road and sitting somewhere other than their easy chairs.

No, don't. I did and those minutes are lost forever.

Here's the Cliffnotes version:

People with half-centuryish old vaginas = good

Obama = bad

Her last score of posts are especially interesting, since she went from asserting that the Palin girl ISN'T pregnant to saying that ain't it cool!