A woman I know posted on her Facebook the other day something like, “A married woman never has to worry about being childless, as long as her husband is around.” This is someone I’d consider wise, but the best of us have our weak spots. (She s married once, but only briefly.) I married a grown-up, and I’m grateful for that amazingly often.
I also married a feminist. The other day he mentioned that he was trying to figure out how to approach his local HR person to register a complaint: apparently, she’d been asking only the women who work for him to help plan social doings, never the men. He didn’t think that was fair. (He did go talk to her; apparently she was surprised and said she’d never realized she was doing that, which sounds awfully disingenuous to me. But possible, I suppose.)
Then yesterday, my car showed a CHANGE OIL SOON message. I called the dealer, since we’d just had it in there to have the oil changed. They told me “Oh, yeah, we must have forgotten to reset it. Just bring the car in any time and we can do that for you.” When I told my husband, he said, “That happened before on the truck, and they just told me how to reset it myself. I bet they’d have done that this time if a guy had called.” So I googled it, and sure enough, resetting the sensor (timer? mile-counter?) is a trivial thing.
It’s much harder to notice prejudice when you’re on the privilege end of it; he’s doing a good job these days.
And because I can’t not mention the death of Sir Terry Pratchett, here’s a great article about him by Neil Gaiman. I think this is some of why his books are so much more than just funny; his best characters (in my opinion, Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, and Tiffany Aching) all have that same righteous rage in them.
Wish he could keep writing so we could get his views on what happens on the other side of Death’s house.