These were all men’s responsibilities since the end of matriarchate and it is continued to be so now. The same responsibilities men had in almost all other countries of the world, but as I written sometime earlier “contemporary Western women trapped themselves into a cage of their own emancipation” and now we are living within a new generation of men who think that giving birth, cleaning and cooking is not much of a job at all, thus shouldn’t be complimented by any kind of financial support from their side. So we end up with such an unequal division of responsibilities in a contemporary family (praised by feminists, who got it all wrong, and men):
Women:
– give birth
– stay in shape after giving birth so that their husband doesn’t complain he married Angelina Jolie and got Kirstie Alley
– raise a baby
– build a successful career, so that they can provide half of the family’s income
– cook, clean and bring cold beer
Men:
– built a successful career, so that they can provide half of the family’s income
– drink cold beer
– lift their feet up when their wife is cleaning
– complain to buddies that his nine-month pregnant wife got fat
Living in Europe gives females a different perspective on finances and relationships. Famous term “to go Dutch,” meaning to split the bill 50-50, speaks for itself.
Since I moved to Berlin two years ago, I observed German men and their attitude to women and I compared them to my fellow countrymen.
I was working as a part-time waitress in a crowded Berliner café and observed a following scene – family of three – guy and a girl with their baby came to have a lunch. Everything seemed nice and peaceful – a perfect family idyll – until the bill time came.
First, a guy carefully read the bill and then generously offered to pay a half. The girl read a bill too and they started arguing about who ate what and who is responsible for giving the tips.
No need to tell – I got no tips, but I was happy that they left, because this little episode left me in question about my own future in case of marrying such a dork. Don’t get me wrong. I’m an educated, modern women, but I’m not going to deny my weaknesses and work twice as hard as any men just to prove a useless point of being an equal human being.
Only after a guy will grow a vagina, push a baby out of it and breastfeed it for a year, sacrificing his body, time, career and youth for the health of the future generation, will I consider men and women being the same. And I’m not talking about equality in human rights. I’m talking about biological differences which make women more physically vulnerable and thus less able to compete with men when it comes to strength and, well, unfortunately, wealth, during some obvious periods of time.
I know hundreds of feminists will jump on me screaming that a woman can build a successful career as well as a men do. Yes they can. And yes, some women don’t want to have kids. But we are not talking about exceptions; we are talking about masses and tendencies. And the tendency I observed creates a vivid vision of a guy who tells his pregnant wife “to get her fat ass off a couch, because she didn’t pay her half of the rent yet!”
Did you know that Germany is among last countries in Europe for the amount of children born? Well, I guess it is not that German women don’t want to have kids. They are just so busy proving that they are equal to men. When they actually realize that their career is their only baby, and their last boyfriend left them for a 23-year-old woman with no serious expectations, it is too late to get pregnant.
Mentioning the age – as proven by millions of men and women around the world – men prefer females of a younger age to ones who are over a certain border. Again – unfortunately, but totally understandable – and explainable by, again, biology. “Men are like trees, women are like flowers.” When a guy gets older, he gathers experience, wealth and strength needed to support a family, while a women’s reproductive age is short, and no matter how much we support career moms and women who have their first babies after 35 – we can’t fool nature. I’m reaching 30 in some years myself.
Most guys of 35 want a 20-year old student girlfriend, but if in the beginning of 20th century they knew that they would have to provide for her, now they want them not only young, but also equally wealthy, which makes no logic to me.
I’m against exaggerated proof of masculinity. When a 12-year-old boy takes money from his parents to pay for a 12-year-old girl, I find it absurd. But I totally see why a 35-year-old gentleman with a stable full-time job should see no harm in inviting his 20-something student girlfriend to a dinner from time to time. I’m not promoting sex for money here, as some may wrongly assume. I’m just being realistic by saying that older wealthy men have money but no youth while a 20-year old girlfriend would most possibly have less money but she would have the youth and beauty he desires; some kind of natural barter.
I have a friend who is in his mid-30s. Most of his friends are females of his age. Obviously they are approximately of the same status as he is, having jobs, but interestingly, no families. They are good enough to be his friends, but too old and too desperate (according to him) to be his girlfriends. So he prefers girls in their 20s, because they are young, fresh and their biological clock is not ticking loud enough to make him feel obliged to have a serious relationship.
Nevertheless, he complains, that he had to pay in a restaurant for his last girlfriend, who was a student and didn’t have time for a full-time job. This leaves me in an eyebrow-raised situation, because it looks like the sexual revolution taught us the wrong lesson.
My conclusion, which I came to after analyzing male behavior in different countries, was the following: some men confuse women’s emancipation with the absence of male responsibilities. They simply don’t understand that “equality” frees women in their choices, but doesn’t stop their periods and give them penises.
Alina Rudya is a former Kyiv Post staff writer studying in Berlin.
