Living in the boonies affords us many benefits. Getting our mail on time is not one of them.
With all the new changes in the postal system, we probably will be the last ones to benefit.
Also, ever since moving to our new home, we’ve had a bear of a time trying to get businesses to update our address on file. So, our mail keeps going to our old address in spite of the fact that we’ve lived here since March.
Back in Raleigh, I feel like we had some kind of mail privilege, because our mailman would deliver to a central location, and make deliveries several times a day. I could go out there and chat with him and ask about getting packages early and whatnot (we lived in a closed off, though not technically gated, community).
Now we’re lucky if we get one delivery a day and the mailperson speeds off so fast, I still don’t know who delivers our mail.
Speaking of privilege, I was reading something the other day that reminded me of just how divided men and women are, culturally speaking.
A strength training coach on the Innernet was talking about how when they post in their forum of females, they can post the exact same content to men and women and yet get 2 very different responses.
Example, this trainer posted something about how everyone should lift weights because lifting weights makes you stronger and stronger people are harder to kill and more useful in general.
To a male audience, this is all you need to say. No further sales pitch needed.
Me man. Strong good.
But the la fems in the audience?
The females were offended.
They felt devalued and demeaned. The women in the forum who didn’t see themselves as strong, and didn’t see the value in *becoming* strong, perceived that statement as an attack — they believed the trainer was calling them useless human beings.
Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
The trainer wasn’t calling them useless. He was trying to inspire them. Especially older women who are more prone to bone loss and hip fractures. Lifting weights and getting strong can mean the difference between life and death.
But that’s not how it hit these ladies’ ears.
And, in my weird way of thinking, this shows just how much *both* men and women have been indoctrinated.
Men are supposed to be strong, and women allegedly are supposed to focus on their appearance and ask men to carry heavy things for them.
That attitude has been reinforced by both men and women.
In other words, women have been told their usefulness lies in doing certain things and not others. And when someone comes along and suggests something else, that gets project into the conversation.
Here’s another one. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
Men are supposed to wear the pants in the family and make all the big important decisions, and women are supposed to manage a household and pay the bills.
This was certainly a truism at one point in the past, and it still is to some extent though not too many people talk about it anymore… the fact that men wear the pants in the family but the women are the ones who pick them out, put them on him, and tighten the belt.
“Happy wife, happy life”.
C’mon, you’ve heard this stuff before, right?
Used to be life insurance agents would sell insurance to wives, and get the husband to rubber stamp it because the wife needed the money if the husband died because she was a homemaker and didn’t work outside the home.
The husband was the “breadwinner”.
Today?
Not so much, and yet, there is still a subtle undercurrent of the same male/female dynamics at play in a lot of American households.
And… it creates just enough of an adversarial relationship (and cultural divide) between men and women to prevent effective communication about very important topics.
Like money…
Anyway, take from that what you will. And, if you want more inane ramblings that may or may not help you in your journeys, sign up to my email list.