I'm a man, and I'm reading "Women's Things"

Before she became pregnant, Meghan Stark interviewed terrorists in Afghanistan, experienced gun battles in Iraq, and escaped missile attacks in South Ossetia...... Witnessing numerous wars, she found herself in a deep crisis at home when she became pregnant: she had to "waste her career" in caring for babies and doing household chores, while her husband was able to return to his old life without difficulty.

Megan Stark gave birth to two sons in China and India, and during the difficult period of housework and trivialities, it was the local nanny who helped and accompanied her. The mutual aid between women made Meghan quickly realize that her ability to temporarily get out of the predicament came at the cost of another group of women who had no choice.

Unwilling to compromise in silence, Meghan turned her pen to the family, asking why parenting and housework are always classified as "women's business". It's a thrilling private battle, and it's a reality that all women can face.

The content in this issue is based on the reading experience and book review sharing of the members of the Sandwich Reading Club after reading the book "Women's Things". Due to space limitations, it has been abridged.

Wang Lime

Location: Shanghai

Occupation: Gastronomy practitioner, currently selling vegetables

The discovery of a woman, and the discovery of a woman

I was going to write the author's name and found out that I had forgotten. In the book, she narrates in the first person, replaced by a mother, a writer, a journalist, or a code name for "sorry" or "madam", so I forgot her name. I'm going to look through it again – Megan, yes.

Chinese translation and original cover

"Women's Business" is divided into three parts, the first two parts are based on location, Megan Stark has experienced two pregnancies and childbirth in China and India, raising children with the assistance of Chinese "aunt" Xiao Li and Indian maids Mary and Puja, and is also trying to complete the writing of her second novel. When the manuscript was finally delivered, she realized that she wanted to write about these women who lived with her day and night, not only from her own perspective, but their real stories, so in the third part, Xiao Li and Pouja and Mary reappeared as Megan's interviewees, rather than the story of the employment and employment relationship.

Frankly, the first two parts were easier for me to read than the third part. When the details of a woman's childcare and housework are recorded in such a direct and detailed way, my sadness accumulates in a sense of depression, a situation that I have seen several times among the women around me, in works such as Rachel Cusk's "Becoming a Mother", but the intensity of this emotion has not diminished in the slightest. But at the same time, I think that because of the same intellectual position, or the so-called "class", I felt familiar and safe with the narrative of the first two parts, and although the content was sad, it seemed to be still within my control and understanding, so the reading process felt relatively relaxed. In the third part, when the main body changes to Xiao Li and Puja, I am a little afraid of the unfamiliar growth trajectory, the kind of hardship beyond my life experience, I can't bear to immerse myself in it—I think this may be another kind of arrogance brought about by "class".

This is a book about the "discovery of a woman", which is accompanied by pain and helplessness, but the recording itself is a form of rebellion, a process of self-empowerment. It seems that this is too slogan-like shallowness, and it is still like an "inspiration" from an elite perspective, and I seem to be a little overly introspective, but I always believe that for more women, living is a kind of strength.

Wyoming

Location: Changsha

Profession: Editor, poet

I want to stand with you

I'm a man, watching "Women's Business". As if he had discovered something new, his 11-year-old son rushed out of the study, shouting and telling his mother. He still doesn't understand what the book is about. If you ask him, who is stronger in the class? The top three are all girls, whether in terms of Xi, physical fitness or personality, boys are hanged. That's it, it's the same as what I experienced when I was a kid. But when I was in junior high school, the story went in a different direction. Boys and girls have learned to decipher the book "Reality", either actively or passively, and they have all understood it from another perspective – men and women are different.

In this country, almost every boy has high expectations, and the expectations and resources from the adult world make them always look farther and grander about their future than girls. And most of the girls already know the situation they will face in the future - find someone to marry and have children. They are just boarding at home temporarily, and they are fortunate to have the love of their parents. When they do step into society and start their lives independently, they will sooner or later understand that there are various structural discrimination in society that limits their career choices and career development. If they have children and become mothers, they will be like all mothers, like Megan Stark, the author of "Women's Things", to understand the real cold reality:

"Women don't write novels, command armies, work in banking, work as doctors, go on expeditions or draw as much as men, for obvious reasons, but people turn a blind eye to that. In the past, it was thought that the reason was that women were forbidden to work. Quite the opposite: we have been doing all the work around the clock for centuries. After all, there is always someone to bathe the children, feed them, teach them skills, buy groceries, clean the room, and take care of the sick and the elderly. The work is physically demanding, daunting in its tedious degree, and endless. It's not a job, it's a demand for a continuously expanding workforce.

It's a never-ending job that eats away at our energy and stamina, erodes our shared health, and deprives our collective minds of generations.

”

Professionally, Meghan Stark is a strong man, as a foreign correspondent, she has covered wars, penetrated dangerous and chaotic regions, spent time in Jerusalem, Cairo, Moscow, Beijing and other places, won the Hal Boyle Award of the American Foreign Correspondents' Club, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. However, she became pregnant, and she gave birth to a child. So we all know what the next step in her story will be. The light quickly contracted, focusing on one character – the mother. She had to quit her job, stay home, and disappear from the world she had been in.

It seems that we don't have to read "Women's Business" to already know the end of the story, her ending. But I wanted to read this book, not to know more about the story, but to see the feelings and moods of women. We can all see housework, taking care of children, and having to help children with their homework under the so-called home-school cooperation. But women don't say, men don't ask, and we never know what that means for those lively souls. I doubt how many husbands really understand their wives' feelings. Even though my sons are 11 years old and my wife and I have lived together for 15 years, there are many things that we have never talked about and faced together. There are some things that are inconvenient for the closest people to say, because if they do, they have to tear open the scars that have quietly scabbed over (unless both parties have an open heart and are willing to talk openly).

Stark and her husband, both foreign correspondents, have little difference in values, vision, intelligence, and abilities, but after a single harassment in India, Stark wrote:

"I've experienced countless cultural forms of sexual harassment, and Tom is unharmed. I barely talked about it to him because I didn't want it to be a shared memory. ...... I'm assuming he knows it, because it seems obvious to me. I was treated like an accessory. I've been touched, caught, and cornered. I deliberately ignore the words that can only be understood. ...... But now he looked at me blankly, as if I wasn't one of them, and it occurred to me that he didn't know at all. Did he think his wife was so smart that she could be a woman in this world, but she didn't have to exist as a woman? There are so many things to say that I can't even speak. ”

That's why I had to read Women's Things. When a woman decides to stand up and talk about them, we, the men, better listen. Because, although we live with women (wives, daughters, sisters, mothers), we don't really stand with them. Don't interject. Don't argue. Don't be presumptuous. Just go and listen. Listen as much as you can. Don't jump to your feet like you're on fire. Don't blush. Don't have a glass heart. Don't pretend to be righteous to hide the fact that you're not that powerful.

I know that the so-called antagonism between men and women has become an increasingly fierce contradiction at present. On social media, people are attacking each other and hurting each other for this. But try to understand the obvious truth: how could the stone give in if it weren't for the eggs' resistance? And try to understand the not-so-obvious truth: You, I mean most men, you're not a stone. Or rather, how can you be self-righteous and think that you are qualified to be a stone?

It is a fact that although only a part of the disadvantaged groups rise up to fight for their legitimate rights and interests every time, it is often the whole society that benefits. The capitalists did not weaken after the workers won the eight-hour day, and religion did not decline after the believers won freedom of belief. Society is a complex system, and when a certain part of oppression is forced to be removed, the whole system will adjust to adapt to the new changes, and eventually benefit everyone.

Take Northern Europe, for example. It is recognized as the most female-friendly region in the world, and it is also the region with the highest happiness index in the world. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark all rank in the top 10 of the world's happiness index. In Iceland, maternity leave for men is three and a half months. In Sweden, fathers are entitled to 480 days of "parental leave", of which 90 days are mandatory. Supposedly, this is still paid.

Therefore, don't really think that the rights and interests between men and women are a zero-sum game of either/or. Men and women, on the side of the egg. If women's jobs are not guaranteed and their contributions to the family are not recognized, then men will only be reduced to the miserable lives of workers. If a woman's rights and interests have been sacrificed to let her take care of the family and raise children, what reason does a man have not to be in the company's 996?

About "vulnerable groups". I would like to add that in our context, "vulnerable" is a bad term, and it can also be stigmatized. When we search for this term in the Chinese context, we get two explanations:

(1) Vulnerable groups, also known as disadvantaged groups or disadvantaged groups, refer to the weak groups of people who have difficulties in living in society. For example, low-income households, elderly people living alone, unemployed workers, etc.

(2

The disadvantaged group, also known as the socially vulnerable group and the socially weak group, refers to the social strata of a country or region that has a weaker ability to participate in social production and distribution and less economic income in the social structure formed in a certain historical period.

The former is to refer to the group of people who are the result of an unreasonable social structure or who suffer unfair treatment, that is, those who have difficulties in life, as a vulnerable group, while the latter is an objective description of the social structure in contrast to the vested interests of society. The disadvantaged group is a relative concept, and people who do not have difficulties in life can also be disadvantaged. Stigmatizing the vulnerable and equating them with the "weak" is effectively depriving the vulnerable of their right to be heard. Only when disadvantaged groups admit and see that they have been treated unfairly in this social structure can they unite to promote social change.

Megan Stark has an awareness of women's place in the social structure, otherwise she wouldn't have felt so much guilt when she writes. It is precisely because of the disadvantaged position of women that she can hire nannies at a cheap price. She is both deprived of and benefited from this structure. Nor could she find a better strategy in this social structure.

To be seen is a need, not a gift. When I write this book review, I'm talking to men. "Happening around us every day" does not necessarily mean that it will be "seen". In fact, it is because it happens around us every day that we ignore it. will Xi it. Only when certain social conditions are met, will more and more people feel strange. However, even on the eve of the great change, the wall will not fall down on its own. The wall does not have this self-realization.

This book, I want mothers to read with their daughters, fathers with their sons, wives with their husbands, and brothers and sisters together. And not only women are watching.

Let's work together.

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