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“Think about it. Think about what it would be like to date a woman. She’d spent time getting dolled up to come see you. She’d do her makeup and put on perfume, and she’d signal to you with every fiber of her being, ‘You matter to me. I took time for you.’”
“I mean, sure, I guess,” said Hiljd. If Valdi were here, he would launch into a diatribe on the patriarchy right now, about the expectations on women, and the way that women were treated like objects to be attained and—Fuck Valdi, though.
“And then, imagine being in a relationship with a woman. Like, you’d have conversations about everything. You’d both work to keep the house clean and there would be a fair division of labor, and she’d never just get up from the dinner table and wander off to the living room and turn on the TV, just expecting you to load the dishwasher, as if that is, like, your job.”
“Well,” said Hiljd, “to be fair, Valdemar was never like that.” Oh, fuck, she’d brought him up herself. Shit.
“Really?” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “Seriously? Because I’ve never met one who didn’t do it. They don’t even mean to, you know, and I get that. It’s subconscious on their part. It’s like, when you’re a kid, your mom waits on you, and then when you grow up as a woman, a switch goes off and you start trying to take care of things, because you just watched your mom do it, your whole life. And when you’re a man, the switch doesn’t go off. It’s not as if they don’t get responsive to it if you make them responsive, at least most halfway decent men. But… I just don’t want to have the conversation again, you know? It’s not like you have it once either. Again and again and again.”
Hiljd shrugged. “I mean, when Valdi and I were married, he was always in this weird thing of trying to make up for the fact that I made more money than him. Like, he said it was great, and that he wasn’t at all threatened by that, but…” Maybe there were a number of unevolved dickish things about her ex-husband, now that she thought about it, the crowning jewel being when he refused to have a vasectomy.
“Hey,” spoke up the red-bearded orc from the other side of the room, “I definitely want to meet a woman who makes more money than me.”
Hiljd and Lucy both turned to look at him.
He grinned. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to listen in. You guys were in very loud men-are-pigs mode, though, so?”
Lucy rounded on him. “I’ve had this conversation too many times to count. You’re here to sail in and defend your whole gender?”
The red-bearded orc shrugged. “Nah. I think everyone has a right to complain about the opposite sex. What I resent is the fact that I’m not allowed to complain about women.”
“Not allowed,” said Hiljd. “Really? Who’s stopping you? Is there some law saying you can’t say whatever sexist thing that crosses your mind?”
“No,” he said, “no law. But there’s this idea I’m saying it because I’m being sexist. If I’m being sexist, you’re being sexist, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Sure,” said Hiljd, “and if we didn’t live in a patriarchy, and if men didn’t have certain innate biological power advantages over women, maybe there wouldn’t be a difference in complaining about men versus complaining about women.”Fuck, I just said patriarchy. Out loud. In a conversation.What was wrong with her? Hiljd considered herself a feminist, but she was already an orc woman. With tusks. So spending a bunch of time being outspoken and demanding, it wasn’t exactly a winning strategy for her. Better to seem at least a little demure. Of course, even thinking that made her want to let out another primal scream.
“I don’t think we live in a patriarchy,” said the red-bearded orc. “I’m not saying we never did, or that there hasn’t been sexism in the past—”
“But it’s all better now?”
“Mostly, yeah,” he said. “And here’s the other thing, the thing no one ever wants to talk about, the fact that men are just considered disposable, you know? Like, who do we send to war? Who do we ask to do dangerous jobs? Who do we ask to do smelly and labor-intensive jobs?”
“Well, that’s because of the patriarchy you claim doesn’t exist,” snapped Hiljd. “And also, it’s because of the innate biological differences between men and women. Look, most men are stronger than most women. There’s an effect that testosterone has on muscle mass andyouare always going to be stronger thanweare. And so even if we level the playing field between men and women in every single fathomable way, there is always the fact that a man has the capacity to physically force a woman to his will and the only thing that’s standing between him and that is that I’m just supposed to trust that he won’t.”
The orc man’s lips parted.
Hiljd took a drink of meade, cringing. What was wrong with her?
“I’m Gunnar,” said the orc in a very deep voice.
She furrowed her brow. Why was he looking at her likethat?
Lucy piped up. “I actually was reading that differences within gender groups are larger than the differences between genders? Like, there’s a huge amount of overlap in physical characteristics between men and women. Weight, height, all of that sort of thing.”
Hiljd turned to look at her. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. I hadn’t thought about that before.” She blinked. “I suppose we spend more time trying to look at the differences between men and women, but we’re more the same than different.”
“Exactly,” said Lucy, nodding. “That’s what the article I was reading was saying, too.”
Gunnar leaned forward and rested his elbows on his legs. “So, you know, what would you say the patriarchy is?”
Hiljd raised her eyebrows. “What kind of question is that?”
“I’m just getting the feeling we have different definitions,” said Gunnar. He glanced over his shoulder at his friend. “Back me up, Erik.”
Erik fingered his mating ring. “Oh, no, count me out of this conversation. Some of us are married, dude.” He got up. “Actually, I should go find my wife.”
“Your naked wife,” said Gunnar, looking up at him. “Your wife, who you brought to a party so that she could parade around naked in front of other people.”
