In defense of the non-kitchen dwellers.

I like to fancy that I'm a pretty open minded person.  I carry the philosophy that in every person there is something to be admired and especially every culture.  But lately.  I've been having quite the problem keeping an open mind.  I have this friend here, Muhammad, from Pakistan.  When we met, he was very racist, but seemed to have some restraint in the category.  Which is great, because if there's one thing I can't take it's racist rants.  However, lately he has not been keeping that rant in check, and moreso it turns out that he is in fact quite sexist as well.  I'm not overly surprised by that and I do what I can to make excuses for his ideas, as they are a product of his culture.  But it takes it's tolls.  In cooking class, for instance he refused to cook with me because cooking is a woman's job.  Me being me.. Well I politely informed him that, "if you don't cook, you don't eat."  I have seen many men cook and none of them died, so I felt pretty confident in the notion that he could wash a few carrots.  And he did.  But mostly only because I refused to do them, but he was fairly angry about the whole situation.  I strongly believe that when there are things that you don't like, it's your job to model them properly. A lot of people (in some cases, rightly so) that Americans are all self centered and rude.  So I make a point of always trying to be courteous and respectful and to go out of my way to be kind to strangers.  In Muhammad's case I try to model what a strong independent woman is and to show him that in other places in the world, women can do anything and very often do. 

But, I've reached that point where I find myself thinking that if he says "oh but you're just a little girl.." or, American's look foolish because women do X, Y,Z, one more time, I'm going to scream.

And he always manages to avoid saying it until I've regained my composure thankfully.. 

But today, he posted on his page this video..



With some strange little comments about how funny it was.

His admirable points are just ever so slightly becoming harder and harder to find..

Every person has their admirable points.  I just wish they would broadcast them more thoroughly than the less admirable ones.

The whole thing makes me wonder how much of our personalities grow from the culture we are raised in..  Would I be a strong independent woman if I were raised in a different, less woman friendly environment?

I suppose psychologists have been arguing this nature versus nurture business for a very long time.

Me, personally?  I figure I'd probably have been stoned to death by now.

In class, this same issues is coming to light.  We have increased our vocabularies and are string sentences together with some success.  Our teacher asked what males do in our country, and we all said a sentence or two about it.  Then she asked what women do back home.  The Chinese, Japanese, and Pakistani's all said "cook, clean, laundry.."

I was dumbfounded.

Yes, I do cook, clean, and do laundry.  But.. I mean, life is more than those things.  So I strung together that women can do anything, with a few examples one of which was being a soldier.  Everyone was just completely shocked.  Women can't fight...

I guess the real problem is that no one ever told me that there are things that women can't do.

Surprisingly, that's a problem that I can live with.