The male/female tension is old. I have never gotten along with my mother-in-law, despite the fact that she is a remarkable, tough woman; she has practically raised my kids and raised a son with whom I can share an intellectual life and who has always been the rock in our household.
I suspect if she’d ever supported herself (her husband died when she was in her mid-forties) she would not have been the supportive grandmother she is but she would not have had this attitude that somehow men are beasts but that her son should be at her beck and call every hour of the day. She would be less condescending toward men and more self-sufficient and sure of herself.
She, of course, etests “feminism” but feminists modeled their behavior on women who patronized men, overpoweringly babied them (my husband isn’t far from retirement but he eats lunch every day with her and if he can’t she expects to fix his lunch – she is almost 90 and blind), and seldom took personal responsibility – that was always a man’s job.
Of course, some of her attitude is colored by the fact that her father – by about every objective standard of others as well as his children – was a real bastard. Sometimes we pay for the sins of generations before.
