Ain’t Chauvinism, Love

Said the man to the woman:

It’s all true.

I DO love it when you cook for me and would gladly have you cook for me always.

I DO love having you stay home with the kids.

I DO love your body and your beauty and notice them first of all that is good in you.

I know you’ve been told that all these things are proof of my base desire to control and use you.

But in fact, it’s all borne of something quite different and very simple: a man’s desire to delight in a woman.

For as a woman, there are gifts you are uniquely able to give me, a man, just as there are gifts that I am uniquely able to give you.

Of course I could cook my own food and do my own laundry, just as you, for your part, could open the pickle jar and provide for the children without me.

But why should we.

Let us be man and woman.

Let us give each other the gifts of our genders.

Not in glowering, untrusting transactions, but freely, shooting sparks into the night.

Do not let your heart be poisoned against me for the hurt other men have done you.

I am not that man.

Unsquint your eye: I am not your enemy or your saviour, and neither are you mine.

Beneath it all, in the comfort of the dark, alone and unburdened, you and me, we are just a boy and a girl who want to be loved.

Said the man to the woman.