I think of that line Carrie Fisher says in When Harry Met Sally<\/em>, when her character (Marie) is trying to persuade her boyfriend to get rid of his wagon wheel coffee table: \u201cEveryone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor. But not everyone can possibly have good taste and a sense of humor.\u201d<\/p>\n My husband thinks I have shitty taste. I had to rescue the coasters with the New Orleans foods (Jambalaya, Snow Balls, Shrimp Etouffee, and the Cajun \u201cHoly Trinity\u201d of peppers, celery, and onions) from the trash, because he thinks they\u2019re awful. I want to tell him, stop being so fucking ungrateful. He is impossible to get presents for, because he\u2019s picky and unpredictable. When I saw those coasters, I was sure he would love them. I was sure that he\u2019d feel recognized, which is what my husband always searches for in a present: to feel seen. He\u2019s from Louisiana, he loves to cook. How can he NOT love these fucking coasters?<\/p>\n Sometimes I think he pretends to find them repellent, just to confound or injure me.<\/p>\n He maintains, like Carrie Fisher\u2019s character, that there is such a thing as \u201cobjectively\u201d good taste, and that certain objects I love, like those coasters, or like my light green sweater, are reflective of bad taste, and not, as I maintain, a matter of taste.<\/p>\n My light green sweater is unflattering, he said this morning. I pretended I wasn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n On our way to the mall, my younger daughter tests me and her older sister about how picky we each are about food. It\u2019s a survey Holly found on the web. She reads Adrienne and me a long list of foods, and we must choose between liking it (one point), neutral about it (zero points), or disliking it (minus one point). I am neutral about bananas, oranges, and blue cheese; I dislike papaya, liver, almond milk, and ketchup. Otherwise, I like everything. My score is 55 points; Adrienne\u2019s (the pickiest) is minus 30. I feel proud, like I\u2019ve won, but Holly wrinkles her nose. \u201cDo you like everything? What\u2019s the matter with you, Mom?\u201d<\/p>\n I want to tell Holly, \u201cFar from it, there are definitely things I object to.\u201d I want to tell Adrienne to look up the word \u201cdiscriminating,\u201d and consider whether that\u2019s a quality anyone should embrace. I want to ask her father, \u201cIf I have such shitty taste, why the hell did I pick you?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the following statements, select True or False<\/em><\/p>\n 1. I do my share of the housework.<\/p>\n 2. \u201cMy share\u201d is not a subjective term; it means 50%.<\/p>\n 3. When I cook, I use every pot.<\/p>\n 4. When my partner cooks, I clean.<\/p>\n 5. I don\u2019t know how to run the dishwasher.<\/p>\n 6. I stack plates haphazardly, when asked to do it, so my incompetence absolves me from being asked to do it.<\/p>\n 7. When I am working from home, I don\u2019t like to be interrupted.<\/p>\n 8. When interrupted, I say \u201cI\u2019m working!\u201d to communicate my current unavailability.<\/p>\n 9. When I interrupt my partner who is also working, and she snaps at me, I think she\u2019s being aggressive.<\/p>\n 10. When I say \u201caggressive,\u201d what I mean is \u201cmean.\u201d<\/p>\n 11. I respect all the uncompensated labor women do.<\/p>\n 12. I understand that this labor is real work, often done on top of their compensated work.<\/p>\n 13. I want to do my share of childcare.<\/p>\n 14. See #2: I understand \u201cmy share\u201d to mean 50%.<\/p>\n 15. Children, for biological reasons having to do with gestation and breastfeeding, at least in the early days, need their mothers more than their fathers.<\/p>\n 16. By \u201cearly days,\u201d I mean until they go to school.<\/p>\n 17. My daughters are closer to their mother than to me.<\/p>\n 18 I attribute this to the fact that my partner endlessly indulges them.<\/p>\n 19. It\u2019s hard to be the bad cop.<\/p>\n 20. It\u2019s hard to be misunderstood in my own house, especially given how hard I work.<\/p>\n 21. My daughters are lesbians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think of that line Carrie Fisher says in When Harry Met Sally, when her character (Marie) is trying to persuade her boyfriend to get rid of his wagon wheel coffee table: \u201cEveryone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor. But not everyone can possibly have good taste and a sense of humor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":17971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2893,2892],"class_list":["post-17967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-gender-politics","tag-when-harry-met-sally","writer-kim-magowan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17972,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17967\/revisions\/17972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A QUESTIONNAIRE FOR MEN WHO CLAIM TO HAVE EXCELLENT GENDER POLITICS<\/h5>\n