THE MIC

There's been a lot of chatter about the Patriarchy lately. Or maybe I'm hearing it all the time because I'm the father of two vocal and opinionated young daughters. Shocking, right? 

What you don't hear much of is the counterpoint. I'm talking about The Matriarchy. You know it's significant when it's preceded by the word THE. Any Buckeye grad will tell you that. Indeed, I learned it from some advertising done years ago by my friend John Hage. 

Moreover it was confirmed by Ms. Muse who let me in on the little secret and informed me the official nomenclature is The Matriarchal Industrial Complex. And their sole mission is to counter the omnipresent Patriarchy, with a sneaky effort via a series of micro, micro-aggressions, almost too subtle to notice,  to take men, and all of mankind, down a peg or two. 

Which, let's be honest, is not all that difficult.

If you've ever seen me trying to remove and wash a king size duvet cover, and then spend an entire afternoon trying to put it back on, you know it's working.

Add to that, the whole top sheet/no top sheet kerfuffle, and you begin to see the far-reaching impact the MIC. But their devious ploys goes way beyond the cleaning, maintenance and proper folding of bed linens. 

Case in point: Zip lock bags. 

It can't just be me.

I see the tongue and groove injection-molded onto the top of expensive sandwich bags and I begin to sweat. At one time, these bags only required a simple fold. But now, and I place the blame squarely in the knowing hands of the MIC, apparently I must read an owner's manual -- like I or any other man is going to read an owner's manual or follow the instructions -- to achieve the hermitic seal I had been promised. 

I am convinced there's a secret locking code. And furthermore, I'm convinced that code was distributed to womankind on January 21, 2017 -- the day of the Global Pink Pussy Hat Protest.  

This seemingly minor annoyance was magnified tenfold when I attempted to store clothing in some hefty size vacuum locked bags. Turns out that if the bags are not sealed, in the yard-long seam at the top, the sucking of air will not properly proceed. Resulting in a massive time suck, which robbed me of vital hours on the Internet to school unschoolable Red Hats.

Look around and you'll begin to see the insidious ways The Matriarchal Industrial Complex goes about their surreptitious business of man-shaming. 

I'll leave you with this: Tik Tok.

Fearmongers will tell you it's a data stealing scheme of the CCP. I think it's more dastardly than that. Do you suppose it's a mistake or a coincidence that the majority of the 13-14 second clips feature dancing? I don't. 

Furthermore, have you noticed the majority of the participants are women? I did.

Often clawing at their boyfriends/husbands/significant others with significant two left feet and involuntary overbite to get out there and dance.

I don't dance.

I can't dance.

And if you're a fella reading this, I'm betting you can't dance either. It's all part of their plan.

You hear a lot about the Glass Ceiling, but does anyone want to talk about the pitfalls out there on that  thoroughly-humiliating Glass Dance Floor?