It’s all fun and games in the world of gender equality until the toilet is clogged or the trash needs to be taken out or until the spiders and cockroaches come out of hiding. One early morning at work I was minding my own business when I heard, “Oh, look there’s Pat!” Contrary to their tone, these nice female coworkers weren’t really happy to see me, rather, they were latching on to the first male to pass by … it seemed they needed someone to exterminate the three-inch cockroach that was making its way from one end of the breakroom to the other.

They profiled me. They assumed because I’m male that I’d have a certain skill set, some innate bug bravery. In the normal world of say fifty years ago, these assumptions would have been perfectly reasonable, there are things men typically do and things women typically do. But today, today, don’t women want to, that is, aren’t women supposed to smash their own cockroaches?

The problem with the concept of universal equality is that it implies universal sameness, and the problem with every girl being the same as every boy is that it blurs the wonderful differences between boys and girls. I think that mainstream society understands that the only thing that has to be identical between men and women is the opportunity given to each, but some days you have to wonder because the media is only interested in depicting American life at the two extreme ends of every debate.

What the cockroach teaches us is that you can’t believe everything you hear. The truth is that men have wives and daughters, moms and aunts and sisters, so we know women are as capable as men and we also know what makes men and women different. Certain things are gender-assigned by nature. Of course, for better or for worse, these assignments can be flipped and redefined at will. Most men and most women, unlike the lives depicted on TV, work as equal partners every day. No man really cares about being given assignments in life purely because he’s male. It does get a little rough though to be viewed as a misogynist one minute and then be asked to save women from predatory insects the next.

♦

So they didn’t want me to kill the cockroach. In fact, I had summoned the courage and was about to step on it when they stopped me mid-stomp. They wanted me to catch it in a cup and release it outside where it could be free and enjoy the vegetarian lifestyle guaranteed to all insects by the US Constitution. This is something I did not want to do. This was something that these three ladies absolutely believed was my job. I corralled the roach into a paper coffee cup and nearly sprinted to the exit, fearful with every fiber in my being that said roach would escape the cup and climb up my sleeve causing an involuntary scream not too unlike an eight-year-old schoolgirl.

In the end, I was surprised I had the fortitude to help. I find that in these circumstances, men will try to help out in almost every instance.

We all get asked in life to do certain things, sometimes because we’re good at something, sometimes it’s because we have a certain bit of knowledge or a specific life experience and sometimes it’s simply because you happen to be either a woman or a man.

It’s not controversial and we shouldn’t allow society to make it so.