gender bias

As I began writing this on Wednesday, I was reading Helen Whybrow’s memoir, The Salt Stones, which focuses on her family, her ninety-some Icelandic sheep, and how as a pastoralist she lives within the rhythm of her animals, the trees and grasses, blueberries and shrubs, the soil microbes and those in our gut, and all that lives in and on, over and above that soil and makes of her two hundred acres a thriving ecosystem. Her husband is kind, her step-daughter has gone off to live her life, and soon her daughter will follow. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t always know her daughter, but is the same kindly person for all that. I read the final chapter yesterday. I felt grateful for the beauty she shares.

On our beach walk, we found bits of litter on the sand and tangled in the rocks, enough to half fill our trash bag. Mostly this was bits of plastic and plastic foam smaller than my thumbnail, but also a comb, a sturdy mesh bait bag, several lengths of reusable plastic twine. We admired the local bald eagles scavenging onshore. This photo taken at a distance—the bird flew as a wave washed in.

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The conversation turned to Kurt Cobain, and someone claimed Cobain’s wife killed him like a “typical woman” does. He said it at least twice. Beside me, my husband says he thought, uh-oh.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The deadliest place for women is at home and 140 women and girls on average were killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year, two U.N. agencies reported Monday.

Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the deaths of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023, an increase from an estimated 48,800 victims in 2022, UN Women and the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said. …

By contrast, the vast majority of male homicides take place outside homes and families, it said.

But set aside murder for a moment and consider that the comment by my friend suggests that women’s typical behavior is murderous when angry, that unlike men, this cruelty(?) or destructive tendency(?) is uniquely or particularly female. That it’s typical. Well.

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