When I was a much younger man, my girlfriend brought me to some workshops sponsored by her summer internship program. Those classes were my introduction to gender theory, the concept of systemic inequality, and many other ways of thinking that I didn’t previously know existed. But the moment that I remember most was a time I didn’t learn something new but rather felt something very old. The director of the program said something like, “I’m a feminist all day long. But at night, when there’s a sound or something goes bump, I tell my husband to go check it out.”
I still remember the thrill I felt when I heard that—it was the thrill of feeling that being a man was necessary. She had affirmed the risk of protecting a partner. I remember thinking, Yes, that’s what men have to do.
Years later, after I married my girlfriend, we worked in Tanzania for the Lutheran church. She was there as a teacher, and I was a pastoral intern. Our neighbor, a Tanzanian, woke us one night and asked me to kill a poisonous snake in her room. She was almost certainly more equipped to kill snakes than I was, but she lived alone and seemed scared.
