Man Problems
Maybe it's men who ruin everything
There is a long history of journalism chronicling the way women have ruined the pleasures and pursuits men have long enjoyed. In 1929, English theatre critic St. John Ervine wrote, “When the theater was vital and alive, there was no woman either on the stage or in the auditorium.” This, of course, has never been true, but that was not a deterrent for St. John. Over the past many decades, women have been accused of ruining marriage, and their own “charm and femininity” by smoking, wearing makeup, and even worse, pants. Women have been accused of ruining men themselves “making milksops of their men,” and they have ruined the US military and military academies, and even the whole country. They have ruined the sports of tennis and golf and even the morale of toll collectors for the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. Most recently, they have ruined the modern workplace, what with their feminism and liberal ideas about equity and fairness.
What’s worse than this cultural preoccupation with the notion that women ruin things and would be best kept out of public life, is that throughout history, men have had an alarming predilection for treating women’s rights and whether or not women even deserve rights as legitimate topics of debate. They do not trouble themselves with examining why they feel entitled to this unearned authority and they are not terribly interested in how women want to advocate for themselves and assert their autonomy. It’s a horrible state of affairs.
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Another popular journalistic refrain concerns the death of feminism, the collapse, the failure, the irrelevance. Mostly, these are sensationalistic discussions that position feminism as a problem rather than a solution, suggesting that efforts to address misogyny are futile and we would all better off if we embraced the status quo.
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My neighborhood in Los Angeles is inundated by Waymos. Every day, I see those self-driving cars ferrying people or, more often, simply driving around, empty. They are easy to make fun of because while they are, theoretically, smart cars, they can also be quite dumb. If a passenger forgets to close a car door after exiting a Waymo, the car is pretty much rendered unusable until someone comes along to help it out of its predicament. During ICE protests in Los Angeles in June 2025, several Waymos were targeted in spectacular acts of defiance.
People often say they will never take a Waymo but I don’t mind them. As a woman, a driverless car has genuine appeal. I won’t have to engage in awkward conversations about my nonexistent husband or politics or whatever might be on a driver’s mind. I won’t be kidnapped, murdered or sexually assaulted. I won’t be stalked or harassed. I’m not paranoid. These are very real dangers women face when availing themselves of rideshares.