Women. You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em, so the general attitude seems to be. These days, it’s a topic I would rather not broach, so many ready to take offense at the drop of a hat, but who can blame them? The United States, in my mind one of the most open cultures in the world (until the Orange Shitgibbon came along), never gave them their just due. We said we did, but saying and doing are so far apart anymore. Maybe always was. I was fortunate enough to have grown up in a family which was as close as you could probably get to democratic. Not in the early days, of course, but who would want to put a family at the mercy of a five- or eleven-year old? Still, us kids were included in most decisions— the ones which involved us kids, anyway.