Mark Morford

I'm on Mark Morford's SFGate.com email list. Today's column, titled What Whips Your Spinach? What's it mean when the men do all the cooking and the women sit back and talk about God?, made me smile. I've recognized this trend amongst my own friends. Not necessarily that the women/partners cannot cook or cook well, but that more men are taking up the art. In part, the plethora of cooking shows has to have something to do with this. For my part, my mother told me at a young age, "You will not do to some other woman what your father did to me." And with that, I was learning to make cookies, pop corn (before the gadgets, folks), and make simple dinners. Later, moving in with Archie, I got a lesson on how my mother's cooking wasn't very healthy or flavorful. When we switched to vegetarianism (a phase for Archie; a long term commitment for me), we were determined not to be bored by bland food and took it upon ourselves to expand our horizons - something we both continue to do albeit with different roommates.

A quote from Morford's column, "After all, roles change and energies shift and men and women swap slices of identity all the time despite ourselves and despite the culture's rampant stereotyping and despite the regressive sexist homophobic Christian Right's attempts to strip women of their power and keep 'em in their place. We inhabit each other's aspects all the time; we just don't always want to admit it."

Note to Mark, should you read this: Nope, it's not just a San Francisco thang. I can point to people in Seattle, LA, Portland (OR), Detroit, New York (including NYC), Indiana, and Austin where this is happening. Granted, for the conservatives, these are big cities, but since when were big cities not part of the "real America"?