“If my wife will let me.” That’s what Richard Branson said when he was asked whether he’d go to Mars. “It may be a one-way trip…. So maybe I’ll wait till the last ten years of my life, and then maybe go, if my wife will let me” (Klein, This Changes Everything, p.288). Does he really think no one will notice how inauthentic he was being? He’s one of the most powerful men in the world. He doesn’t need anyone’s permission for anything.
On top of that, he won’t take her?
And on top of that, she doesn’t have a name? (I’m surprised he didn’t say ‘the wife’ rather than ‘my wife’—to underscore his view that women are all just so interchangeable.)
It’s tiresome.
Wife/girlfriend as Mom. So the man can continue to be a child, just one of the boys.
Wife/girlfriend as authority. See, I’m not sexist, women have the real power.
Even from our most intelligent, most capable, men.
So very tiresome.
