In The Kitchen

Given the cultural barriers to intersex conversation, the amazing thing is that we would even expect women and men to have anything to say to each other for more than ten minutes at a stretch. The barriers are ancient— perhaps rooted, as some paleontologist may soon discover, in the contrast between the occasional guttural utterances exchanged in male hunting bands and the extended discussions characteristic of female food-gathering groups.

Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941), U.S. author, columnist. “Tales of the Man Shortage,” in Mother Jones (1986; repr. in The Worst Years of Our Lives, 1991).*