Creampuff Contemplates Caulk

When Katr and I moved into our condo, we hired a friend of Sahi's to paint our place. Brka is the kind of house painter who is also "in a band", so while his painting technique was excellent and his hourly rate was more than reasonable, his hours were somewhat erratic. Often, he would come in around 2:00 p.m. or so and would still be there when we got home from work, painting away while CNN blared in the background. After the first week of coming home to Brka in his paint spattered overalls, I started to feel like Murphy Brown.

Part of what was taking so long was that Brka was assiduously applying caulk to all the gaps between the newly re-attached baseboards and the walls. Finally, only our room was left and in an effort to speed things up a bit, we asked Brka not to bother with caulking the baseboards in the bedroom. "Caulk" - who pronounces the "L" in "caulk" unless they work at a hardware store? Not me. So when I spoke to him about it, what I actually said to Brka came out sounding like "Oh, hey Brka - we don't want any cock in the bedroom." 

Before I fully grasped that I had once again neglected that wiley "L", Brka nodded wisely and said "That's okay. I don't much care for cock in the bedroom either."

Brka was cool.

I was reminded of this incident by an hilarious caulk story on Syd's blog and now, weeks later and in light of recent events, I have been considering "no caulk" on a deeper, philosophical level. See, gender inclusivity has been a hot topic of discussion lately, firstly in the case of the BlogHerNorth (working title) conference that's in the works and secondly in case of the lovely Stitch n' Bitch group or rather "Knizzles" - "Stitch n' Bitch" is so old school - that I giddily attended a couple of weeks ago.

On the conference side, a few folks have questioned or are debating the value of a seemingly gender exclusive conference like BlogHer. Is it necessary? Well, yes. Hasn't feminism's raging success rendered this kind of thing pointless yet? Sadly, noooo. If we're not getting the exposure, the opportunities and the invitations into whatever "club" we want, don't we have only ourselves to blame?  Well, sure, occasionally. 

It's important to note that people of any and all genders are invited to attend the BlogHer conference (apparently, nearly 20% of last year's BlogHer attendees were dudes). But since the primary goals of the conference are to showcase successful female bloggers and to create much-needed opportunities for women bloggers to gain speaking and presentation experience on a global stage, it makes sense to me that only self-identified women will be speaking, presenting and facilitating, etc.

Will guys come to a "women's" event like BlogHerNorth? Well, some won't and fair enough. I often choose not to go to "men's" events, otherwise known as "events". And that's fine.

[An aside: Then there are guys like my brother and my dad, who left my mom and I at home and went off to Lilith Fair one year. Curious, I asked my brother why he would go to a chick thing like Lilith Fair, he replied, without irony, that he "went for the music". I waited for him to follow up with something classy like "Well, I WENT for the music, but I STAYED for the squirrel." but no. Because my brother is cool. I probably would have said the thing about the squirrel. And then Jaro would have patted me on the head, then returned to his room to listen to Tori Amos while finishing his paper on Cesar Chavez.]

The second gender inclusivity question in recent days came from what I (unimaginatively) considered an unusual source: Knizzles (see "Stitch n' Bitch is so old school" above). I was at the last knitfest and had a great time meeting some very cool, funny chicks, drinking tea, eating cookies, picking up tips. Oh, and knitting! Good times, good times.

One of the knizzlers has begun a joint project with her male partner and asked the group what the deal was regarding male attendance, as apparently it had never been discussed. Is Knizzles a "girls only" group? If not, should it be? If her partner attends, should other knitting men known to the knizzlers be invited as well?

For a brief moment, I experienced what members of gentlemen-only clubs must have experienced when women expressed an interest in smoking cigars in large leather armchairs: utter bewilderment. It's not that I don't WANT to sit next to dudes at Knizzles - I am an equal opportunity knitter - it's just that it honestly never occurred to me that any guy would wish to come. Which is kind of ridiculous of me, really. And which I think says something uncomplimentary about my own preconceived notions about caulk, in the bedroom and otherwise. Hmmm.

In the end, of course, I say all who wish to knit should be invited. Just so long as the guys don't spend the whole night talking about their PERIODS. Gah.

I'm glad we had this talk. Now that I've had my say, I'm going to spend the last, precious minutes of my workday watching the "Fans Only" version of Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" video over and over. Don't fight it.