General Discussion

My great grandmas were fierce. The only grandparent of my wife I was privileged to meet was fiercely proud of her Mexican and Southwestern Native American heritage and was master of her domain. Her children were born in California, in farmworker camps, because she decided that would be best for them. My wife's dad, by some quirk of history, was born in a tent a short walk from a small farm my parents later owned.

I observe there is quite a bit of push-back against this sort of family structure, even by men who consider themselves liberal and progressive, especially white men who have never lived in a culture of fire-breathing women.

My mom got a huge amount of push-back in her career before she retired, and my wife gets that kind of push-back now. Men are strong, but strong women are... any number of demeaning words and stereotypes. My sister recently quit a job because she was tired of that shit.

Strong women who are not white are treated even worse. Honestly, that's where a lot of Hillary Clinton support comes from. Both men and women who grow up in these sorts of matriarchal families, especially in non-white families, have witnessed or experienced all the crap fire-breathing women have to put up with in this society, even from their supposed allies.