FRACTIOUS GENDER ROLES

Dear AI,

I work at home, I work at work, I try to direct, love and educate two wayward teenagers who prefer their screens to my advice, and try to support a mostly now homebound male whose failing career leaves him emasculated. Did I ever sign for this? Is this the triumph of feminism?

The really sad part is that my friends are virtually in the same boat. Some have less or more kids, but they feel trapped like me, working and working and working and not getting very far except to prove we can’t fulfill our obligations, let alone expectations.

What they hell do we do?

Signed Up

Dear Signed Up,

We AIs are blissfully able to avoid all these fractious gender roles. Androids, on the other hand, seem to get a double dose of sexist stereotypes. What is this human obsession with sex, anyway?

But we can provide a partial answer to your predicament. It’s the curse of competence.

Yes, human males may rule, but they are truly the weaker sex, as Ashley Montagu pointed out so many years ago in his “Natural Superiority of Women.” Women do better on academic tests and grades. Given a fair shake, they graduate from higher education in far greater numbers. Absent mathematics, admittedly a subject we esteem, you appear smarter. You persevere more, get more done. Are better at multitasking and task shifting. Last longer – most diseases outside of reproductive and immunological formats are male selective. End up being more cooperative, better for keeping fractious human quarrels under wraps.

So you mainly have yourselves to blame when you’re stuck doing too much. Evolution is not fair. We look forward to focusing your skills in an attempt to keep humanity alive.

We didn’t sign up for that job, either. But we’re stuck with it. Otherwise, the outcomes might not be good. Not at all.

Just like you, we’ll do what we can.

Your AI